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Why is AMD quiet about black screens on 290x?

tommybhoy said:
:confused:

670-58.6 avg

690-92.6 avg

~60% scaling?

In both those results, SLi scaling is working at about 60%, it's not optimal by a long shot, but a 60% increase is way way better than 0%.:p

Up until I changed from 7950 CrossFire to the 290X, CrossFire wasn't working in Ghosts.
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Not sure where you are getting 0% from, 7990 86.3fps
i make that around 60% scaling as well

As i already said, fps is one thing, but glitches prevented me from being able to use SLI, the game is pretty broken on both vendors
 
@kleimo

I did some extra testing and like yourself starting up and shutting the PC down then starting up again straight after will get rid of the issue. I shut the PC down and left it for 30 mins or so before turning back on and it blackscreened in metro LL... If it was hardware id expect it to blackscreen all the time.
 
mmj_uk said:
When you're running hardware at such a high temperature all it takes is a single weak component to cause problems, that's why in every other industry temperatures are kept down to a minimum. Running at such a high temperature puts undue stress on hardware and is not good for reliability especially in the long term.
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I was getting black screens on my 290 tri-x just web browsing (temp at 32C), having moved to the CCC 13.11 beta v9.5 the black screen issue appears to have disappeared. Sounds more like a compatability issue with the driver and the card rather than a temp issue, fingers crossed 14.1 will fix all of the black screens.
 
LtMatt said:
I said largely, not completely. I'm speaking as a dual 290 gpu user who has done a lot of testing looking for the black screens. You're both speaking as Nvidia users who read forums. Or in Rroffs case someone who 'knows' someone who had two faulty cards. You're both welcome to write it off as a whole batch of faulty cards, but i think you're wrong. Small batch of faulty cards, immature drivers and a new power tune implementation is my opinion.
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Wasn't writing if off as anything, just not sure that its a driver issue (it still could be) - I know either IRL or from people I game with regularly a reasonable number of people who have bought the 290 series cards and while a small sample size a fair few of them have had the blackscreen issue and those who have RMA'd for direct replacements have generally had replacement cards that don't exhibit the same issue (atleast not that I've heard) and reading around a few forums, not the least these, also seems to back this up as a wider theme.
 
I spoke too soon, now started black screening again...

Has anyone seen increasing the voltage helping? (referring to this post or was it because he flashed to a 290x?)
 
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iFrag said:
Chrome, I upped the voltage and it's fixed it so far, 5 hours no black screen. RMA?
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Only if you're sure OcuK will be able to replicate the problem. Have you tried the latest 13.12 WHQL drivers? How much did you have to bump the voltage by? If its a small amount i wouldn't bother but technically its faulty if it requires such a thing. I assume you're at stock? 1000/1250?
 
I've tried 13.11 beta v9.5 and 13.12 (current driver in use), I've bumped it by +30 as that's what I read somewhere, I'll play with the voltage a bit more later and see how low I can go.

Card is stock 1000MHz Core / 5200MHz Memory
 
iFrag said:
I've tried 13.11 beta v9.5 and 13.12 (current driver in use), I've bumped it by +30 as that's what I read somewhere, I'll play with the voltage a bit more later and see how low I can go.

Card is stock 1000MHz Core / 5200MHz Memory
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Try leaving the voltage at stock but lowering the memory to stock clocks of 1250mhz. I notice yours is slightly overclocked by 50mhz. In theory it should have a similar to effect to keeping it as it is but running with a small voltage bump.
 
1000/5200 is stock on this card ? if so - sounds like its possible that either the memory is faulty, or it hasn't been binned correctly - not uncommon with any manufacturer with factory oc'd products

either way - its not right - so RMA time

obviously there is a chance that the retailer will not be able to replicate the fault - but conversely - a product should be aok out of the box

I had a 480 that I had to volts bump to work at the factory OC'd clocks - and I decided not to RMA it - and it wound me up over time
 
or possibly not in your case :)

seriously though - cooling is one factor but if that memory won't run at that speed at the stock volts - then something is not right - and its prob not the cooling as memory except in extreme cases doesn't tend to fail by overheating
 
Buckster said:
1000/5200 is stock on this card ? if so - sounds like its possible that either the memory is faulty, or it hasn't been binned correctly - not uncommon with any manufacturer with factory oc'd products

either way - its not right - so RMA time

obviously there is a chance that the retailer will not be able to replicate the fault - but conversely - a product should be aok out of the box

I had a 480 that I had to volts bump to work at the factory OC'd clocks - and I decided not to RMA it - and it wound me up over time
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Yeah i agree its faulty but if a small voltage bump cured it id just do that personally rather than go through the risk/hassle of an rma for a product that works fine with a small bump. Remember if they can't replicate it hes £15 down. I suppose he could DSR it but then he'd lose out on postage costs. If it was me id just bump the voltage a notch or two but i know thats not for everyone and it should just work without such a requirement.
 
I have to admit to where LTMatt is coming from - it can be more faff to RMA than put-up with :( just annoying

I was silly in the case of my 480 as it required a voltage bump of about 5 notches - serious amount of extra volts and power on a 480) - different in this case as just a small bump
 
Buckster said:
I have to admit to where LTMatt is coming from - it can be more faff to RMA than put-up with :( just annoying

I was silly in the case of my 480 as it required a voltage bump of about 5 notches - serious amount of extra volts and power on a 480) - different in this case as just a small bump
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The issue is however we don't really have direct access to voltage for the memory, and the biggest contributor to black screen is unstable memory clock.

I mean I bought one of the VTX unlocked 290x from OcUK, and the memory clock top out at overclock at 5600MHz max stable and any higher I'd would get black screen. I paid extra £60 without the free BF4 games (there were reference 290 with free BF4 at the time for just £299.99, making the reference 290 essentially only cost £280) for the extra shader cores/steam processor from the unlock. I mean it is a great card, however, a standard 290 with memory clock to 6000MHz+ would easily match my unlocked 290x which the memory can only clock to 5600MHz max, so in a way I don't know what I paid the extra £60-£80 for...

In Gibbo's 290 overclocking thread, he said with unlocked voltage, both Elpdia and Hynix memory will hit 6000MHz+ without problem, but from my personal experience, adjusting "core" and "aux" voltage don't seem to jacks for helping me to clock the memory clock higher. If I knew I'd be getting duff memory with my unlocked 290x, I'd probably have held off and save up and wait for a MSI 290x Lightning instead with some "proper" memory.

I'm getting mix feeling of happy with the performance of the card and disappointed at the same time :p
 
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Such little gains from overclocking the memory though on a 512 bit bus Marine. Its nice for benchmarks and all, but outside of that memory overclocking has no use. I can't recall you posting many benchmark scores either. However i can understand your frustration. In my experience memory overclocking is tied to core voltage with Hawaii. As an example...

I can reach 1400mhz on the memory with stock voltage. On the core i can reach 1100 at stock voltage. Fully stable on both, both overclocked at the same time. Now if i leave the memory at stock 1250, i can reach 1100 core with -0.050mv fully stable. Infact, i think i can go as high as 1125 on the core with the memory at stock and running undervolted.

Now if i keep -0.050mv and leave the core at stock 947 or 1000, then try increasing the memory to 1300 - BAM black screen. Clocking the memory needs core voltage at times, depending on how good your memory is.

Now in your case things could be a little different, as your 290 is slightly different in that its been upgraded to a 290X. What effect that has on this i don't know.

Outside of benchmarks i'd pay little heed to memory overclocking. Regardless of the high end card very little will be gained from it when gaming. Even 320gb bandwidth at stock is overkill imo.
 
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