arionum-gpu-miner seems to quit for some batch numbers...
but it also has different intensity for cpu and gpu blocks, -b 48 -t 1 on GPU blocks is fine with minor UI lag, but on CPU blocks it just makes PC stutter like hell

totally unusable for desktop, if you have a dedicated mining rig then yes, you don't care, so please leave with your "everybody is happy with the mining software", because at least 1 doesn't.
currently only ariocppminer works perfectly, but it's only for CPU
Hey, not trying to teach you to suck eggs or anything but have you tried lowering GPU intensity on cblocks to 0? You are the first person I have seen that has this problem considering the card you have, I myself run both miners on a laptop and suffer some UI lag but nowhere near as severe as you describe.