Display Driver Crashes And BSODs With New GPU

I recently built a new computer using the following parts:

Motherboard: ASUS P8Z77-V PRO
Memory: CORSAIR Vengeance 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3 1866
PSU: CORSAIR HX Series HX750 750W
Storage: 2 x OCZ Vertex 120GB SSD in RAID 0 Configuration and is also the boot drive
320GB Western Digital 7200RPM HDD as a data drive
CPU: Intel i5 3570k
CPU Cooler: Corsair H70 Core w/ 2 Corsair SP120 static pressure fans
lastly,
GPU: MSI R7870 Hawk

I have the CPU overclocked to about ~4.4Ghz using the ASUS motherboard's TPU switch and the AI Suite II's automatic overclocking utility. My main issue has been more of an annoyance than something that keeps the computer from functioning. I have been attempting to overclock the GPU which is pretty much made for overclocking considering it has the TwinFrozer IV cooler along with other OC features. My problem though is that even with minor overclocks like 1140 Mhz core clock and 1250 Mhz memory clock while playing pretty much any game I'm having issues with the display driver crashing (I'm assuming that's what is happening as the game freezes, goes black and then flashes back.)

This is as compared to the default speeds of 1100 core clock and 1200 memory clock. Not only does the display driver crash I also get BSODs every so often, eight in total now. The BSODs I'm getting mostly have the error code 0xA0000001 which seems to be cause by atikmdag.sys usually. I also recently tried using 3DMark 11 to benchmark the system and it would actually perform worse when I overclocked the card. The CPU score was always good but the GPU score was rather low. For overclocking I am using MSI Afterburner and watching the GPU temps they have never gone over 53C which I know is a safe temp. I have BlueScreenView and Windows Debugging Tools installed if you would like more information on the BSODs or any other information.