Just an update:

Reverted everything to stock, besides the factory OC'd GPU
Checked RAM with memtest - no errors
Checked SSD(OS) and HDD(Steam location) with CrystalDisk - no errors
Completely wiped my SSD and installed fresh win 8.1 x64
Re installed GFX drivers on clean OS
Re installed Steam
Re installed dayz (for the 3rd time)

It still is not working

I DONT KNOW WHAT MORE I CAN DO

Hey Andy,
Seems I have found out why my game has been crashing.
After all my troubleshooting I was pretty sure it wasn't my system or hardware and because DayZ is in alpha assumed that it was the culprit.

Anyways played some Alien Isolation a while ago, it too crashed similarly to DayZ, but the DirectX pop-up error I saw lead me to believe it was in fact my GFX card.... the error said something along the lines of... "The video card has been physically removed from the system... etc", so it was either not getting power (I have more than enough) or somehow disconnecting itself.

Long story short: It was a brand new card, so I didn't even think about it being faulty...I tested my old HD5870 and there were no crashes, so I sentthe R9 290 back to the place I bought it, they installed new BIOS, and its been working 100% ever since.
Please close /resolve this topic.

Sorry for all the trouble, but thanks for helping with this problem.
Im off to play DayZ again... whoohoo :D

Hey mist3r,

Thanks for the response, honestly Im going to try anything at this point cause I just cant understand whats happening with my DayZ
To answer...
My CPU is @ 3.9... So nothing too extensive as far as CPU OC.
And my GPU, the Powercolor PCS+ R9 290 according to the net is factory overclocked to 1040Mhz on the core and 1350Mhz on the vRam.
Any ideas? Anything I could try and test?

Hi Andy,

Thanks for the response.
Its been happening just before 972... I've taken a LONG break from DayZ (gaming in general dude to personal reasons) and only recently started playing again. From what I can remember, I could play flawlessly back in April/May... but now I have this problem...
Also its the only game that game I own that gets this kind of freeze/crash... all my other games work 100% so I'm fairly positive its not a hardware/system problem.

While trying to troubleshoot this, Ive come across a quite few posts on the net where people have the exact or very similar issues to mine.
Thanks again
Count_G

Side Note: Decided to try experimental last night, and I get the same problem :(