Soldato
Disabling Afterburner worked - the only drawback is the game runs like crap now. Actually not that bad but far from smooth, stutter-free experience.
Now to figure out the way to overclock with Afterburner disabled and it should be what I'm after
You could try disabling the OSD functions of Afterburner & see if it'll still work ?
Or try Sapphire Trixxx, which has no OSD abilities iirc.