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forcing an R9 290 to a clock speed...

DazQ87

DazQ87

DazQ87

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Collective GPU minds of OCUK:

I am having some more black screen issues with my R9 290.

Basically I bought my 290 just before Xmas to replace my 7950, now when I first got it I had some major black screen issues when playing low intensity games, mainly DOTA2 (although anything which maxed the card never crashed).

Luckily the 14.1 beta drivers seemed to fix whatever was causing this issue and I have had trouble-free gaming from Jan-April. Now roll on a few days ago I have been having massive black screen problems, only in DOTA 2, mostly on the main menu, its the usual black screen hard lockup, although sometimes it will recover with the usual display driver stopped responding rubbish. If it does recover however, the memory will be locked at 150MHz and needs a re-boot to allow it to clock back to 1250MHz.

Now when I run MSI afterburner in the background whilst playing DOTA, the memory will sit at 1250MHz happily, but the GPU clock speed will fluctuate continuously between 400 and 600 MHz, when it should be locked at 975MHz in 3d mode. The GPU usage is also all over the place depending on how high the card is clocking itself.

I believe that this continuous change in GPU clock causes the display driver to stop responding, probably just because it gets confused eventually.

I have seen a similar problem in X-com, where having v-sync on didn't put enough load on the GPU to warrant the full 3d clocks, making it sit between 400 and 600MHz meaning it blackscreened every 10 minutes. I have a 144Hz monitor so I just turned V-sync off and the GPU usage went up to 100% at 975MHz and I managed to have a 3 hour session with no crashes.

It must be this changing core speed that causes the crash because I can run BF4 and tomb raider for hours, which will happily sit at 975MHz core speed 100%GPU usage and never black screen. (I have a custom afterburner profile for fan speed which keeps the temps below 82c)

I have tried every driver between 14.1 and 14.4 beta, none of which seem to fix this. Although I have no idea why it has suddenly gone bad again after 4 months of no-issues, although I suspect it's a random windows update or similar. Even turning the V-sync off in DOTA just dosn't generate enough GPU load to force the card to full clocks.

Now my question: Is there way like a BIOS flash or something that I can do which will force my 290 to sit at full clocks rather than this odd intermediate state between 2d and 3d mode? I'm 100% sure this is the cause of my crashes but I can't find a way to fix it in this particular case.

It really is a great card 99% of the time, but it just seems so daft I can run BF4/NS2/tomb raider for hours on end with no crashing, and yet the low requirement DOTA2 crashes on the menu after 3 minutes making me curse it and wish I had gone with the geforce 780!
 
I had the dreaded black screens only way round it was to down clock the memory by 100mhz and up the power limit in afterburner which got it stable
 
if you under-clock the memory by ~150mHz and it becomes stable, RMA the card ASAP as its a known issue with some of the early 290 with non Hyinx memory.
 
Not sure how much help this is. Anyway when I first bought a 7950 couple years back I would also get black screen. It turned out to be the PSU power cable, with the Corsair PSU being Modular I changed the cable for another and didn't have the black screen since.

Might be worth a try if you can to change the cable?
 
shankly1985 said:
Not sure how much help this is. Anyway when I first bought a 7950 couple years back I would also get black screen. It turned out to be the PSU power cable, with the Corsair PSU being Modular I changed the cable for another and didn't have the black screen since.

Might be worth a try if you can to change the cable?
Click to expand...

I may try swapping the PCI-E cables for different ones when I get home, my HX850 has about 4 unused tucked in the back chamber of my case.

I'm not sure it's a card fault though, as it really does seem to be as a direct result of the core speed just going all over the place, which I presume is due to the drivers not being able to make their mind up. I'll have to take an afterburner screenshot when I get home just to show how odd the behavior is in DOTA 2 compared to literally anything else.

Still strikes me as odd that I can run really intensive games for hours with no crashes ever but as soon as I sit on the DOTA menu for more than 3 minutes it bombs out.
 
DazQ87 said:
Collective GPU minds of OCUK:

I am having some more black screen issues with my R9 290.

