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R9 290 Powercolor - Advice needed.

valks

valks

valks

Associate
Joined
22 Jun 2014
Posts
5
Hello, this is my first time on the forums and would like some advice/help please!

Right... My current rig is as follows:

i5 4670
MSI Z87-G43
8gb DDR3
R9 290 Powercolor
Corsair AX860 PSU

I have had this problem since the purchase of my machine... Whenever i play a Directx 11 game everything is fine, but when i try a game that uses Directx 9 the game suddenly hangs and black screens. Sometimes it returns to game with severe FPS and other times just minimises and i have to end the task.

If i benchmark my PC (heaven/valley) i can run both dx9 & dx11 without a crash at all! I have tried both windows 7/windows 8.1 from fresh installs and also made sure everything is up to date.

I did an RMA to overclockers, which the service was brilliant! Though, they returned it with the following response:

"Here is the technicians Test Report:

"Intensively stress tested on Direct X 9,10,11 games and benchmarks for long durations, no crashes to report - no fault found. "

Following that response i rang overclockers to find out if there is anything else i can do as it still remains to crash. I was told to gather more evidence video's etc and contact them again so they can replicate the error.

Here is what happens within games:


The temperatures are as follows whilst running a benchmark:

dx9.gif


Is there anything else i can try? If any more information is required i be happy to post!

Thanks in advance for taking time to read this!
 
You could try using MSI AB and increasing the power draw to 50% to see if it makes any difference. It could be unstable! Is it a reference model?
 
Yes, i have tried every driver AMD have issued and still get the crashes. Do you think it is faulty hardware or driver issue?
 
Ahh I know this feeling, I had 2 of the same card do exactly the same, reduce the memory overclock from 1350 to 1200ish and I bet it works, I think the direct x thing is a red herring, along with the benchmarking, I could benchmark for hours and it was a none issue.

The more demanding games caused the problem, if you have sleeping dogs with the HD pack, its a great test, my first card wouldn't last 20 mins, the second lasted about 1 hour, but if i dropped the memory overclock it was fine.

OCUK took mine back, I now have a 780ti, wouldn't touch another one.
 
Ah its good to hear someone else who was experiencing the same.

I think I will contact ocuk again and see if I can RMA it. Hopefully I can exchange it and go over to nvidia. I will try and down clock the memory and see how I get on with it, but I don't really want a card that won't run how it should do!

Thanks!
 
Yea you shouldn't have to downclock it, it just means you can at least say exactly what the issue is, so they can reproduce it.
 
The black screen you get...is it the hard knock type which you press ctrl-alt-del does nothing and required a hard reset on the PC, or is it the type that driver crash and you'd still be able to get back to desktop?

It is the latter, the chances are the graphic card's voltage is too low; if it's the prior, then it would mean those memory are not stable at the factory overclock 1350MHz (stock 290 memory clock is 1250MHz)
 
When i get the black screen it happens like in the video posted above then returns to the game with a severe fps drop once the game returns. I never have to reboot.

I originally had an akasa 650w PSU and had the same issues so then i purchased the corsair AX860W.

I do run the PSU in hybrid mode. Should i run it in normal?
 
Hybrid vs normal will make no difference, its just how it uses the fan to cool the unit. Can you test the card in another machine? I think an RMA may be in order!
 
valks said:
When i get the black screen it happens like in the video posted above then returns to the game with a severe fps drop once the game returns. I never have to reboot.
Click to expand...
Then it is driver crash type of problem which people would usually only get when their core clock isn't stable.

It is either:
a) the card's voltage is too low
b) the PSU is not providing sufficient (and stable) 12v power to the card
 
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