Asus R7 260X OC DirectCU black screen

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thunderheart99

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Dec 5, 2013
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Hi Everyone,

A few days ago one of my reliable XFX HD 4870's cratered, leaving me with a decision. I could drop out of crossfireX and try running a single 4870 to play games, or I could go buy a new video card. I tried the single 4870 option, and it was absolutely dying playing Tomb Raider (normal settings, 1920x1080) where the crossfired 4870's performed just fine on the same settings. New card it is.

Enter the Asus R7 260x. The first night I plugged it in it worked just fine, and I actually played about 3 hours of TR without incident. I come back to the machine a bit later and the screens are unresponsive. I unplug the cables and reconnect, nothing. Same thing from the keyboard and mouse input.

I have to hard reset to get the computer to display anything again. For the remainder of the night and all day yesterday it would randomly decide to stop displaying the screen. 30 seconds after booting in to windows, watching netflix, doing nothing at all. There doesn't seem to be a cause = result that I can see.

My setup -

Asus Crosshair III Formula motherboard
AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition 3.2GHz
12GB DDR3 RAM
Asus R7 260x (formerly 2 XFX HD 4870's in crossfire mode)
Corsair 850w power supply
Windows 7 Pro SP1 x64

I have tried the following drivers: shipped (13.2?), 13.10, 13.11 beta 9.5, stripping everything AMD off in between each iteration, removing the card from Device manager (and physically from the motherboard). I realize that this is PCI-e 3.0 and my mobo is 2.0, but all I've read says this shouldn't be the issue, that 3.0 is fully backwards compatible.

I had it stop during the TR in game benchmark testing and I could still hear audio, so I think it is 100% on the card just.. going to sleep? shutting off? I don't know what it is doing, but it is frustrating.

Apologies if this is elsewhere, but I wasn't sure what is more frowned upon - clutter or thread hijacking (and I didn't find any specific to my situation).

any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
 
Solution
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I know this thread is over a month old, but I thought I'd share my story if anyone else ends up here...I got two of these Asus R7 260x DC2 OC 2GB cards earlier in December for two different computers and have sent them both back for the same reasons:

TDR BSOD on the drivers that shipped with them and black screens on the latest drivers from AMD.

I went through everything -- Memtest86+, upgrading power supplies, clean Windows installs, different CCC and driver versions, driver-only installs, stock settings, overclocking, one memory chip, two memory chips, memory chips in different slots, new memory chips even though they test fine, motherboard BIOS up, down, different boards, different processors (AMD FX 6350 and FX 8350), Windows PCIE...
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sorry, I put the PSU in there after poking around a bit more.

corsair 850w that handled two 4870's that required 2x6 pin connectors each without an issue.This card only has one 6 pin connector for power.

Temperatures - hard to say. the GPU Teak app that loads when windows starts shows it at 30 C-ish when idle, not sure when it goes in game since I haven't been able to get in to a lengthy game session since that first night to see if it is blowing the roof off when it is under heavy load.

I should also say that the 13.11 beta drivers did less black screening and more "your graphics card has failed, but it recovered", but still functionally unusable from a gaming perspective. In game performance (Tomb Raider 1920x1080) was like I was watching bullet time in Max Payne for everything that was happening on screen.. suuuuper sloooow mooootiooon..


Update - I don't believe it is a hardware issue. I've uninstalled anything AMD related and run the computer for hours on just the default windows vga drivers and it wakes after the monitors turn off, hasn't black screened or crashed at all when watching netflix, I just obviously wasn't able to test it with gaming.

I have also tried a minimal install of 13.10, installing CCC and the driver only. That worked much like the first night of installing the card. I was able to game for a bit and then afterwards I came back to the machine to find it had black screened again.

Today before work I stripped off 13.10 and put on 13.11 beta 9.5 (CCC and driver only), and cleared the event logs so I could look to see if anything fails through the day . I also made one other change based on something I found relating to one of the errors in the event log, which was to go in to IE and disable TLS... now we wait and see.
 
