me also having vdrop. And once the benchmark hang,,,,for the subsequent stable clock speed will be artifacting as well.

I have to restart the system and the artifact went away......me have no idea why the system restart will do away the artifact

Btw, i did not manage to get the 11.12 nor 12.1 preview driver installed for the card....I have to install the driver from the CD Driver for the driver to work...Anybody encounter this issues coz I see quite a few online members manage to use 11.12 or 12.1 driver for 7970