Kuky...thanks for sharing your experience....you just saved me some major bucks. Little help to you though :-(
Used to be ATI fanboy but after switching to Nvidia and finding their drivers so much more reliable (especially SLI vs CF) and no stoopid Catalyst AI nonsense, I vowed never to go near ATI/AMD again as their drivers suck so bad. I was contemplating getting one of them there 7970s for going multimonitor but it seems like AMD are outdoing themselves again in the crappy drivers dept.
Unfortunately releasing a buggy product and letting your customer base beta test seems to be the norm now, to the extent that I've taken to waiting at least 3 months before touching any new game or card.
Hope you get it sorted.