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** MSI 290X GAMING EDITION BLOODY SILLY PRICE!! **

Ok, so while we are having the VRAM discussion, from what I've read in reviews/forums I have found the below but I'm not 100% that it is accurate. Does anyone want to add to that, or do the various companies just throw in whatever chips they have for each batch?

Sapphire Radeon R9 290 Tri-X:
Reference PCB, Custom SK Hynix memory modules

MSI 290 Gaming Edition:
Custom PCB, SK Hynix memory chips

Gigabyte Radeon R9 290 OC WindForce:
Custom PCB, Think they use the memory Elpida chips.

Asus Radeon R9 290 DirectCU II:
Customer PCB, Think they use the memory Elpida chips.
 
Gregster said:
All that shows is instability with the UEFI fast boot option. If they use the legacy BIOS, they are seeing stability more so, so doesn't prove anything about Elpida memory being an issue. The fact that most of the 290's/X's use Elpida is probably the reason for such high numbers.
Click to expand...

Also what it proves is maybe there are a lot more Eplida based cards than Hynix?

Without know the exact percentage share of how many Hynix and Elpida units there is out there, it is pretty impossible to prove. As its as simple as if 75% cards out there are Elpida based, then of course they will have more black screens.

So it seems pretty pointless and also as Gregg says as well.
 
Edit: a good point ^^^^

Gregster said:
All that shows is instability with the UEFI fast boot option. If they use the legacy BIOS, they are seeing stability more so, so doesn't prove anything about Elpida memory being an issue. The fact that most of the 290's/X's use Elpida is probably the reason for such high numbers.
Click to expand...

A users poll is not proof either, but it is a very good indicator. :)

Looking at the Graph yes Elpida + UEFI is by far the biggest chunk @ 59%

But, even Elpida + Legacy is still way above any Hynix Fail.

Best case Elpida is still 1 in 8 GPU's, worst case Hynix is 1 in 30.

All Elpida are 59%, 22%, 16% and 11%

Hynix: 3%, 1%, 1% and 1%.
 
Gibbo sadly i can confirm that most black screens problems are on Elpida cards. Been looking in to this since R9 came out on 3 english and one polish OC forums.

I get black screens if i mess around with my settings but with 1.4 vcore asus bios 6000mhz card is rock stable in games.

On stock sapphire bios my card is unusable !!!! Memory clock jumps up and down all the time and driver crash or black screen. Does not matter what drivers I use reinstalled windows ect..
Thing is as ATI gpu fan over years i learned to deal with **** like this. For me its AMD thing.

But if someone is noob lets say he wont reflash bios on hes card and wont spend whole weekend to find stable settings. RMA is hes only option then.


O well waiting for mantle driver for another format c: weekend :D
 
Last edited:
humbug said:
Edit: a good point ^^^^



A users poll is not proof either, but it is a very good indicator. :)

Looking at the Graph yes Elpida + UEFI is by far the biggest chunk @ 59%

But, even Elpida + Legacy is still way above any Hynix Fail.

Best case Elpida is still 1 in 8 GPU's, worst case Hynix is 1 in 30.

All Elpida are 59%, 22%, 16% and 11%

Hynix: 3%, 1%, 1% and 1%.
Click to expand...

Right, I am useless at math but let's try.

A company sells 1000 GPU's with Elpida memory and of that 1000, 10% fail = 100 failures

A company sells 100 GPU's with Hynix memory and of that 100, 10% fail = 10 failures.

So when put into a graph like that we see.

Elpida failures 90%
Hynix failures 10%

Looks bad on Elpida but as the majority of 290's/X's have Elpida, the graph could be massively misleading.
 
Gregster said:
Right, I am useless at math but let's try.

A company sells 1000 GPU's with Elpida memory and of that 1000, 10% fail = 100 failures

A company sells 100 GPU's with Hynix memory and of that 100, 10% fail = 10 failures.

So when put into a graph like that we see.

Elpida failures 90%
Hynix failures 10%

Looks bad on Elpida but as the majority of 290's/X's have Elpida, the graph could be massively misleading.
Click to expand...


Exactly what I've just try to say!

I know for a fact Hynix is rarer, I mean come on when a card appears with Hynix everyone is like that card has Hynix. At launch only AMD and Asus cards seem to have it, shortly afterwards Asus no longer had it.

From the amount of systems we build and the cards we test on AMD reference designs they seem to be mostly Elpida.

Its only now on the custom 290's were seeing a lot more Hynix in use by the likes of MSI and Sapphire.

Don't get me wrong, I prefer Hynix, it always seems to have a slight edge in overclocking?
 
humbug said:
As i said in the post you quoted tell me that, Greg, Gibbo has a good point.
Click to expand...

Also I forget to mention, but remember it was Hynix who had the fire as well:-

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/for...possibly-affected-15-global-memory-production

Before release of 290 series effecting GDDR5 ability.

So there is definitely way more cards out their with Elpida which basically backs up what I am saying. There are more reported black screen issues with Elpida memory simply because there are far more Elpida based cards out there as Hynix production was reduced due to the fire.

This is no doubt why Hynix was a rare find on the reference 290's and Elpida cards were more popular.

Yet on the custom cooled cards Hynix actually seems more popular which makes sense as now their production has fully recovered from the fire. :)
 
andybird123 said:
I would imagine similarly that most people buying 290's have motherboards with uefi bios'
So what bios someone has is also proof of nothing
Click to expand...

It seems that Sapphire has 2 different BIOS's on that switch and it isn't just "uber/quiet" modes. The switch sets the GPU in either UEFI or Legacy mode. Not sure how this affects but seems UEFI is having a fair chunk of issues, so flashing the Sapphire BIOS on (making sure that it does in fact have Legacy support) a 290X could help sort out a few black screen issues. Or it could just be faulty cards/drivers... Pass.
 
just standard air but may get a water loop on the go in the future, when is the NDA lifted on the lightning anyway?
 
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