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MSI R9 290 Gaming unstable

DazzXP

DazzXP

DazzXP

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Joined
10 Jan 2005
Posts
54
Location
Newcastle Upon Tyne
I got the card today and i must admit it has been somewhat a nightmare. It replaced my ASUS GTX 470 but when firing up some games they refused to load and 3D Mark just crashes.

I used the display driver uninstaller powered down the system then installed the new video card. Since games wasn't loading and crashes and what not i thought ok i will flatten the system and start from scratch.

Did that although i haven't got round to reinstalling the games yet 3D mark constantly crashes. So reset my processor from it's moderate overclock to factory defaults. Still crashes in 3D Mark after the last 7 hours of trying 4 different drivers, i have found out it's the clock speed of the GPU causing the crashes. Factory default is 977MHz, if i down that to 947Mhz it works fine. Yet i loop Heaven with extreme tessellation at 977MHz with the GPU maxed at 100% and doesn't crash.

Kinda strange i wonder if it is a BIOS problem or what, with only 30MHz factory overclock i wouldn't have expected to make so much of a difference in stability since people can typically get around an extra 100MHz before having to apply voltage.

Not even sure if i should RMA the card or what or if it will be fixed in a BIOS update? What would you guys do?
 
Does your PSU provide suitable amperage to it? Also, if you're running the Mantle drivers, don't because they're still buggy. You could also try upping the voltage of the GPU.
 
I am using a Coolermaster Silent Pro 2 850w PSU, 68A on a single rail, i have used the 13.12, 13.30 and also the mantle 14.10 v6 drivers, same issue with all of them. I havn't tried the voltage yet since i havn't gotten round to overclocking it etc but will more then Likely be CPU limited anyway to have much effect i can bump the voltage it maybe the BIOS on the card is undervolting rather then a defect.
 
Every time I see a GPU issue and see Gigabyte in the peeps Sig I advise to look for a new Mobo Bios (twice on here tonight).

Not sure if issue is also on AMD chipsets but is on Intel Chipsets.
 
Edit; New BIOS for the Giga is a good start. he's right ^^^^

Strange.

Can you run Heaven @ 1000Mhz, even 1050Mhz?
 
My R9290 observations

Hello all, I'm tuning in from the land down under and have really enjoyed reading these forums over the last couple of months.

I'll be interested to see if LtMatt can help you with this issue at all, he seems to be a guru.

I also purchased an MSI R9 290 Gaming recently, and initially had problems with it throttling massively, or showing as running at ~950 MHz core but extremely poor performance. After flashing numerous different BIOS's to no avail I was getting worried. Eventually I worked out not to run it on the 14.1 drivers and reverted to the 13.12 whql drivers which have been perfect for me. But you have tried that so what else could it be...

I can mine at a consistent 860kh/s which I'm very happy with. I think others can get more out of it but if I try I get black screens or crashes. This is with an OC to only 1007mhz, but I think the rest of my rig might be bottlenecking a little.

I'm primarily a gamer though and once back onto the 13.12 drivers it has been excellent. Again only with very minor overclocking but still happy with FPS and quality.

What might be useful to you DazzXP is I've tried the reference BIOS and Sapphire's (actually all the partner ones on techpowerup) and have found the MSI one really does work the best with it, closely followed by the AMD reference. I personally didn't think it worked well with the Sapphire one. But I do feel the MSI BIOS is a bit lacking, like it's holding the card back slightly, and it does need better optimisation. I read this in a thread Gibbo contributed to and very much agree. I do realise though that the heat from this thing does need to contained.

I think you might as well try a different BIOS and if it's still not working flash back the stock MSI Gaming one. Or, have you got a different PCI slot you could try? Also, have you tried playing games or mining to check performance? Perhaps your copy of 3DMark is a bit sketchy?

Hope that helps, sorry for the novel. Cheers!
 
I don't know if this helps but I have been getting instant crashes of BF4, heaven and valley recently in DX11 while furmark and heaven in DX9 ran fine. I had been using Trixx to overclock and had resent back to default. While investing I uninstalled Trixx and everything is fine so I am concluding at some point it was not sending the right info to the card. 14.1 drivers win7 x64

Prior to this everything was relatively fine apart from the odd crash which I believe I traced down to my cpu overheating as my waterblock must have become slightly unseated when I added another gpu clock and rad to the loop
 
DazzXP said:
I got the card today and i must admit it has been somewhat a nightmare. It replaced my ASUS GTX 470 but when firing up some games they refused to load and 3D Mark just crashes.

I used the display driver uninstaller powered down the system then installed the new video card. Since games wasn't loading and crashes and what not i thought ok i will flatten the system and start from scratch.

Did that although i haven't got round to reinstalling the games yet 3D mark constantly crashes. So reset my processor from it's moderate overclock to factory defaults. Still crashes in 3D Mark after the last 7 hours of trying 4 different drivers, i have found out it's the clock speed of the GPU causing the crashes. Factory default is 977MHz, if i down that to 947Mhz it works fine. Yet i loop Heaven with extreme tessellation at 977MHz with the GPU maxed at 100% and doesn't crash.

Kinda strange i wonder if it is a BIOS problem or what, with only 30MHz factory overclock i wouldn't have expected to make so much of a difference in stability since people can typically get around an extra 100MHz before having to apply voltage.

Not even sure if i should RMA the card or what or if it will be fixed in a BIOS update? What would you guys do?
Click to expand...

What tool did you use to uninstall the old drivers? Was it DDU 12.2? What OS are you using? Sounds like a conflict or other issue or possibly PEBKAC rather than a faulty card.

ArchAnGeL said:
I don't know if this helps but I have been getting instant crashes of BF4, heaven and valley recently in DX11 while furmark and heaven in DX9 ran fine. I had been using Trixx to overclock and had resent back to default. While investing I uninstalled Trixx and everything is fine so I am concluding at some point it was not sending the right info to the card. 14.1 drivers win7 x64

Prior to this everything was relatively fine apart from the odd crash which I believe I traced down to my cpu overheating as my waterblock must have become slightly unseated when I added another gpu clock and rad to the loop
Click to expand...

Try using afterburner beta 18 to overclock if you're having problems with trixxx.
 
I don't know if this helps but I have been getting instant crashes of BF4, heaven and valley recently in DX11 while furmark and heaven in DX9 ran fine. I had been using Trixx to overclock and had resent back to default. While investing I uninstalled Trixx and everything is fine so I am concluding at some point it was not sending the right info to the card. 14.1 drivers win7 x64

Prior to this everything was relatively fine apart from the odd crash which I believe I traced down to my cpu overheating as my waterblock must have become slightly unseated when I added another gpu clock and rad to the loop
Click to expand...

LtMatt don't you think his problem here is running 14.1 as opposed to 13.12? I know it was the big prob for me initially.
 
When I get my PSU from RMA I will test the 13.12 to ensure stable before trying any new betas.

Will be hard to resist if the new ones support TrueAudio for Thief.
 
Agent Orange said:
LtMatt don't you think his problem here is running 14.1 as opposed to 13.12? I know it was the big prob for me initially.
Click to expand...

If my missus gets her backside in gear and turns my pc on, I can remote in, run some tests and confirm.

However, I ran heaven with 14.1 last night for an hour or so after uninstalling Trixx where before it was instantly crashing
 
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