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I know this thread is over a month old, but I thought I'd share my story if anyone else ends up here...I got two of these Asus R7 260x DC2 OC 2GB cards earlier in December for two different computers and have sent them both back for the same reasons:

TDR BSOD on the drivers that shipped with them and black screens on the latest drivers from AMD.

I went through everything -- Memtest86+, upgrading power supplies, clean Windows installs, different CCC and driver versions, driver-only installs, stock settings, overclocking, one memory chip, two memory chips, memory chips in different slots, new memory chips even though they test fine, motherboard BIOS up, down, different boards, different processors (AMD FX 6350 and FX 8350), Windows PCIE setting in power options, Windows 8.1, Windows 8, Windows 7 and a trip to a therapist.

I gave up. The cards are bad. Both of them. Both machines now have XFX 7850 Core 2GB cards with their original boards and RAM. One got an upgrade to the 8350 and the other kept the 6350 and they both got new power supplies out of it.

Do yourself a favor and send the Asus card back.

Sometimes you could surf and do other stuff, even run Furmark or 3DMark, but a couple of minutes into a GAME (Skyrim, Kerbal Space Program for instance) you get the BSOD on the Asus drivers or the black screen, but not OS crashed, on the latest drivers.
 
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Solution
Apologies for the lateness of my update, it has been a hectic couple of months to start off the year.

MCSE99... I did almost everything you did in an attempt to get this card to work. In addition to what I listed above, I wound up getting a new motherboard (I tried to update the bios of my Crosshair and bricked the thing when it failed to write the new BIOS), new cd drive (no IDE ports on the new board), and did my new Win7 install to a Sandisk SSD with the 13.12 drivers.

I did take the card mentioned above back in for testing, and it was found to be a POS. They gave me a new one and things improved, but not enough to say this card is a keeper. I was now getting black screens about once a week, and still no specific sequence of events I could tie it to.

I've now tried the workaround posted in another thread, which is to tweak the 2d memory clock settings up to 1750MHz and leave it there. It bumps the idle temperature up a bit, but I have put it through the wringer the last few days and no sign of the tell tale indicators of impending doom.... pixelation of video as well as "smearing".. random hiccups and freezes, spots on the monitor just going to a solid color for a bit, these were all signs I'd be coming back to a black screen later on.

I've run Netflix and youtube full screen on both monitors, netflix and a game on at the same time, and any other combinations of things that I suspected were part of the problem before and things are still solid in to day 3. Definitely still to early to declare victory, but others have posted how this has "fixed" their problems, so I'm giving it a try.

The unfortunate part of this is that I'm now well beyond the 30 days I had to bail out on the card and get something else, so I'm really hoping this hack works some magic for me.

This is the thread I got the solution I'm trying from: http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1940145/freezes-randomly-fitting-asus-260x.html
 
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I too am sorry about my late post regarding this card, it's been a harrowing few months scouring the internet searching for answers as to why this thing is such a useless paperweight. If anyone on the internet has even mentioned this card in passing, I've likely read their forum post or article. Perhaps my 'hack' will help.

What has happened is the knuckleheads down at Asus decided to overclock this card (Asus R7 260x OC2, same problems) so high that it's unstable with most processor/mobo setups on the market. Because of this, most people everywhere are experiencing awful flickering, driver crashes, and sheer incompatibility with tasks that every card on the market has no problem with. As I typed that last sentence my screen flickered blue.

All for the purposes of saying "LOOK LOOK, OUR CARD IS OVER 100MHz FASTER THAN OUR COMPETITORS AT SAPPHIRE AND XFX, WORSHIP ME" in their advertisements. Great job Asus.

My fix for it has been to use Asus' OWN UTILITIES to UNDERCLOCK the card down to Sapphire specifications as outlined here (http://www.techpowerup.com/gpudb/b2490/asus-r7-260x-directcu-ii-oc.html). This fixes most of the system instability while leaving only some occasional flickering.

This still doesn't fix the other problem with the card: The drivers are pure bollocks. If they aren't struggling to display a flash video, they are instead being completely helpless as to display Direct X applications that predate Direct X 9, something every competitor card has no problems with. Unfortunately it isn't possible to use stock 260x drivers from AMD's website because they do not account for Asus' overclocking, resulting in aforementioned system instability.

