Powercolour r9 290 problems PLEASE HELP

WonderMousePC · 12 Feb 2015 at 11:12

Hi

I got the Powercolour PCS+ R9 290 on Tuesday, and so far I have been able to play games very well. However, outside of games I get the error "amd driver has stopped working and has recovered" coupled with a black screen for a few seconds. And more importantly my PC freezes for a few seconds and then restarts, this can happen at any time running any program.

I have reduced everything to stock clocks and ruled out the possiblity of it being a psu problem (as I can play BF4 for a few hours no problem)

According to some other owners of the PCS+ it may be a gpu BIOS problem but I'm not sure.

ANY ideas at all on what to try next?

I don't want to have to RMA the card, and I think the fact that I can play games shows that its not completely faulty.

Davedree · 12 Feb 2015 at 11:16

try increasing the voltage with stock clocks. Using Trixx or Afterburner
VDDC Offset + 25 or +50 and the Power Limit to +50

ED209 · 12 Feb 2015 at 11:20

what OS are you using and what PSU do you have?

what gpu did you have before? if it was a AMD card strip out the drivers and re install them from scratch again and see if that helps and make sure the drivers are up to date.

WonderMousePC · 12 Feb 2015 at 11:29

I'm using Windows 8.1 coming from a 7870. I have uninstalled and reinstalled the omega drivers 3 times now, using ddu as well. I'll give the voltage thing a go, but does messing with the voltage void the warranty. Because at this stage it looks like I'm going to have to RMA it

Edit: PSU is 700w OCZ

jimhaumman · 12 Feb 2015 at 11:36

Try reinstall whole system.

Davedree · 12 Feb 2015 at 11:39

jimhaumman said:
Try reinstall whole system.

try voltages and tdp limit before that.

WonderMousePC · 12 Feb 2015 at 11:42

I've upped the voltages and pwer limit (+25v and +50 power) now to test it.

I'm also waiting for a reply from raymound at powercolour who is said to be giving out bios updates on a per card basis. But I presume he lives in America so it could take some time for him to reply

Morfinel · 12 Feb 2015 at 12:00

Try to remove amd drives and use the one that Windows will supply to see if same thing will happen

hobohouseparty · 12 Feb 2015 at 12:22

Hi all,

Very interested in this thread as i've been looking at this card myself due to the great price of it. Checking around it seems like quite a few people seem to have this black screen/freezing issue which is just making me think twice now.

Please keep us updated and fingers crossed for you in getting it fixed

nitram100 · 12 Feb 2015 at 12:34

I never encountered this problem with mine, hope you get it sorted as its an amazing card.

WonderMousePC · 12 Feb 2015 at 13:25

No crashes as of yet, but I've noticed something else.

I was doing some benchmarking in a bunch of different games. And I noticed the gpu utilization would jump from 100% to 0% and anywhere inbetween, it won't stay higher then 80% even for a few seconds. I didn't get any stuttering but the fps was hitting 55 in low and 40 on high in battlfield 3/4.

But the strangest part is the cpu usage never went higher then 80%, so it's not a bottleneck. The gpu should be working at 99% constant and getting 120fps in bf3/4 on low.

Any Ideas?

Davedree · 12 Feb 2015 at 13:32

Are you using trixx or afterburner,

in games is v-sync disabled

Harl0 · 12 Feb 2015 at 13:33

Sounds like voltage.

Set it to dynamic/auto in your BIOS.

Change your power profile accordingly to not limit power consumption by your GPU.

Also as mentioned, download and install MSI Afterburner to track voltage, power consumption etc.

I had the exact same issue and resolved it by doing the above.

WonderMousePC · 12 Feb 2015 at 13:34

Harl0 said:
I had the exact same issue and resolved it by doing the above.

With the same card? what numbers did you set it to?

Edit: Afterburner

richardmr2354 · 12 Feb 2015 at 13:53

Got to say i have had no issues with mine, sounds like a voltage issue though. They do love volts

WonderMousePC · 12 Feb 2015 at 15:14

Just tried Middle earth shadow of mordor and got constant 100% gpu usage, but still problem persists in other games even though the cpu usage doesn't exceed 80%

jimhaumman · 12 Feb 2015 at 15:42

Any news from the guy from PowerColour?

r7slayer · 12 Feb 2015 at 15:47

Are you on the latest drivers? 14.12(omega drivers)? I'm going to assume you are. Also its weird how your getting this problem outside games. Theres a good chance the 2d clocks are too low as in memory! I can remember when i first got my card i had this problem or similar to yours outside games and noticed it especially when surfing the web and youtube however newer divers fixed my problem so i didn't have to edit my GPU bios to increase 2D clocks.

(if your wondering what 2d clocks are they are your clocks outside games/sort of idle clocks.)

Also is your Motherboard's bios update?

edit- just seen your on the omega drivers on another post lol. Sorry overlooked this!

Hmm is a weird one, as normally this is associated with a bad overclock but its happening at stock and outside games!

WonderMousePC · 12 Feb 2015 at 16:07

No news from PowerColour yet.

Yes it is strange. I just flashed my motherboard a week ago so its up to date. I think I have to wait and see if I get a reply to update my GPU bios, if that doesn't work I may to a full wipe and reinstall windows 8.1, and IF THAT doesn't work then its time to RMA as there will be nothing left to try.

It's really dissapointing because I have a few days of holiday coming up, and may have to revert to my old gpu while I rma the new one.

Maybe I should just sell my PC and move to Intel + Nvidia. I'm not a big fan of Nvidia but it's better then having to sit through this all the time, sometimes I swear AMD just isn't worth the stress.

JamesM · 12 Feb 2015 at 16:31

Is this something to do with the memory clock on idle and not enough volts? I'm sure AMDMatt mentioned something about this yonks ago.

Try a search on this forums and see what you can find.