50, yes.. 50 BSOD in the past week (I think it might be GPU hardware?)

[omgoblins]

Hello friends, thank you for your time.

Here is my situation, I had a PC problem with a dead mobo and my PC was out of commission. I recently (over 30 days though) bought a new mobo/cpu/gpu. Otherwise I used the rest of my parts from the old build.

specs (old):
Seasonic x850 gold PSU
Samsung nm20 ram (16 GB - 2 sets of 8GB pairs)
Creative xifi pro titanium sound card
I guess that's it. I also reused the case, fans, and a 1TB HDD
256 GB Samsung 830 SSD
specs (new):
AMD FX 6350
Gigabyte 970A-UD3P
Gigabyte R9 290 Windforce
Also a new optical drive and CPU cooler (Phanteks TC14) plenty of cooling in case and temps are cool on all components.

So when I first installed everything I used my old SSD with my old operating system and such. When I started having problems, I decided to format my drive and install Windows 7 Pro 64 bit fresh.

So the problems were basically BSOD, visual artifacts (tears, colored blocks, lines, entire screen turning RBG colors), Black screen freezing which would sometimes crash and sometimes not.

The main problem I could see was that all these problems ONLY occur when I have an AMD display driver installed. If I uninstall it, or use safe-mode, I have no problems. Also, I have frequent crashes of the AMD display driver- sometimes it will crash and reboot like 4-5 times and then I will get a BSOD finally. Sometimes though it will crash and then reboot and I wont have any problems.

Things that caused these crashes and artifacts:
Just starting up windows (after the black loading screen they would start)
Opening Google Chrome
Trying to watch a youtube video
Attempting to start up a game
Doing too many things at once (multiple tabs, and quick inputs in a row while things are still loading).

Sometimes though, I would go through like 3-4 BSOD in a row, and then be able to get into Windows fine with no artifacts. Also IF I was able to get into a game (DotA2) then I would be able to play without crashes until I exited the game, sometimes for hours at a time. The only other games I tried to play during this time were AC3 and Skyrim. AC3 especially caused a ton of crashes, but a week ago I was able to get into it and I played it for like 8 hours without a single problem, since then I have had crashes attempting to start it, as soon as I get into the game, and even when just loading the launching software Uplay.

Even when Windows doesn't crash, I can still have a lot of visual artifacts (I tried to take a screenshot of this once using the snipping tool, but it actually didn't appear on the screenshot only my screen).

The thing is, the error code/messages for these BSOD are all over the place. I have been using blue screen viewer to look at them and I can upload the minidump files as well. So I ended up re-installing Windows 7 onto a new SSD (same 256GB Samsung 830, just a new one that I've never used). I still had some problems as soon as I installed the display driver, so I even did a Windows Repair over that installation to see if that would magically fix it- nothing changed.

So at this point, I feel pretty certain that it's a GPU problem, I've tried different versions of the display driver, I've only installed the display driver and none of the extra applications and drivers that are optional like control center. I've tried to do anything I can think of and have found online.

Sooo can anyone help me? Should I give up on this GPU and send it in for an RMA? I unfortunately don't have another AMD 200 series GPU to test out, although I do have a few Nvidia ones and an older 5000 series AMD.

I haven't run memtest, but this RAM worked wonderful for my old build for a long time. I did run windows mem test, no problems there, but I know that's not great. I wasn't sure which memtest to download as I read on another forum that a newer version might have some unwanted spyware with it.

Anyways, any help would be appreciated.

minidump logs at onedrive (think I did this correctly): https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=C6C7496AFBCE63AF!152&authkey=!AL_T6kDaEljGUo8&ithint=folder%2cdmp or the shortened link (http://1drv.ms/11GoFOD)

 

[bootcher]

Test your system with another videocard. Use DDU when installing any new driver. You can also try to run your pc without the soundcard, I had troubles in the past and in the end it was a broken soundcard.

I would run memtest, just to be sure. Also run a harddrive diagnostic with the manufacturer tool. Check your system events file for errors.

I don't think it is a hardware problem if you can run your system on safe mode or without drivers installed.

 

[omgoblins]

Thanks, I will try to do all this today

 

[omgoblins]

So I used DDU to uninstall the AMD drivers, it appeared to remove something even though I had used windows control panel to uninstall previously. I then rebooted and tried to install the 14.9 stable drivers, but as soon as they were installed I restarted and got a few artifacts upon launch. I then tried to use Furmark stress test at 1440p and crashed after 10 seconds at most (GPU got up to 59 degrees), the screen just went black- the gpu was still at full load- and I had to do a hard reset. The second time I tried to do a 720p stress test and again furmark crashed to a black screen at 10 seconds, again I couldn't do anything but hard reset and the GPU was still sounding like it was under full load.

I haven't tried to run without a sound card, but I'm not having any kind of sound issues when using it. I have a sound bar connected via optical and my headphones via USB and have no problems with either.

Also another little note: when I install the AMD display drivers and start windows, I get a Windows service error saying that the Group Control Policy was unable to start or something, it affects standard users trying to log in to windows. I don't have any standard accounts on this computer, so it's not a problem, but it's odd that it happens every time when the driver is installed, this wasn't always the case, fairly new.

Again, I have used two different SSD's, one brand new, and the problem has been the same on both. I did run a test with Samsung Smart doctor and didn't have any issues that it could find.

I ran Memtest for 3 and a half hours, it didn't find any errors.

 

[bootcher]

Try to run the 3d tests with another videocard installed. Also if possible, try the videocard on another system. This way you can make sure if there is something wrong with the gpu.

 

[omgoblins]

Installed my old Nvidia 560-Ti 448 and associated drivers, so far no problems (still having problem with Group Control Policy service on Windows, but I don't think that's related to my GPU woes).

I don't have another computer to install my 290 into, but I will try to be able to set something up soon, I have parts around.