Dang man, sorry to hear this! What a headache! I am not suggesting you do this yet (because I know next to nothing about 7970) but with the 5870 you could flash the bios from another brand. It think it is TechPowerup that has the BIOS collection from all the gamers, along with a GUI BIOS flashing and editing utility for the Radeons. Anyway, if you are sure it's a BIOS issue, may *possibly* be worth looking into. I'd probably read up on what the gamers are doing first, though. A lot of times they find the brand that gives the best O/C BIOS and then flash other cards to that one. I am sure there will be some good info out there...
Wish this stuff would just work like CPU crunching does (for the most part). The sad part is, there is no way for a team to remain even remotely competitive unless it chases high credit GPU projects as well. What to do? Because I feel you on this one...
Sent from my MB860 using Tapatalk 2