Desktop Instability

[Capt Doufos]

Hi!

I am tearing my hair out at the moment and wondered if anyone has experienced anything similar. My R9 290X has started becoming unstable on the desktop, it looks like the driver stops responding, there is an attempted recover which usually fails and I have to reboot. This was only manifesting itself in browsers initially, Google Maps would really do a great job of triggering it. It's now occasionally even doing it at the logon screen (Windows 10). I don't really remember when it started, but here is the real twist. Zero issues when running games, normal or VR! If there is a game currently running it will not crash, only when back on the deskop!

I have done a safe mode driver reinstall which seemed more stable for an hour then it's just gone back again.

Any ideas? I have no ethusiasm for another Windows Reinstall at the moment.

 

[Davedree]

Very common on hawaii, it has issues in memory stability as there are only 2 p-states for the memory clocks( idle 150mhz and full speed), you can either turn hardware acceleration off. Or you can modify your 290 to always run at 2d clock speeds but this involves higher consumption and temps.

What monitor resolution and refresh rate are you currently using?

 

[Capt Doufos]

I'm running a 3440x1440 (60hz) screen, I do have a 2nd 1920x1200 but that shows problems as well if connected.

 

[Capt Doufos]

So... I managed to finally solve this, hopefully for long enough until the prices drop on the current cards. After much searching it appears it's a common issue. I have modified the firmware on the card so it runs a bit slower, seems memory is the culprit. Fingers crossed it seems ok since doing that.

You need:

GPU-Z
Hawaii Bios Reader
ATI Flash

I have set mine to 1000 GPU / 1150 MEM with a minimum GPU clock of 450 instead of 300. Seems to have done the trick for now.