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Why is AMD quiet about black screens on 290x?

I know it is annoying but you won't hear any thing out of AMD until at the very least they've some idea of what is causing it, even then they may apply a stealth fix to it and AMD isn't alone in such practices.
 
MjFrosty said:
They're known to ignore issues on launch cards. They can't afford the bad press. There were a lot of underlying hardware level problems with the 5870 which got practically no coverage. They might be the loveable under dog on here, but they're also sly dogs when they need to be.


On the flip side I had no issues with my 290X.
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Nvidia ignored the bumps issue for ages,ie,months. I should know with the amount of laptops which were affected by it. Nvidia tried to fix it for free by pushing laptop OEMs to bump up the fan speeds on laptops if they came in for fixing.

Eventually it took CD(of all people) to expose what the problem was and they had to fix months later at their own cost when it came out that the problem was NOT fixable unless the GPU attachment procedure was re-designed. The press coverage was marginal for an issue that saw multiple court cases against them and cost them at least $200 million in the end. It was the biggest hardware screwup in graphics card in the last decade by far.

People have very short memories.
 
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I'm not naive enough to think problems like this are unique to AMD. I have had NVIDIA problems before. It's just the total lack of communication that gets me. I do wonder if contacting someone in the gaming press might be worthwhile, but i dont expect it big news.

If AMD said today - yup, look guys, this is problem with PCI-E 2, or UEFI, it's going to take us two weeks to fix, sorry, i would be cool as a cucumber. It's the panic that i'm not doing the right thing by holding off on a RMA and the amount of time i've wasted trying to fix the problem that irritates me.
 
nickrorschach said:
I'm not naive enough to think problems like this are unique to AMD. I have had NVIDIA problems before. It's just the total lack of communication that gets me. I do wonder if contacting someone in the gaming press might be worthwhile, but i dont expect it big news.

If AMD said today - yup, look guys, this is problem with PCI-E 2, or UEFI, it's going to take us two weeks to fix, sorry, i would be cool as a cucumber. It's the panic that i'm not doing the right thing by holding off on a RMA and the amount of time i've wasted trying to fix the problem that irritates me.
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They had issues with a batch of HD7870 cards:

http://www.techpowerup.com/174858/s...870-cards-affected-by-black-screen-issue.html

AMD investigated the problem and they found a solution and asked OEMs to recall the affected cards.

According to an investigative report by BeHardware, some Sapphire-made Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition graphics cards may be affected by a "black screen" issue. Some Sapphire HD 7870 users could notice random screen blackouts. A collaboration with AMD unveiled the cause of the screen blackouts to be caused due to a "noisy" GPU electrical signal (voltage is controlled by pulse-width modulation). The cause for GPU electrical signal noise is found to be bad quality ceramic capacitors responsible for conditioning power to the GPU.

AMD has been investigating the issue for months, and had already informed its add-in board partners (AIBs) about components responsible, and to take steps to correct the issue. BeHardware, however, was able to reproduce the problem in recent batches of Sapphire-made HD 7870 cards bought from stores. Following the investigation, Sapphire corrected the issue at their production lines, recalled inventories from French retailers, and relaxed its RMA policy towards existing users of its HD 7870 cards.
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You have to consider the bumps problem which Nvidia dragged out too,which was massive. Its not to say AMD also does not drag its feet,but people tend to forget Nvidia has done so too. If anything Intel is the most proactive of all of them,ie,the SB B2 chipset issue.

Having said that I tend to get random black screens with FF at times with my GTX660. I found out it was down to the Nvidia drivers,as I knew some other Nvidia users who had the same problem. It seems to be down to some 2D power state issue,so hopefully the latest branch should help.

It could be a driver issue too,as the official R9 290X driver is not out yet AFAIK. If the problem persists after that,you could probably RMA it.
 
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CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
Nvidia ignored the bumps issue for ages,ie,months. I should know with the amount of laptops which were affected by it. Nvidia tried to fix it for free by pushing laptop OEMs to bump up the fan speeds on laptops if they came in for fixing.

Eventually it took CD(of all people) to expose what the problem was and they had to fix months later at their own cost when it came out that the problem was NOT fixable unless the GPU attachment procedure was re-designed. The press coverage was marginal for an issue that saw multiple court cases against them and cost them at least $200 million in the end. It was the biggest hardware screwup in graphics card in the last decade by far.

People have very short memories.
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Deflect deflect defend defend. I didn't say Nvidia were saints, did I. I'm fully ware of Nvidia's affiliation with faulty laptop GPUs. Having had to re-flow more than a handful myself. Namely in Dell Latitude D series. Although if I remember rightly there were issues with the mainboards in those anyway. DELL and their awful propitiatory standards.
 
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Rangerjr1 said:
1200 OC is fine at 60Hz, but kind of defeats the purpose of running 1200 if i cant run 120hz on my screen.
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Wait??

It does not black screen at stock speeds or does it?

Or is only overclocked to 1200MHZ it black screens??

If its the last scenario then its your overclock not being stable.

How can AMD fix an unstable overclock?? :confused:
 
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MjFrosty said:
Deflect deflect defend defend. I didn't say Nvidia were saints, did I. I'm fully ware of Nvidia's affiliation with faulty laptop GPUs. Having had to re-flow more than a handful myself. Namely in Dell Latitude D series. Although if I remember rightly there were issues with the mainboards in those anyway. DELL and their awful propitiatory standards.
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I have a GTX660,so Deflect deflect defend defend. A problem Nvidia was taken to court for. Yes,that shows how proactive they were.

But I like how people like you say AMD ignore problems whereas when an example of Nvidia doing the same happens,you rage.

You have just contradicted yourself by admitting you knew of a problem Nvidia ignored.

The problem lasted for ages before Nvidia stated replacing hardware. The resoldering did not help as it was a physical design problem,which was only rectified by a redesign of how the chips were soldered to the PCB. It was preceded by a wave of software updates to up fanspeed. I knew at least a dozen people who had to send their laptops back many times before they eventually were just given new ones,since most laptops did not use GPU daughter cards.

I knew people with HPs,Toshibas,Acers and many more makes who were affected.

Many more people were not even aware of the problem and ended up dumping them and buying new ones.

FFS,my 6800LE was affected by a well known capacitor plague issue which was never really solved and there was a massive thread about it where people found the issue. Nvidia just ignored it.

Try harder.
 
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Could it be a heat/memory problem with that 1200mhz o/c. maybe the card is just not getting enough airflow, what's the fan speed/profile set at for that o/clock?
 
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