GPU VRAM makes computer to freeze

[Tolis_GR]

Hi all,

I 've been fighting with this issue for over a month. I made this setup several months ago from spare parts i had and some i bought. I experienced problems after installing a RX 460 4gb that i bought for a fairly good price (new). PC would freeze randomly and would display grey, white or black screen accompanied with the typical buzzing sound.
After hours and hours of troubleshooting and after excluding most common culprits like psu, ram, mobo i narrowed down the problem on the gpu itself and more precisely on the vram.
The card's vram is unstable, it would make a crash even at the advertised speeds (1750 mhz) but not that often. Overclocking the vram at around 1850 mhz is a disaster. Crashes quite often even while browsing under small load. Then at 1900 and 1920 mhz is the most stable frequency i had. I don;t remember having a crash at those frequencies.
What about it? Are those memory chips of bad quality actually? I am reading a lot of people facing this issue with the RX4XX series. Specs in my profile

 

[Gam3r01]

If you believe you have narrowed it down to that issue then request an RMA. Nothing else to do or worry about.

 

[Tolis_GR]

I have tried a bios flash on the card trying to fix the problem. Of course i have kept the original bios if i need to flash it back, but would they be able to detect those flashes and cancel my warranty? ^_^

 

[Gam3r01]

They might be able to, I dont know why you would resort to a BIOS flash on a card with warranty.

 

[Tolis_GR]

Cause i enjoy testing things. Though i discovered that my bios was different than the ones that i found on techpowerup database and are supposed to be the official, so something could be wrong with the card on the first place.

 

[imrazor]

Then at 1900 and 1920 mhz is the most stable frequency i had. I don;t remember having a crash at those frequencies.
What about it? Are those memory chips of bad quality actually? I am reading a lot of people facing this issue with the RX4XX series. Specs in my profile

So...it's unstable at 1850 Mhz, but if you overclock to 1900 or 1920 it's stable? Am I misunderstanding, because that doesn't sound right. And if it's stable at 1900 Mhz, why not just leave the VRAM dialed in at 1900MHz?

 

[Tolis_GR]

Then at 1900 and 1920 mhz is the most stable frequency i had. I don;t remember having a crash at those frequencies.
What about it? Are those memory chips of bad quality actually? I am reading a lot of people facing this issue with the RX4XX series. Specs in my profile

So...it's unstable at 1850 Mhz, but if you overclock to 1900 or 1920 it's stable? Am I misunderstanding, because that doesn't sound right. And if it's stable at 1900 Mhz, why not just leave the VRAM dialed in at 1900MHz?

Yes it is stable at 1900 and that's where i am leaving it, but i am posting cause as you say it doesn;t seem sound. I am curious whether this is normal when overclocking the vram or not.

 

[Tolis_GR]

I think i found what i was looking for.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/5akvdn/is_micron_vram_issue_possible_on_polaris_cards/

 

[imrazor]

So when you overclock it, it must automatically configure looser timings giving greater stability. Odd ... I've never heard of that when overclocking VRAM. I wonder if that's unique to Polaris, or if other video cards do that too.

 

[Tolis_GR]

So when you overclock it, it must automatically configure looser timings giving greater stability. Odd ... I've never heard of that when overclocking VRAM. I wonder if that's unique to Polaris, or if other video cards do that too.

It;s odd yes. I guess that Micron vram isn;t going well with Polaris. Memory timings were my first thoughts as well that's why i tried a bios flash, but many have no problem at all, so i tend to believe it;s all about the quality of their memory chips