So the result is that many applications and game engines (like Unreal engine) shows a blank screen while audio happily plays in the background, completely unaware that the user cannot actually see the game. Trying to troubleshoot this is worthless because the game, and windows, is unaware that the card has wet the bed and left the user with an audio-only show. DXWnd only occasionally fixes this, but not always.

My best suggestion if you have this card is to send it back, if someone gave it to you as a gift, immediately go out and exchange it for a working card right away, if you found one laying on the side of the road, throw it in a river, and then urinate on it for good measure.

If you're like me and got it past the return date, all I can suggest is to use DXWnd as a fix for it's shortcomings, and to underclock the card as low as you feel you can go to enjoy it again. And then wait for eternity for Asus to release working drivers on their site. I suggest every week submitting a bug report to Asus, if enough users do it, they have to take notice that they released a hunk of garbage and move to fix it. At least that's what I keep telling myself to retain my sanity.

Best of luck.
 
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I had a lengthy reply written up, but then realized I wasn't logged in and lost it in the process.

Long story short, I dumped the R7 260x from my system just over a week ago after giving up on ever finding a solution. I had tried a hack where someone suggested an adjustment to the 2d clock speed using GPU Tweak, but then it eventually failed out when I was trying to play Dead Island.

I hit a daily deal at my local store for an EVGA Geforce 760 FTW 4GB card, and it has been rock solid stable since it was installed no matter what game I throw at it.

The R7 certainly looked impressive for all of its specs and output values, but when it is coming close to the crossfire cards I had before, and even challenges the card I have now there has to be some corner cut somewhere when it comes in at under half the cost with similar output.

My plan now is to return the R7 to be tested (again), hope they find it faulty, and hope I can convince them to use my extended warranty to credit me towards the Geforce 760 I bought instead of forcing another of these horrid R7's on me. If they do, It is going up for sale immediately with the plastic wrap firmly in place.
 
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Thanks for this. As I mentioned earlier I've abandoned this card and gone to a GTX760, but I can pass this along to a friend who also bought and let him know he can save his remaining hair from being torn out. :)

As for my card, I may resurrect it for use in a media machine I'm considering building, or I may try and sell it. If I do sell it at least now I can say there is a bios update applied / available so I'm not selling them garbage.
 
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Hey d2kx,

I am trying to flash this Sapphire VBIOS on my ASUS r7 260x 2OC as I'm typing this. I had to force it through cmd because it says mismatch error otherwise.

If that's not how this fix is supposed to work your reply is welcome.

Thanks!

 
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Yeah, it's correct that you need to force it:

atiwinflash.exe -unlockrom 0
atiwinflash.exe -f -p 0 sapphire.rom

I have been using it for many weeks now and it is clearly the best 260X ROM avaible. Black screens are properly fixed, PowerPlay is working and 2D artifacts are very rare (2D artifacts are mainly because of bad quality Hynix VRAM though).
 
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Hello, sadly the new ROM did not help and the blackscreen issues persisted, I will try again and clean the drivers as well.
 
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First I was Snaching My Head:fou::fou: Due To this Issue Did a lot Of Research e Tried Various Sloutions Over The Web But Nothing Work And Found This Solution It Worked Great For Me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!😍

My GFX:- ASUS AMD R7 260x 2GB OC

First Of All This is Little Bit Tricky
1st:- Download .mod File From Here VBios Mod VBios File
2nd Follow the Flashing Step Via ATIWinflash How to Flash Via WINFLASH TOOL
3rd Just Instead of 7970XFX.rom Put AS260XDC2OC_042Fmod2.rom
4th After That Reboot System and Open Control Center and Go to Performance >AMD Overdrive> Tick Enable Graphics OverDrive>high Performance Memory Clock and set the slider to 850Mhz

And All is Done No more Black Screen !!!!!
It Hs Been Few Days Never Faced Any Issues
While Happy Gaming!!!!!:bounce:

And NO it DOES NOT Slow ur Gaming Performance as well 😉
 
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