Hey Footman,
Would you mind checking to make sure the ‘Material Quality Level’ is set to ‘High’. Also, the graphics card you are using is going to have trouble rendering on Epic settings, as it is not a high end gpu.
If you would like a comparison of all the graphics cards and where yours stands, relative on the list of performance, there is a link below. Artifacts are sometimes an indication of graphics processor issues.
Let me know what you discover and we can continue to troubleshoot this issue.
Thank you,