• 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.

How many 290/290x before it worked?

atomic7431

atomic7431

atomic7431

Soldato
Joined
18 Feb 2004
Posts
3,095
Location
Lincolnshire
Just interested as to how many 290/290x owners have had replacement card/cards before they got one which is both stable and problem free?

I ask as i have now had 2 290 (x unlocked by Ocuk) and the first suddenly stopped performing ie very low Fps and the second, Black screened and yes i set up a custom fan profile and tried whql and beta drivers with a clean install of windows each time.

Also how many would you accept before you said enough is enough and changed to something else whether it be 780/780ti etc.

Brand
Model
how many faulty
how many non faulty

this would help :)

Update to try and give an idea of what brand is doing what and or how many have caused issues.

Reference models and good/bad

MSI - 4/2
Powercolor 290 - 1/2
Sapphire 290 – 14/3
HIS 290 – 1/0
VTX3D 290 – 1/2

Asus 290x – 6/0
HIS 290X – 2/0
Sapphire 290X - 7/4
VTX3D 290x – 2/2

Custom Good/Bad

MSI Gaming Edition 290 – 5/0

Gigabyte Windforce 290x – 2/1
MSI Gaming Edition 290x – 2/0
Sapphire TRI-X (and Oc) – 8/2

no brand etc listed - 19/4

Hope this serves to give a rough idea whats going on with the 290 range

so 74 cards which are ok and 22 which were RMA`d so far.
 
Last edited:
Bought two Sapphire 290's (stock cards/cooling) in November, both are perfect and have never missed a beat.

I know you only asked for people who've had replacement cards, but to provide a more balanced set of responses, thought it might be of interest to know how many cards didn't have problems - so you know whether your chances of getting a wrong 'un are 90% or 9%.

Personally, I would go with the three strikes rule, if I haven't had a working item after 2 replacements then I'd change to another item.
 
Both my cards I bought for this PC were fine first time (His 290 Preflashed to 290x) and the 2 in my mining pc (Sapphire 290) appear to be ok (though I've not gamed on them, but they don't black screen when running 1000 /1500 overclocked at stock volts.
 
Last edited:
Both of mine had worked great on air before I sold them, never had the chance to use the EK blocks I had for them.
 
Mine is reference sapphire from release and works perfectly. Does 1281/1585 on water but am still on Sapphire bios. Doubt it can go highr even if i flash Asus and put enough voltage through it to wake MJ from the dead.
 
I've had 4 now (2 pairs of 2 for crossfire), 3 of which have been faulty.

2 reference sapphire cards when they were first released, both bad ram.
2 trix's just recently, 1 fine, other won't even boot up.
 
I've RMA'd a couple for people due to the original card having blackscreen issues and replacement cards afaik work fine, atleast no immediate recurrence when I refitted them (was pretty easy to get it to happen before) and not heard anything further about problems since.
 
tri-x i had was a duff blackscreener.

I suspect it was a DSR return, no plastic protecting film over the fan unit when I got it (previous two I've had both came with this) also came with BF4 (which according to Gibbo stopped happening).
 
Last edited:
Got my HIS R9 290 in early November when they were £310 and it's been solid as a rock apart from the one time when I stupidly tried to push the Elpida past 1300MHz and it BSOD'd.

Haven't touched the BIOS, but I did check if it was unlocked. No joy.

Runs quiet and cool thanks to an Arctic Accelero Xtreme 3 and a box of Alpenfohn heatsinks.
 
atomic7431 said:
Keep em coming people, thanks and will update the thread with figures once we have a few more, makes a really interesting comparison :)

@Confused Stu you are quite correct ideally i need a broad comparison and meant to state this really Doh!
Click to expand...

Not really a fair comparison because most people who are happy don't post to say, yeah my card works fine. People with faulty cards on the other hand, its the first thing they do.
 
Got a ref VTX3D 290 X-Edition from here, it's currently being RMA'd due to artifacts at stock, lets hope the replacement I get is stable, I want to put it under water but I'm reluctant to until i know I've got one that won't crap out on me!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom