R9 290x/290 Black Screen issues

[BababooeyHTJ]

Looks like AMD's new flagship has some issues with crashing. There are threads on every tech forum that I visit with users mentioning this issue. Here is a video from a user on Rage3d. There are other videos posted in the OCN 290x/290 owners thread.



Here are some threads with user complaints.

Most 290x/290 owners on Rage3d.

Hardforum thread

OCN Thread Also there are several reports in other threads.

Xtremesystems thread

[AliG]

I'm thinking the cards are secretly saying "#YOLO"

[NEOAethyr]

I've read all through all the threads posted in the op post except for the guru3d one, only read the last page.

It seems most reports are users with the elipida mem batches.
Some users with hynix reporting too, but then again... they could be mistaken about which memory they have too.
Reason why I say that is perhaps it's possible the review card had hynix so the users automatically assumes they have hynix, just throwing that idea out there.

Also, booting into vga safe mode or otherwise uninstalling your driver essentially puts the card into 2d mode.
You can't thoroughly test the card in that mode.

Here's a screenshot of the problem before the black screen hits:


I can't say for certainty what the issue is from that type of corruption.

Here's my thoughts:

Memory, probably the elipida batch, best case most likely the timings, in worst case a bunch got out with either bad soldering or were bad chips that got passed as ok.

Irq, could be a simple, but yet complicated(Always is lol...) and annoying irq issue :\.

Driver, ties with all the above, and etc etc lol.

One more reason why I lean more towards the elipida though.
I swore and I still do that the very 1st usa batches(at least) of the xbox360 had bad vram timings.
Most people won't notice white dots on there screen when it doesn't effect all games and all scenes...
That's getting offtopic though but I wouldn't put it past them.
If it's just timings it's fixable with a bios update.
But that's not good when it comes to rma's and so on.


I have a question, has anyone tried an effected card in another system?

And one more thing before I end my post.
Coil whine..., I hope this soon becomes a thing of the past (I think it's a health hazard... :| ).
A good portable high freq and large fft audio analyzer should beable to give an actual picture of such noises, even if the person can't hear them (alot of people couldn't hear high pitches noise coming from tv's and vcr's...).

[BababooeyHTJ]

I've gotten that to happen by overclocking the memory on my cards to 1400mhz. I know that one of my cards uses Hynix, I'm not sure about the other.

[NEOAethyr]

I see some are saying that it could be a gpu error, could be.
If there's any kind of gpu logging you can turn on and check with either the administrator->system logs or in the driver cpl logs I would do that.
If anyone can figure out how to do that there "should" be a log for the black screen error.

I have noted that the crash doesn't crash windows, seen a post mentioning that there was no windows memory dump after it happened on there system.

Refresh rates seem to make no difference.

Card might be sensitive to system memory timings and the like, such as dual channel and everything else.
Which may related to an actual vmem prob.
Drivers written for a long time have preferred to use system memory for temp ram, it's not really a good practice in my eyes (it slows things down but it makes more mem available supposedly).
(Heck it could even be some sort of pcie error now that I think about it)

Several mentions of higher fan speeds helping, yet there are also several mentions of this black screen crash happening with those on water cooling, one person mentioned there temps on the gpu maxed at 45c.
However there was another person that said they were also on water, however I did noticed there pwm was hitting 65c or so (after 45c I would start to think that was a prob..., that's just me though).

It definitively seems to happen on more games then just bf4.
It also seems to continue to occur with the latest drivers called beta 11, I'm not sure of the actual driver vers, but beta 8, 9 and 11 so far seemed to have been checked.

Also, from what little I've seen, seems like downclocking won't help.
But that's a stretch, I can't say for sure.

I would assume being the time of the year that it is and how important these cards should be for amd, we should hear about what's really going on within a day or 2.

I'm thinking we will know for 100% pretty soon if it makes any difference on this prob if the mem is elipida or hynix.

Here's some more threads I've read through:
http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf4...18069487298/1/
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=383104

[NEOAethyr]

Update:

I found these threads:
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread....ht=memory+leak
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=383565
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=383282
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=383425

Right now there's mem leak on the amd drivers that effects most if not all cards, not just the 290 and 290x.
Though it's not clear to me, it's looking more and more like it's the main prob.
The sony ps4 is crashing too I've read, who knows if it's related or not (most likely not but you never know).

Seems amd is aware of the mem leak and they're working on it.
My guess that the randomness of the black screen issue could very well indicate that it was indeed the mem leak that caused it.
Best guess though, not 100% positive.

[STEvil]

need people having the issue in other programs to check for memory leaks as well, though some kind of real-time capture might be needed since the systems can go unresponsive during the black screen.

[cowie]

I am so upset i refuse to talk about it
If i get some devine intervention and get a fix i will post

[EtheEnthusiast]

I tested my cards alone and together. With 4 cards Eyefinity Group with 3 screens cannot be created. With 2 yes but Eyefinity group not stable in game.
4 work with single screen.
For Eyefinity I use single card for now. I have 3 30s connected by 2x D-Dvi and 1x DP to D-Dvi Sapphire Active Adapter from 2009/10

For me Single card has been 100% stable. Not a single black screen or crash or anything.

Tested so far:

Card(s) Quiet Mode Fan at 55% Max Temp 82c at straight 1000 Core. Not noisy with 3 Window case(for me)!
Driver is set to Supersampling / Edge detect / High Quality
Resolution 8024*1600 + Max + 2x Supersamplin

Valley 1.0 passes every time Score 413 Single Card
BF 4 (64)
Mafia 2
Metro Last Light
Shadow Warrior SE
Bioshock Infinite
Arma 3
Hitman Absolution
Crysis Warhead 64

From my testing I can say that the 4GB Vram can be enough for 12megapixel+ resolution if I stay at Minimum Acceptable 2x Supersamplin. Waiting for 290X 8GB version questionable.
For me R9 Sereis is amazing! I keep on testing and waiting for drivers. I wrote to Red Driver Cave about problems and other things....

[kromosto]

OMG that 3 monitor setup on the video... that is the 3 monitor setup i wanted

[Heinz68]

I am so upset i refuse to talk about it
If i get some devine intervention and get a fix i will post

http://www.amdsurveys.com/se.ashx?s=5A1E27D25AD12B3D

[Hornet331]

reminds me somewhat to the grayscreen problem on the HD5xxx series, which got fixed in later catalysts and some cards just where faulty and had to be rmad.

[Heinz68]

I've gotten that to happen by overclocking the memory on my cards to 1400mhz. I know that one of my cards uses Hynix, I'm not sure about the other.

Here is little application MemoryInfo 1005 (does not install) and will look like this when run.

EDIT
Was trying to replace the Image with smaller one, delete the first and posted the second with different file name and ended up with 2 images with same size. LOL
Than i decided to delete both of them and it does not work even if the text is no longer there, looks like attachments can't be deleted.
Maybe moderator can fix it.

[STEvil]

hopefully I got the right attachement there.. did you try going into advanced editing? was easy enough to click the x on the attachment in there

Also, are we sure the memory identifier is 100% correct and we arent seeing cards with possibly an incorrect bios (not that it really matters)?

[BababooeyHTJ]

Yeah, I know about that utility. I'm not sure how it works with crossfire though. My catds are also water cooled so I can't just pull one out.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using Tapatalk

[BababooeyHTJ]

reminds me somewhat to the grayscreen problem on the HD5xxx series, which got fixed in later catalysts and some cards just where faulty and had to be rmad.

Thats exactly what comes to my mind too. It took forever to get a fix though and amd never commented on the issue until Kyle from [H] asked due to the massive six month old thread on his forums.

[NEOAethyr]

Also, are we sure the memory identifier is 100% correct and we arent seeing cards with possibly an incorrect bios (not that it really matters)?

That is a good question...


Reading this thread I had started thinking it could even be a batch of bad caps going around, possibly getting on both nvidia and amd cards:
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/sho...php?t=18557629

I'm also wondering if the coil whine on some cards (not many it seems) is related to an actual cap issue.
And a bad overclock that some report, it could be that stressing the vrm on amd's ref board in any ways could cause the issue on some batches.
While on bad batches the caps are so bad that it's stressing the vrm by default.
Reason why we haven't noticed it on the nvidia cards is maybe because they put more time into the ref board power design.

That's really a far fetched guess on my part though.
If it were the actual case, that could mean alot of cards (among other things...) out there on both sides don't perform really like they could of, and some downright faulty at it's stock ratings.

Who knows, maybe it's really all down to the beta driver .

I do have an idea, I've read just one post that mentioned that unplugging the dvi cable and plugging it back in after the black screen was a fix for the problem.
It's something that doesn't seem like it would fix anything but it's still worth a shot to check out.

[BababooeyHTJ]

http://www.amdsurveys.com/se.ashx?s=5A1E27D25AD12B3D

I don't even think that amd reads that crap. Why can't they just respond to their customers on their forums or by email like nvidia does?

I can't stand their "customer service".

[STEvil]

Is everyone having the issue using DVI?

edit

Notice Ranjerj1 says using 60hz instead of 120hz fixes it for him

[NEOAethyr]

I don't think it fixes it actually, it's probably less stressful ^^ (less frames to draw or maybe just less work for the gpu in some other way).

I think I've read of people affected by this with hdmi as well but I'm not sure.

[STEvil]

should be the same amount of stress either way if vsync is disabled.

[Lanek]

I don't think it fixes it actually, it's probably less stressful ^^ (less frames to draw or maybe just less work for the gpu in some other way).

I think I've read of people affected by this with hdmi as well but I'm not sure.

without v-sync m8 without v-sync.. i dont think it is linked to stress situation anyway.

[god_43]

looks like installing the beta driver fixes the issue for some ppl who have done it. 13.11 beta 8+.

[NEOAethyr]

Should be is the word here, apparently some users are reporting it is more stressful.

I don't doubt it myself.
Noticed a long time ago that everest/aida benchs are higher with a lower refresh rate.
Probably shouldn't be a difference by now.

The black screen seems like it could be a premature failing in the memory clocks to me.
An not so much elipida to blame, "maybe" just there mem has less tolerance to say bad voltage or something compared to hynix's design.

I don't really know, I'm just reading through the forum threads.
Hopefully it's just a driver issue and nothing to do with the overclocks...

Really bad launch .
And apparently ea didn't test there game as much as they should of either or something.
Which is weird because I thought it was an open beta...
I know the black screen affect more then that game, but it's the bundled launch game...
Here's hoping this gets sorted out soon.

[BababooeyHTJ]

Still odd that you can force a black screen just by overclocking memory. With every other card that has GDDR5 that I've used in the past typically you'll see some degradation in performance due to crc before you see stability issues.