Win 8 + Radeon HD 7950 black screen

Thursday night I noticed some pending updates to Adobe Creative Cloud. I let them install overnight, at some point I saw some odd glitches (like Aero restarting) but everything seemed fine when I jumped on in the morning - used the machine for web browsing, etc. before and after work without issue.
Near the end of the day on Friday, I noticed there were some extra windows in the Alt+Tab menu - most of them without names, and a couple that indicated they were system items that just normally wouldn't be displayed there (don't recall the names specifically). Alt+tabbing to one of them would take me to a screen matching the Win 8 color scheme I had picked during setup.
Thought it was odd, but still didn't seem to be hurting anything; so I launch Borderlands 2. About 10 minutes into playing, screen stutters, goes black, and there's the typical "terrible game crash" stuttering sound from the speakers.
Restart, and I'm getting a black screen after the Windows splash (logo + circle of dots) with no indication that input is working.

Restart again, using the Windows disk to launch into the recovery options. Used a system restore from before the Adobe updates - since everything before hand was fine. Besides the Adobe rollback, the only thing that stood out was a C++ Redistrib. rollback. No luck - still had the black screen after the windows splash.

Chose to reinstall Windows, thinking a fresh start would be easier/faster than full debug (all my storage is on two non-OS HDDs or synced with 3rd parties, so I wouldn't lose anything anyway).
Things that have happened since then:

• 
  ■ Default Microsoft driver for gfx card uses both screens at launch without issue. Approximately 10-20 minutes later, system crash and reverts to using one monitor at minimum resolution on subsequent restarts.
  ■ Installing the driver from ATI's site gives a generic "installation failed" error.
  ■ Reinstalling the Microsoft driver in Win 8 gives a "cannot overwrite existing file" error (selecting the ATI supplied drivers gives an error about the account type - don't recall the specific message).
  ■ Switching down to 1 monitor and reinstalling Windows seems fine at first; but the screen flickers and goes black about 30 seconds after the login page. Stops accepting all input - seems to be frozen. This continues even with Windows Update turned off (so it's not trying to apply an update that's freaking it out).

I believe this is separate from a previous (but similar) issue I had, as the previous card was RMA'd and had some obvious hardware issues - this issue seems to be entirely related to the driver installation.

Parts list is:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant / Benchmarks

CPU: AMD FX-8350 4.0GHz 8-Core Processor ($199.99 @ Newegg)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler ($35.98 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: ASRock 990FX Extreme4 ATX AM3+ Motherboard
Memory: Corsair Vengeance Pro 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($94.44 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($99.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($100.00)
Storage: Western Digital BLACK SERIES 2TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive ($149.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Western Digital VelociRaptor 150GB 3.5" 10000RPM Internal Hard Drive ($116.63 @ Amazon)
Video Card: Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 3GB Video Card ($399.99 @ Newegg)
Case: NZXT Source 210 Elite (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case ($42.98 @ Best Buy)
Power Supply: Thermaltake Black Widow 850W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8 (OEM) (64-bit) ($113.41 @ Amazon)
Keyboard: Logitech G510s Wired Gaming Keyboard ($89.99 @ Amazon)
Mouse: Logitech G700 Wireless Laser Mouse ($99.98 @ Amazon)
Total: $1543.37
(Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available.)
(Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-02-03 23:28 EST-0500)