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New 290X not playing nicely - Black screens of despair

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29 Nov 2007
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408
So the UPS brought me a shiny new 290X Vapor-X, to replace my 390X Tri-X (it kind of makes sense). I installed the new card (after uninstalling the old driver, cleaning registry, running DDU, the works), everything went fine and I played around a bit checking gpu-z etc. But then, as I had to shut down and restart, I started getting "horizontal waves" followed by a black screen, either in the log in screen or immediately upon reaching the desktop; sometimes it wouldn't happen until I tried to double click any icon or perform any other action but as soon as I did, boom, black screen.

Sooo out with the 290X, in with the 390X; everything works. I uninstalled the driver again and cleaned everything and threw the 290X back in; it seemed to be working again. Fast forward an hour or so and the same thing happened: horizontal "waves" or "ripples", followed by black screen, after restart upon reaching Windows. This time I remedied it by uninstalling the driver in the safe mode and it worked as it did the first time around.

What's a man to do? The driver is the latest one for Windows 10 and it hasn't been giving me any troubles with the 390X. Dud card, dud driver, both of the above or neither of the above? I haven't been dabbling with these new(ish) generation AMD cards for very long yet this time around so there might be things I'm overlooking.

Thanks in advance.
 
Why did you down grade in the 1st place?

Ahh technicalities. :cool: I had ordered the Vapor-X ages ago, got impatient waiting and got the 390X to play with in the meantime; haven't been massively happy with it (aesthetics and noise-profile, mainly) so kept the Vapor-X order in place and finally received it. 390X shall be peddled to a friend for the price I paid for the 290X.
 
Unfortunately you are most likely lost the game of memory lottery for the 290x and the factory memory factory (Sapphire) overclock of 1325MHz (5300MHz effectively) on the 290x Vapour X isn't stable. Those wave and then black screen is the well-known indication of unstable memory clock.

You should either return the card to the retailer for a replacement or refund, but if that is not an option, and all you want to try to get the card run stable without black screen, you could consider dropping the memory clock down the the reference 290x's memory clock of 1250MHz (5000MHz effectively), and the black screen should go away (hopefully).
 
Unfortunately you are most likely lost the game of memory lottery for the 290x and the factory memory factory (Sapphire) overclock of 1325MHz (5300MHz effectively) on the 290x Vapour X isn't stable. Those wave and then black screen is the well-known indication of unstable memory clock.

You should either return the card to the retailer for a replacement or refund, but if that is not an option, and all you want to try to get the card run stable without black screen, you could consider dropping the memory clock down the the reference 290x's memory clock of 1250MHz (5000MHz effectively), and the black screen should go away (hopefully).

Gosh dang it. :( It's most unlucky as like Dtshaw reported yesterday, these cards are out of stock and they'll only be handing out refunds; OTOH, I'm big on running my cards at least at the specced speeds, so the prospect of downclocking the memory doesn't fill me with joy either. :(

Thanks a lot for chipping in!
 
A 390X is faster than a 290X and runs cooler so very strange to prefer the older card over the new one. Are you feeling alright?
 
A 390X is faster than a 290X and runs cooler so very strange to prefer the older card over the new one. Are you feeling alright?
Exactly.

The 390x is actually an improved version of the 290x, with 8GB of memory that should run at the rated higher clock speed without black screening.

The Tri-X cooler shouldn't be noisy, unless you don't have even average air-intake and airflow for your case. You can setup an custom fanspeed curve profile via software such as MSI Afterburner.
 
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As said the 390 is an improved 290, It's faster, a better clocker and it should be cooler. If it isn't I'd be wanting a replacement for that if I was you. It sounds like a huge waste of money, Buy a 390x then sell it to someone for what a 290x costs to pay for a 290x, Crazy. Refund the 290'x and if you are not happy with the 390x get it replaced. That should be one of the better models so if it isn't something's wrong.
 
Nah the Vapor-X is the nicer card. I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that my 390X doesn't really take kindly to "tuning", it's barely stable at 1120 and adding voltage doesn't change a thing; now, any half decent 290X Vapor-X will reach much closer to 1200. Add to that the much better looks and the fact that it's just a better built piece of equipment, a classic, aaaand the fact that I got the 390X on the cheap (paid less than £270) and I think I do have a point. :) I couldn't care less about the extra 4GB of marketing VRAM as in no scenario would it be of use.

Here they are posing for a courtesy shot, in the finest potatoe quality:

q3epB6E.jpg.png
 
Why was it going cheap? I prefer the look of the 390 myself but that's in the eye of the beholder, The reason I never bought a Sapphire Hawaii was because I thought they looked tacky. Big mistake as I ended up with a cruddy Twin Frozer. It sounds to me like you got it cheap because it wasn't performing like it should have been. What was the reason?
 
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