Ummm... no, I really believe it's some user error on your part.
Yeah, maybe it is. But it happens on multiple machines with different configurations, even on the same machine if I add/remove card. I have spent a lot of time researching why, but just gave up. I blame this to aticonfig. cgminer shows clock correctly. Aticonfig doesn't. In the same shell & environment. Maybe I should add --use-darker-magic-kind-of-switch, but I don't know it and don't really care anymore :-)