Well, seems like I got it working via using both text only output and the "usewindow" command and all is well.

On a semi-related note, I haven't been keeping up with GPU mining super closely recently, what are the expected speeds for a 280X on each algo nowadays?
Are their newly released modded kernels? Did people figure out the settings/clocks better? What settings/software are you guys mining with/could you redirect me to a better resource?
I don't know a lot about AMD cards, so perhaps someone else here could help you more with that. But I do know that NVIDIA cards seem to be the best for any of the X## algorithms, and AMD cards are best for some others.