• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

First PC build - trouble activating R9 290

smudge523

smudge523

smudge523

Associate
Joined
8 Sep 2014
Posts
15
just building my first pc. got everything booted up, windows 8.1 running, everything seems fine and dandy. However, windows isn't detecting my graphics card (r9 290) and I'm not sure what to do.

tried to install AMD catalyst so i can download drivers, that fails to install.

tried looking in BIOS (i have a GB Z97X-SLI) and can't find any option for accessing PCI slots.

The card itself appears (visually at least) to be working, as the card itself lights up and the two fans are working fine.


Is there some small piece of knowledge I'm missing in order to get this thing working? Im completely stuck.
 
monitor is currently plugged into both the Motherboard and GC. (if i just plug it into the GC, i get no signal message on the monitor)

if i disable the internal graphics, i brick the PC (tried this half an hour ago, had to pop the battery out the motherboard)

running windows 8.1 and the card does not appear anywhere, just the internal graphics.

i will check the drivers for the MoBo.... standby...
 
the MoBo, PSU and GC were all recommended on these forums, 550w. that should be more than sufficient?

1 x Gigabyte Z97X-SLI - Devils Canyon Core i5 4690K Bundle
1 x XFX Radeon R9 290 DD 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card (R9-290A-EDFD)
1 x Crucial MX100 256GB SATA 2.5” 7mm SSD + 9.5mm Adapter (CT256MX100SSD1)
1 x Microsoft Windows 8.1 64-Bit DVD - OEM (WN7-00614)
1 x TeamGroup Vulcan RED 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-17100C11 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit (TLRED38G2133HC11ADC01)
1 x SuperFlower Golden Green HX 550W "80 Plus Gold" Power Supply
1 x Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST1000DM003) HDD
1 x Raijintek Agos Midi Tower - Black
1 x Raijintek Themis Black Heatpipe CPU Cooler PWM - 120mm
1 x LG GH24NSB0 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM
 
Should all be sufficient. Fastest way would be to check the card in another PC.

If you have a spare graphics card around, you could throw that in just to double-check the PCI-E socket isn't broken (or you could try the existing card in different slots).

My bet would probably be on a faulty graphics card at this point.
 
just updated the mobo drivers, but doesnt seem to have made any difference. unfortunately this is my first attempt at building a PC so i have no spares or alternatives knocking about.
 
I've just had the same problem except mine was working then after a fresh install wouldn't detect it trying to sort out testing my mobo but that seems fine.
mine is a 290x have sent mine back for rma testing if it comes back ok guess it must be some other component of mine.
 
Your i5 graphics needs to be disabled(option is found in the bios) or your discrete card will not work. I would not have a cable connected to the onboard graphics port and your discrete graphics card at the same time, this may cause issues. So disable onboard, install your discrete card in the 1st Pci-e slot (x16 one), connect both Pci-e cables(separate cables preferably), fire it up and let generic win driver install and then install the latest Amd drivers. Good luck. :D
 
As Nutsnut suggested earlier, are both power connectors plugged into the graphics card? Also, just checking that the monitor you're connecting is by DVI or HDMI, not VGA as the 290 won't output to a VGA monitor even by using a passive DVI-VGA adapter (you'd need an Active DisplayPort to VGA adapter to do it).
 
Try what roly said once you set up bios and restarted you should still see monitor come on in start up screen before it loads into windows but because you on ssd it will be fast.

If you don't get a start up screen I would recheck cables and make sure the card is all the way in the slot, if still no luck you might have to use onboard and check bios setting again.
 
I had the same problem when i fitted a new gigabyte z97 gamer7 mobo i updated to the latest mobo bios and that sorted it out for me.
 
tried moving the GC to a different PCI slot... and now windows won't start. gets to a blank purple screen and no further. this is getting beyond frustrating...
 
Seriously update your motherboard BIOS, in my old platform (2500k build) I swapped the 7950 for a 290, would not boot up at all, black screen, no POST.

Updated the BIOS and everything started working fine, it will just be a compatibility issue which can be resolved by an update. It seems to be a fairly common issue for people to need BIOS updates before 290s will be detected.
 
Like others have said update motherboard BIOS to latest version, if that still doesn't work it looks like it's RMA time for the graphics card.
 
Just wondering if you solved your problem?
My card is being returned byt overclockers so they clearly had no problem with it and it must have worked fine for them.
im pretty sure my mobo bios was the most recent f6 i think.
btw my specs are
290x
27" Qnix 1440p monitor
gigabyte UD3H black z97
4790k i7

wondering if AMD Matt might be able to help?
 
Also for what it's worth my card was working fine in my watercooled build.
it was only when i had a problem with it on advanced warefare where the fps dropped to 15fps i decided to unninstal the drivers and try to re install them but it kept on failing after that i did a fresh install of windows but had to use the mobo dvid as my screen wasn't getting detected through the GPU.
kind of at a loss at the moment im guessing my card will be here tomorrow so going to have to start the whole build again and see what happens.
 
Have you updated your BIOS to the latest version? Checked all power cables to motherboard and graphics card? Does sound like a motherboard bios issue.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom