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Why is AMD quiet about black screens on 290x?
- Thread starter Rangerjr1
- Start date
The plot thickens (posted this on the owners thread)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5jLzhAdjv8
I can reproduce the black screen crash on Unigine Heaven 4 at exactly the same points on Linux and windows O.o That type of predictability kind of indicates a driver error :/
I could reproduce and still can during the intro sequence of sleeping dogs on 1440p ultra. The only way to get around this was to down the mem clock to 4k
I don't suppose anybody has actually got to the bottom of these black screen issues. They seem to be happening more and more often to me now, not in intensive gaming but when I'm playing DOTA or trying to watch a youtube video.
I just find it odd how 2-3 hours of BF4 will be fine and yet trying to watch a youtube video causes my PC to fall over.
I'm going to try running the memory at 4900MHz and see what happens, although I won't be happy if I have to run the card permanently down-clocked....
I just find it odd how 2-3 hours of BF4 will be fine and yet trying to watch a youtube video causes my PC to fall over.
I'm going to try running the memory at 4900MHz and see what happens, although I won't be happy if I have to run the card permanently down-clocked....
Soldato
- Joined
- 6 Feb 2010
- Posts
- 14,582
I was rather annoyed at first when I couldn't overclocking memory much before getting black screen (I was lucky to at least have a card that's stable at stock clock I think), but after comparing bench results, I'm not so bothered by it anymore as it made like 1-2fps difference between 5000MHz and 6000MHz at 80fps range in the Sleeping Dogs bench...the different would be even less at sub 60fps and I doubt I would even notice the difference.
IMO for your situation, since it's unstable even at stock clock, you could always RMA the card if you are unhappy with it...but if you can get the card stable at say 4000MHz+, I'm not sure it really worth the effort, considering dropping from 5000MHz+ down to 4000MHz you would probably lose around 1-2fps at most in real-world usage. From my overclocking experience, the fps increase is much more dependent on the core clock. Even with the memory clock at just 1000MHz (4000MHz), it is still comparable to the GTX780, so it still a good deal considering it's cheaper and has more vram (and Mantle and TrueAudio...if you actually wanted these feature over Nvidia's ones).
I would suggest you try 4000MHz first and work your way up on the memory clock to see where's the max memory clock which you won't get black screen; if you still get black screen even at 4000MHz, I would suggest you seriously look into RMAing the card for a replacement.
I just RMA'ed mine it was under a week old and couldnt play BF4 for over 10min on stock. It would also crash when the GPU was hit for video decoding so I assume that would count for flash player as well.
The only way mine was ever stable was with the RAM at -20% (4000Mhz), the fan speeds didnt help me.
IMO if a card does not function at stock speeds its an RMA 100%.
================================================================
Also i was able to get a heaven benchmark out of my card at stock and compared to my "stable" ram speeds
Spec :-
Piledriver FX 8 core (4Ghz)
8GB DDR3 1866Mhz
R9 290
Sabertooth 990FX
Samsung 540pro SSD for OS
Results :-
Stock (5000Mhz RAM) :- 1126
Stable (4000Mhz RAM) :- 1050
A fairly big hit .... so id advise anyone with this RAM issue to RMA the cards ASAP .... Hope its just one batch of bad RAM chips
The odd thing is guys that I'm not sure the card is faulty, like I say I can run BF4 for hours with no problem, the memory sits at 1250MHz, according to MSI afterburner, and sits there. The Core speed goes to 975MHz and sits there. GPU usage is at 100%.
When I play DOTA, the GPU usage is not consistently 100%, the GPU usage goes up and down all over the place, the Core clock is all over the place, anywhere between 700 and 975MHz, and the memory clock can even be seen dropping down to 150MHz.
Like this
I think its the changes in memory speed which are causing the black screen, I disabled the hardware acceleration in firefox and this seems to have solved my issues watching videos. Infact I'm almost 100% sure this is a powerplay problem revolving around the drivers.
I'm going to try running some custom fan profiles to see if keeping the temperature down can help.
When I play DOTA, the GPU usage is not consistently 100%, the GPU usage goes up and down all over the place, the Core clock is all over the place, anywhere between 700 and 975MHz, and the memory clock can even be seen dropping down to 150MHz.
Like this
I think its the changes in memory speed which are causing the black screen, I disabled the hardware acceleration in firefox and this seems to have solved my issues watching videos. Infact I'm almost 100% sure this is a powerplay problem revolving around the drivers.
I'm going to try running some custom fan profiles to see if keeping the temperature down can help.
That is what i have found, can you explain why that might be ?? why benches are diff to a game from a stability point of view ?
Cheers Spence
Games are more unpredictable ? Benchmarks are always the same (so easy to optimise for)
Soldato
- Joined
- 30 Nov 2011
- Posts
- 11,492
heaven is not particularly hard on GPU's and even less so on CPU's, it is not a stability test... 3dmark on the other hand is quite hard on both and games can sit anywhere on the scale between
benchmarks also have a tendency to change scenes which gives your system a brief breather, where as a game can be running constantly for 20+ minutes at a time so where as an overclock can be benchmark stable to complete the run, it then falls over after constant usage for an extended period
benchmarks also have a tendency to change scenes which gives your system a brief breather, where as a game can be running constantly for 20+ minutes at a time so where as an overclock can be benchmark stable to complete the run, it then falls over after constant usage for an extended period
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoN5Pail678
A video I made before I put it in the box to get picked up for RMA, It happened after 20 seconds of BF4. It can happen that fast or it can happen after an hour. I picked up a 780 today so **** AMD
Forgot to say that was at 947/1250, if I drop it to 947/1150 it does not black screen but parts of my screen occasionally flicker black for a split second.
A video I made before I put it in the box to get picked up for RMA, It happened after 20 seconds of BF4. It can happen that fast or it can happen after an hour. I picked up a 780 today so **** AMD
Forgot to say that was at 947/1250, if I drop it to 947/1150 it does not black screen but parts of my screen occasionally flicker black for a split second.
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This problem havent improved with new drivers. Only workin solution is to start the pc once and shutdown and then start it again. What is strange is that it then works just fine whole day. Next im trying to keep the pc powered on night and see if it still works next day.
Its got to the point with me now that if the next set of drivers doesn't fix this issue then it will have to be RMA time, I still don't believe it's a hardware fault as I can run BF4 for hours at a time with no crashing, throttling or temperature issues.
It sounds like a combination of drivers and particular hardware. I presume other AMD owners aren't getting the same issue with the latest drivers? In which case what are the differences between the 290 hardware and that of the other cards? Is there a pattern to it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BoN5Pail678
A video I made before I put it in the box to get picked up for RMA, It happened after 20 seconds of BF4. It can happen that fast or it can happen after an hour. I picked up a 780 today so **** AMD
Forgot to say that was at 947/1250, if I drop it to 947/1150 it does not black screen but parts of my screen occasionally flicker black for a split second.
That happens when either the core voltage or AUX voltage is too low!! Definitely a faulty card if it does it at stock.
I am yet to see an official comment on it yet, but they must be aware of the issue given the note in the latest drivers: "May resolve intermittent black screens or display loss observed on some AMD Radeon R9 290X and AMD Radeon R9 290 graphics cards"
MAY being the key word here...
This is very poor of AMD, I see there is some AMD reps on here, Lt Matt can you get them to comment on the issue. Or are they only here to promote not help?
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