Basically I bought my 290 just before Xmas to replace my 7950, now when I first got it I had some major black screen issues when playing low intensity games, mainly DOTA2 (although anything which maxed the card never crashed).

Luckily the 14.1 beta drivers seemed to fix whatever was causing this issue and I have had trouble-free gaming from Jan-April. Now roll on a few days ago I have been having massive black screen problems, only in DOTA 2, mostly on the main menu, its the usual black screen hard lockup, although sometimes it will recover with the usual display driver stopped responding rubbish. If it does recover however, the memory will be locked at 150MHz and needs a re-boot to allow it to clock back to 1250MHz.

Now when I run MSI afterburner in the background whilst playing DOTA, the memory will sit at 1250MHz happily, but the GPU clock speed will fluctuate continuously between 400 and 600 MHz, when it should be locked at 975MHz in 3d mode. The GPU usage is also all over the place depending on how high the card is clocking itself.

I believe that this continuous change in GPU clock causes the display driver to stop responding, probably just because it gets confused eventually.

I have seen a similar problem in X-com, where having v-sync on didn't put enough load on the GPU to warrant the full 3d clocks, making it sit between 400 and 600MHz meaning it blackscreened every 10 minutes. I have a 144Hz monitor so I just turned V-sync off and the GPU usage went up to 100% at 975MHz and I managed to have a 3 hour session with no crashes.

It must be this changing core speed that causes the crash because I can run BF4 and tomb raider for hours, which will happily sit at 975MHz core speed 100%GPU usage and never black screen. (I have a custom afterburner profile for fan speed which keeps the temps below 82c)

I have tried every driver between 14.1 and 14.4 beta, none of which seem to fix this. Although I have no idea why it has suddenly gone bad again after 4 months of no-issues, although I suspect it's a random windows update or similar. Even turning the V-sync off in DOTA just dosn't generate enough GPU load to force the card to full clocks.

Now my question: Is there way like a BIOS flash or something that I can do which will force my 290 to sit at full clocks rather than this odd intermediate state between 2d and 3d mode? I'm 100% sure this is the cause of my crashes but I can't find a way to fix it in this particular case.

It really is a great card 99% of the time, but it just seems so daft I can run BF4/NS2/tomb raider for hours on end with no crashing, and yet the low requirement DOTA2 crashes on the menu after 3 minutes making me curse it and wish I had gone with the geforce 780!
Click to expand...

Is the game not very demanding? Please use the links in my sig to report the driver issue to AMD. Then try my fix below.

LtMatt said:
Try this for a fix for the clock dropping. No need to use unofficial overclocking method either so clocks will drop to 2d levels as normal.

1. Download RadeoPro - http://www.radeonpro.info/2013/11/new-build-with-support-for-amd-radeon-r-series/

2. Create a profile using the game exe.

3. Click the profile tab, then the overdrive tab. Click the padlock to unlock overdrive, click enable graphics overdrive, the click 'always use highest performance clocks while gaming'. Don't forget to set +50% power tune in RP. Apply clocks and voltage settings through afterburner first. Now right click the game profile shortcut on the left and select apply then launch the game.

GByks3x.jpg


x2XX3xI.jpg
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
Ah brilliant, thanks LtMatt, this seems like it's what I need. Would you suggest a particular driver version or should I stick with 14.4 for this?

Also DOTA2 is like the least demanding game ever, I think the minimum requirements are Radeon 2600, which is why the GPU usage is so low and the core speeds get confused.

Either way I'll give it a try when I get home and report back.
 
DazQ87 said:
Ah brilliant, thanks LtMatt, this seems like it's what I need. Would you suggest a particular driver version or should I stick with 14.4 for this?

Also DOTA2 is like the least demanding game ever, I think the minimum requirements are Radeon 2600, which is why the GPU usage is so low and the core speeds get confused.

Either way I'll give it a try when I get home and report back.
Click to expand...

I'd stick with 14.4 until the new AMD driver comes out. Its going to be soon, this month, so keep an eye out. I had a similar problem before when trying to play Fifa 13 on a 290 crossfire setup. My gpu's were so confident about their performance in the game that they wanted to play it in 2D mode clocks. That just does not work in crossfire. I did have ridiculous amounts of fps though. :D
 
DazQ87 said:
I may try swapping the PCI-E cables for different ones when I get home, my HX850 has about 4 unused tucked in the back chamber of my case.

