Question Is the R7 200 Series now redundant?

[Tutoh1]

Two days ago, I plugged in a spare desktop PC I had with a R7 260x graphics card in it and it booted to windows fine. I was able to play DayZ for a little while before I troubleshooted the sound being switched off by a dodgy keyboard. I uninstalled the sound device on the PC, restarted and the windows reinstalled the sound device with it's original settings, so it was working again.

Somewhere in that, windows 10 was updated, so when I restarted a second time, I received an inactive display instead of the windows login.
In safe mode, I uninstalled the graphics card, choose to delete the installed drivers and restarted my machine. I was able to reboot, see the windows login and run windows on the generic driver. After a couple of minutes, the display went black and switched to standby.

In safe mode again, I used DDU uninstaller to delete any install drivers, restarted into safe mode again.
I used a registry fix to prevent any driver updates with cumulative windows updates just in case.
Then I downloaded the latest drivers for my card from AMD's website:
radeon-software-andrenalin-2020-22.6.1-win10-64bit-legacyasics-june23-legacy.exe

I performed the driver-only install of this and restarted my machine. The display went black before the windows logon.

I'm very tempted to try Amernime Zone drivers since some people seem to be recommending them, but I myself have... lets just say a really really really really really bad feeling about them.

So, do I have a brick stuck in my PC now?

 

[Lutfij]

When I used to work with the A10-6800K APU build I had a while back, I always had to install a specific order of drivers, which began with Crimson 15.12, then Crimson 16.1 then finally to 16.2.1. I quickly learned that if I installed 16.2.1 out of laziness, I'd be left with a half baked GPU driver setup. I had to work in the order mentioned in the prior sentence in order for all drivers to be in working order for the GPU.

Might want to try and work with prior revisions and then gradually work your way up.

To answer your question, that GPU is actually long in the jaw...and as such a lot of people have ended up with a dead or dying R7-260x. You might want to parse the specs to your build like so:
CPU:
Motherboard:
Ram:
SSD/HDD:
GPU:
PSU:
Chassis:
OS:
Monitor:
including the age of the PSU apart from it's make and model, for greater context.

 

[Tutoh1]

Thank you, I had both a legacy and non-legacy driver downloaded and I tried the legacy one before I made this post.
I'm always confused as to why AMD lists them both.

I had tried the older non-legacy driver before and it gave a warning before installation. It did not this time, although this time, I did install in safe-mod.e It is:
radeon-software-adrenalin-2020-21.5.2-win10-64bit-may21.exe

The warning it gave before was:
No AMD graphics driver is installed, or the AMD driver is not functioning properly. Please install the AMD driver appropriate for your AMD hardware.

So the issue is solved. I've tested a game of DayZ and it displayed it with no issues. Here are my specs anyway:
CPU: i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40Ghz 4 Cores, 8 Logic Processors
Motherboard: EVGA E689
Ram: 12.0 Gb DDR3
SSD/HDD: CT240BX500SSD1 and a WDC WD20EARS-00MVWB0
GPU: Radeon R7 260x
PSU: Cougar STX 650W (second hand - not sure on age)
Chassis: Micro ATX (I think)
OS: Windows 10
Monitor: Dell U2412Mb

 

[Tutoh1]

Actually, I will add that I was using a FSP Raider RA550 for my power supply until recently. The machine would suddenly reset after playing a 3D game for 1 and half hours, then 45 minutes, then 20 minutes, then 2 minutes until I swapped it out. Was my set-up too much for it or was it just getting old?

 

[Lutfij]

I was using a FSP Raider RA550 for my power supply until recently
Was my set-up too much for it or was it just getting old?
You mean that the platform would reboot when taxed the system? If so, then that would be an indication that the PSU was incapable of powering the entire system when taxed or that you had a thermal issue(=overheating). To also note, as time progresses, a PSU's ability to output power will reduce. SO perhaps that's what might've happened. Dust build up can also impeded PSU's efficiency.

https://www.evga.com/products/pdf/160-SB-E689.pdf

Ah, one of those classy boards. Never got around to buying it but I did want one. That being said, perhaps check and see if the BIOS is pending updates. I should also mention that I was working with Windows 10 very recently ~2 years, the reason I figured out the driver order and installations was that I had prior driver versions handy. Windows 10 updates would inadvertently break my computing experience which would prompt me to reinstall the OS after recreating the bootable USB installer with Windows Media Creation Tools.

Are you sure you didn't select my post as the Beat Answer prematurely? I don't feel like it's the answer to your thread.

 

[Tutoh1]

I'll look into how to dust out that RA550 safely then.

Not sure how to get excited over the EVGA E689. I'm an amatuer. I shorted my first mobo by testing it on top of a metal case. I bent the CPU pins on my second by resting the manuals on top of it. This was the next one I found selling on facebook marketplace in my area that was compatible with that CPU. It was for $50AU, it was a bit of a drive and I was initially worried that there was no onboard graphics.

Are you sure you didn't select my post as the Beat Answer prematurely? I don't feel like it's the answer to your thread.

Okay, well my issues are:

Why would the display stop working after a minute on Windows generic drivers? Updating the BIOS might solve that. I definitely have not updated the BIOS because that's always been a last resort for me. The display suddenly not working on windows login has happened very frequently on this machine and after mucking about with windows reinstallation and restoration, reinstalling the graphics drivers turned out to be the fix.

Is there any increased stability when installing graphics drivers in safe mode, such as the drivers being able to recognize the graphics card more easily? Again, it might be an issue steming from an old BIOS.

What is a Radeon Legacy driver? It sounds like there's a unified code that recent Radeon cards all use, making them require the same non-legacy unified driver. It looks like my card is one of them. So AMD must provide me with the legacy driver when I search for my card "just in case"?

This was all part of a dumpster drive/second hand mission to see if I could build a half-decent gaming pc for under $200AU. It's a terrible hobbie to pursue.

 

[Lutfij]

I'll look into how to dust out that RA550 safely then.
Em, I didn't suggest you do that. I'd consider it moot at this point.