Explain how this works (R9 290 Black Screen Fix)

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sunkenau

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May 4, 2012
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Hi Everyone,

After purchasing and installing my new Sabertooth Motherboard along with my original R9 290 that I got upon release, I kept getting Black Screen crashes from roughly 2 to 10 minutes after I boot up. I spent a few hours switching drivers and tinkering with settings but still got these crashes.

I then read a post that said, use a secondary PCI power connector, instead of the 1 cable which splits into 2 PCI 6 pin connectors and it actually worked. Is the card drawing so much power from that 1 cable that its best to use a 2nd one?? Crazy stuff but it worked for me which kinda blew me away after trying these 200 other changes and fixes I found on the internet...
 
Solution
i wanted to share my experience with the R9 290 black screen issue that everyone seems to have trouble with.
i cant rma my card. i got it on ebay at a good deal.
mine triggered when it would play a video on youtube or twitch or if the website had an ad playing somewhere on the site. also it did it more so when the system was "cold" like freshly started.
so here are my pc specs.
AsRock Killer Fatal1ty MotherBoard
AMD FX6350 cpu
XFX R9 290 gpu
750w power supply
well i tried everything. switching drivers. overclocking and underclocking. turning hardware acceleration off in chrome. nothing worked. monitored the gpu with gpu z. noticed the VDDC voltage was very unstable at idle. it would dip below 1v constantly. so i cranked the voltage up to +15 on it using MSI afterburner. its been 3 days since my last black screen (sounds like something said in rehab). at idle the voltage is steady 1v. under load it uses a little more than 1v but it doesnt black screen.

Driver Packaging Version 14.501.1003-141120a-177998C
Catalyst Version 14.12 AMD Catalyst Omega Software
Provider Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
2D Driver Version 8.01.01.1443
2D Driver File Path /REGISTRY/MACHINE/SYSTEM/ControlSet001/Control/CLASS/{4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}/0001
Direct3D Version 9.14.10.01080
OpenGL Version 6.14.10.13283
Mantle Driver Version 9.1.10.0045
Mantle API Version 98304
AMD Catalyst Control Center Version 2014.1120.2123.38423
AMD Audio Driver Version 7.12.0.7719

thats exactly whats on my pc now. i hope this helps someone out thats had the same issues as me. it seems to be a major issue with these cards. i love the card and its never black screened during a game ever.
i think the issue is undervolting. like something is telling the gpu to stay at idle voltage even when there is a slight load on it. when it does get a load on it, it black screens.

edit: i just confirmed it. the wife had just turned my pc on to print something off and was browsing a site. boom black screen. i forgot to tell her to load the msi afterburner profile with the voltage saved. now all i have to do is make it load with windows. so far i havent had it black screen with the voltage turned up. the clocks are stock. the fan speed is also turned up because i didnt feel like the stock fan speeds were sufficient.
i will keep this updated.
update: day 3 still going strong.
update: day 5 no black screens.
 


I've been struggling to fix this problem for months, read your post and sure enough my idling VDDC voltage was all over the place in GPU-Z as well (only noticeable when sample refresh rate set to at 0.1s). Bumped up core volatge in Afterburner and it's been stable for days now. No more black screens/driver crashes when I'm on Youtube in Chrome. Never had temperature issues with this card either; Sapphire Tri-X OC.

Thanks!
 
I've been having this issue with my new 290PCS too
MY FIX:
My card's stock clock is 1040 core / 1350 mem; vol +50
black screen while playing GTA V for 10-15 mins, sometimes web browsing
I tried to underclock the mem to 1250, now 1040 core / 1250 mem; vol +50, powerlimit +50%. Force constant voltage in MSI Afterburner
Been playing fine for 2 hours now, if something happen I'll let you guys know
 
after 10 days stable, no black screens, then last night it happened again, I was watching a movie then BOOM, black screen.
downclocked the mem again to 1200Mhz, let's see if it's still there.
 
I followed this guide. Pushed DayZ on max settings all night. It never crashed. My voltage required +19 to keep it a 1.0v. I am going to replace those wires for the hell of it. I also took over control of my fans which were set at 20%. Now they run around 60% and keep my temp at 60-70c.

Thanks Roach!




 


HI there.

Having the exact same problem. Your solution helps me play without crashes, and I am ever so thankful.

However, I cant seem to find the vccsa on my B85g43 MOBO. I found a CPU SA, but I couldnt offset it, simply just change Auto -> +. Any thoughts?

I'll be upgrading to Win 10 soon for the driver upgrade as well, and hope all goes well then.
 
I've found a solution for the black screen/freezes/artifacts on my R9 290.

The fix is pretty easy, and now my card works like a charm. Turns out that in my case, the problem was incorrect connection between GPU and Motherboard. When the PC was in vertical position, the card was being slightly pulled down by gravity(I think it was less than 1mm, it does make a difference believe me), which have caused all the problems I have experienced. So if you want to repair it, simply fix the other end of the card to the case, so it won't be pulled down when PC is in vertical position (picture below).

1452575b3c50bfcR9_290_fix.jpg


If you want to do a fast check, simply lay down pc horizontally, so that card is firmly in position, and do some tests.

I've found out about it when I was doing some tests in horizontal position, had the benchmark runing (working fine). Then I decided to put my PC to original vertical position (what can go wrong huh?), when I lifted the pc I got immediate artifacts and then black screen. If anyone is still sturgling with R9 290, this is worth checking out.

