That is my card! Thanks so much for your help man, I'm currently away but when I get home I will try the update!
As it turns out, I have no idea how to install this bios update. I've done it for Mobos, but it's all self controlled.
Oh dang man. I literally had everything set to make a new bootable disk to flash the bios and everything. Read up on it for about an hour, watched tutorials, got the programs.... Turns out I already have that bios! I literally just bought this gpu less than a week ago, so I guess it shipped with the most recent bios. It's a shame, because I'd say this thing is still quite unstable.
doh, sorry about that.
Im really not to sure where to go from here, i know what your explaining sounds like a bottleneck but if it worked before then its most likely some kind of software error or glitch.
Id perhaps revert to different drivers again and try to get the 280x ones on the catalyst website to work. If not as a last resort use the ones that came with the card (i assume it came with a disk). Also id try using any bundled "management" software that came with the card just incase that allows access to the cards bios and you can mess around in there.
It definitely sounds software related as what caused this was installing afterburner.
Id guess that the MSI after burner may not of been compatible with the new bios of your card or something similar, when installed it hooked into the GPU bios and changed something it shouldnt of done and now the GPU is stuck at low usage. Probably wrong but you could flash the bios with the downloaded version to see if it "resets" back to factory.