I'm not sure it's a card fault though, as it really does seem to be as a direct result of the core speed just going all over the place, which I presume is due to the drivers not being able to make their mind up. I'll have to take an afterburner screenshot when I get home just to show how odd the behavior is in DOTA 2 compared to literally anything else.

Still strikes me as odd that I can run really intensive games for hours with no crashes ever but as soon as I sit on the DOTA menu for more than 3 minutes it bombs out.
Click to expand...

Funny thing is The PSU is the same that I had lol Corsair HX850w I was using one of the cables that's pre-installed used one out the box and all is well. now using a Superflower 1000w and works great.
 
I didn't get chance to have a proper test last night but it certainly seems to have locked my clocks to the right speed and I was able to leave DOTA on the main menu for a good 15 minutes without a crash, which is probably long enough.

Will report back once I have had a proper try over the weekend.
 
well that seems to have fixed my issues*, managed to play dota 2 for a full 90 minutes last night with no crashes, even after a long stint on the menu waiting for the dam matchmaking.

*touchwood
 
DazQ87 said:
well that seems to have fixed my issues*, managed to play dota 2 for a full 90 minutes last night with no crashes, even after a long stint on the menu waiting for the dam matchmaking.

*touchwood
Click to expand...
Yea for the 290 card if the games that are not demanding (i.e. nowhere close to 100% usage on the full clock speed, it would dynamically reduce/increase the clock speed depending on the workload...for the purpose of reducing power consumption and heat I would imagine). Personally I not had this problem in the games I tried, but I'm guessing DOTA2 simply doesn't like the core clock speed going up and down thus causing the driver crashes.

Also just to clarify, crashes that are "driver has crashed/stop responding" is usually core clock issue, rather than memory issue caused blackscreen (which would usually require hard reset on the PC rather than crashing to desktop).
 
DazQ87 said:
Ah brilliant, thanks LtMatt, this seems like it's what I need. Would you suggest a particular driver version or should I stick with 14.4 for this?

Also DOTA2 is like the least demanding game ever, I think the minimum requirements are Radeon 2600, which is why the GPU usage is so low and the core speeds get confused.

Either way I'll give it a try when I get home and report back.
Click to expand...

DazQ87 said:
I didn't get chance to have a proper test last night but it certainly seems to have locked my clocks to the right speed and I was able to leave DOTA on the main menu for a good 15 minutes without a crash, which is probably long enough.

Will report back once I have had a proper try over the weekend.
Click to expand...

DazQ87 said:
well that seems to have fixed my issues*, managed to play dota 2 for a full 90 minutes last night with no crashes, even after a long stint on the menu waiting for the dam matchmaking.

*touchwood
Click to expand...

rjfrid.gif
 
Well after I thought this was all fixed and my card was working fine I have had to restart my PC twice tonight in the space of a 40 minutes trying to play natural selection 2, just a black screen with no audio needing a hard reset.

I'm all out of ideas, I would love to send my card back for RMA, but what is the chance of OCUK actually finding anything wrong with it when it is so intermittent for me. Even then I would rather exchange it for a geforce 780 of some kind just to avoid this kind of rubbish happening again :/

Last AMD card I buy I think, anybody thinking of bothering with a 290 just save yourself the hassle and buy a 780.
 
DazQ87 said:
Well after I thought this was all fixed and my card was working fine I have had to restart my PC twice tonight in the space of a 40 minutes trying to play natural selection 2, just a black screen with no audio needing a hard reset.

I'm all out of ideas, I would love to send my card back for RMA, but what is the chance of OCUK actually finding anything wrong with it when it is so intermittent for me. Even then I would rather exchange it for a geforce 780 of some kind just to avoid this kind of rubbish happening again :/

Last AMD card I buy I think, anybody thinking of bothering with a 290 just save yourself the hassle and buy a 780.
Click to expand...

:( try changing the pcie cables.
 
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