This is what I have experienced before the fix:

- Random black screen and "AMD driver stopped working etc..." during simple web browsing.
- At first I could play a demanding game for few hours, but right after I've quit the game, few seconds passed, then I had screen freezes, black screens, "AMD driver stopped working...". Sometimes a black strips, random artifacts, which sometimes persisted for few hours (did some restarts, nothing helped, what's interesting, uninstalling AMD drivers did fix the issue)
- After few weeks I couldn't even play longer than 5 minutes, I got weird artifacts and black screen when playing a game for 2-3 minutes.
- Tried different OS, tried different AMD drivers, sometimes it helped for a while, but nothing permanent. I did RMA the card and got reply that it's working fine.

The problems usually occured when the card was nearing 80-85 degrees, after the fix I can go to 92 and everything works. Now I don't experience any of the above issues. I hope this wil be helpful to some people still strugling with R9 290 cards.

My build is:
CPU:: Intel Core i7-4790
GPU: ASUS Radeon R9 290 DirectCUII OC
PSU: XFX Black Edition XTR 750W Modular 120mm 80+ Gold (Had Thermaltake Smart SE 630W 80+ Bronze but decided to change it, thought my issues were due to bad PSU, I was wrong...)
RAM: 16GB G.Skill TridentX 2400MHz
OS: Windows 7 / Windows 10
MoBo: GIGABYTE Z97-D3H LGA1150
 
oh my freaking gawd oh my freaking gawd! the freakin frustration of finding out why i got black screen of death on windows loadup and 10 secs after windows loads and everytime i open world of warcraft. i finally hopefully found the answer using beetlejuicegr prfile 1 with -10 power limit!!!! i tried everything from bad psu to bad cpu to bad mobo to bad ram to bad video drivers to default achi drivers. this all started when i installed a ssd kept getting black screen of death for 2 weeks and tried like 20 differnet things to finally find out it was poorly desiged gpu. i have gigabyte r9 290 and even installed software from gigabyte website. in the end it was poorly designed gpu 🙁 never gonna buy another amd product if avoidable
 
just gotta tinker with msi afterburner thats only thing that will fix bsod after windows loads. i can paly evil within no problems but when i open wow and it ask loging name and password it crashes 5 secs later. only by messing with msi afterburner was i able to steady it but doesnt work 100 percent of teh time
 
ok i was super fed up with nothing working so after 2 weeks here's what my final solution and permanant fix is. 1 install windows 8 not 8.1 the problems comes back at 8.1. use amds auto detect utility which should download 14.4 catalyst software. now go to device manager and from windows vga driver update and select the amd fold which should be C:>amd now enjoy the poorly built gpu with very little to no crashes :) im running windows 8 64 bit so you might get a differnet catalyst version of which i have not tried if running a different version ofwindows ejoy :)
 
I fixed my Sapphire R270 OC contacting Althon Micro from Sapphire Support. They sent me a recent BIOS with version 15.049 (my card BIOS was 15.041 retail). No more black screens.

 


i did this aswell . i have a club3d r9290 royal ace

 
I have searched everywhere going back to posts from 2013 and trying everything in the book from Afterburner settings, Bios, switches, mobo settings, , new power supply with dual rails, and everything else that has been suggested. The Fix(crappy workaround) finally came when I downclocked the card to 900mhz core and 1100 mhz memory in MSI Afterburner. Have not had a crash since. I have a fully liquid cooled system.
I7-975- never hits 50C
12gb 1333 memory
Saphire r9-290x that has never seen over 60c and vrms under 72 at full load

I bought the card a few months ago to hold me over until I build a 4k/vr system probably sometime next year. I researched the card what I thought was well and obviously I should have somehow known to research black screen crashes. I have never been so disappointed in any piece of hardware. 3 1/2 years and nothing useful from AMD. I have been building systems now for over 25 years and have been overclocking for 20 years. I know the reviewers had good luck with the card and never mentioned any issues and I am jealous of anyone who has not had issues. More power to ya, but I can say for me that I am just done with ATI/AMD from now on. You expect driver issues and the like its part of building vs. buying ready made. I still enjoy problem solving, but this is rediculous. Buh-bye AMD/ATI...
 
solution 100% forget after burner dropping clocks the problem with the r9 is voltage

afterburner fix works but if you ever reinstall you will get hit with the black screen

flash your cards bios with the saffire tri x bios with 1000core 1300mhz can link if required even if your card is stock fan dont worry the card sits at the correct temps this bios has a slight voltage increase propper by saffire also fan tweak .....its the only bios that will fix the black screening

if your card has a bios switch flick it reboot then flash you can always switch back to stock bios easy power down flick switch back to stock easy stuff

ps your card will also be a true beast :)

my card is bf4 r9 290 i have flashed every manufactures bios to this card with all the diff clock speeds no fix

the tri x bios seems to be the only with the voltage tweak

the newer cards is the same problem the fix will be the same find the oc edition bios they have the voltage increase

its crazy how amd still selling cards with the same problem

i rma my card 3 times each card sufferd this black screen shit even when windows was just idle

i spent so much money on psu 2 motherboards i thought it was the ram everythink the gpu was brand new wasted £100s thinking the card was good thanks again AMD

research before you attempt
post back to help others
 
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