Really confusing!

smallzz · 8 Dec 2014 at 18:15

Hello all,

It's that 'help a brother out' time again.

I decided to upgrade my graphics card from a GTX470 Twin Frozr to a MSI R9 290 as the 470 was getting a bit shakey on some games.

I fitted the 290 and installed up to date drivers and rebooted and as i was talking to fried on TS my screen went black and a soft reboot occurred...

It works fine on the default windows drivers.

I have tried the following:

Different drives both MSI and AMD and tried 3 different versions.
Full system reimage.
Windows updates.
BIOS update.
Upgraded PSU to the recommended 750W. (although PSU calculators have only shown i need 550w)
Tried my old GPU in and this does not occur.

Any ideas?

Full system SPECS are below:

AMD FX-8350 CPU (4GHz)
Asus m5a78l-m/usb3 Motherboard (which the 290 is a cmpatible car)
4x2GB XMS3 DDR3 RAM
MSI R9 290 4G Gaming card
Corsair CS750M PSU (Also tried the TX650M)
Crucial M500 SSD.

I've searched high and low to no avail and it seems strange it only happens with drivers installed.

Has anyone got any ideas?

Any information can be provided if neccessary.

Thanks,

Smallzz

McGraw · 8 Dec 2014 at 18:18

Did you fully clean the old drivers out?

smallzz · 8 Dec 2014 at 18:20

Yeah, this occurred right after a fresh windows install with only AMD drivers being added.

McGraw · 8 Dec 2014 at 18:26

I would guess the card is faulty.

Can you test it in another machine?

smallzz · 8 Dec 2014 at 18:36

Not until the weekend at least. I thought it could have been the card but not too sure what would cause it only to occur with drivers.

McGraw · 8 Dec 2014 at 18:55

I had an old laptop that starting behaving like that when the gpu was dying.

Running it as a basic VGA card prolonged it's life for a few weeks until it gave up completely.

smallzz · 8 Dec 2014 at 19:11

Well, I uninstalled all drivers and reinstalled the AMD ones without Catalyst control center and the machine was stable for 15 minutes and i was able to play a game.

Installed CCC and it happened within 3 minutes of reboot.

When CCC is installed it is only showing my CPU and not GPU and also when i first booted up Skyrim (without CCC) it detected my new GPU but only recommended Medium settings?

Does that seem like a faulty card or am i just being a bit paranoid?

DaleTheWhale · 8 Dec 2014 at 19:16

Try removing CCC again and using just the R9 290 graphics and playing a game for a long time.

Try the beta version of CCC.

smallzz · 8 Dec 2014 at 19:39

Removed CCC and it rebooted again so back to square 1. Ill see if i can test it in another machine or if not may have to RMA.

smallzz · 29 Dec 2014 at 13:57

Well after testing in 2 other PC's with the same issue occuring I sent the card back it they found no fault with it.

Does anyone have any advice that could help?

It seems to me as if the card would be faulty as its failing as soon as the drivers are installed due to it being under load. Is this something I have got wrong?

McGraw · 29 Dec 2014 at 23:33

Was it not bought at overclockers?

Did you rma to the retailer or the manufacturer?

AthlonXP1800 · 30 Dec 2014 at 00:19

smallzz said:
Well after testing in 2 other PC's with the same issue occuring I sent the card back it they found no fault with it.

Does anyone have any advice that could help?

It seems to me as if the card would be faulty as its failing as soon as the drivers are installed due to it being under load. Is this something I have got wrong?

Hmmm it seemed MSI R9 290 4G Gaming card worked fine at retailer so CCC is very buggy software AMD not done enough tests to fix bugs.

I would advise you to sell it and use old GTX 470 as temporary until MSI R9 290 4G Gaming card sold so you can buy MSI GTX 970 4G Gaming card.

DaleTheWhale · 30 Dec 2014 at 00:46

Try adjusting the power slider in CCC to 20%+