Lifelong Green Team turn Red Team - Regret?

[Automatiic]

Afternoon folks!

Aside from my early gaming days and using VooDoo graphics cards (nostalgia, anyone?), I've ran nVidia under the hood. That is until the beginning of 2014 when I picked up two Radeon R9 290x's in Crossfire. The cards are just as fast, if not faster in some cases, than a 780ti and I was extremely pleased with my purchase initially. I was able to run literally any game maxed out with no issue at 1080p.

Since I built my new PC at that time, I've had an issue with my PC freezing during gameplay or BSOD'ing. My RAM and CPU are overclocked but I have undone all overclocking to test and the issue persists. I have swapped the RAM, CPU, PSU, updated every driver for ever item and even updated the BIOS and still, no joy. Finally, I decided to revert back to the original drivers released with the R9 series of Radeon graphics cards. The freezing still happens but it is less often and there are no more BSOD's. If I install any AMD driver that was released after the one I'm using now, I get BSOD's while gaming on some and BSOD's during install on others.

I am going to be buying 3 new ASUS ROG Swift monitors when they come available and while I'm doing that, I'm thinking of buying new cards. Like I said, I'm extremely impressed with AMD's price/performance ratio but lack of stability is killing me. I'm sure nVidia will come out with a 980ti-esque card or a 990 and AMD as already made a soft announcement of the 390 series which looks amazing. From what I've heard about AMD's 390 series, it seems like it would be cat's ass but I am reluctant to buy another AMD product if the lack of stability is a real issue overall for AMD. So, my question is this:

Do you guys/gals think I just got a screwed up pair of cards or are AMD's drivers really this awful overall? I never had a problem with any nVidia card or driver. I'd like to have a choice of card manufacturer when the new models are released rather than just going green because I have to. But if AMD's drivers really are this poor, I will have no choice. What are your experiences with AMD drivers? Am I just unlucky?

Thanks for your time.

Oh, and my PC specs are below in case you would like to view them to give me insight on what else may be causing the problem if you think AMD isn't the issue!

CPU: i7-4930k OC'ed to 4.5Ghz
MOBO: ASUS Rampaige IV Black Edition
RAM: G.Skill Ripjawz 2400Mhz DDR4 (4x8GB)
GPU: Radeon R9 290x x 2 in Crossfire
HDD: Samsung Evo 840 PRO 1TB SSD
CPU Cooler: Corsair H100i
Case: Rosewill Blackhawk Ultra
PSU: Rosewill Lightning 1300W
Standard Blu-Ray CD-DVD Combo Drive
Windows 8.1 Updated
22 Cougar Fans (Can't remember the exact model)

 

[Onus]

Both companies have had driver issues over the years, but it does seem from comments I've read recently that AMD is having a lot more problems with theirs right now. Have you tried running a single card? Have you tested to see if the issue is related to Crossfire? A single R9 290X should have no difficulty maxing out games on a single 1920x1080 monitor.

 

[junkeymonkey]

AMD's drivers really this awful overall--- what do you think??

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/all.html?refine=amd+14.

I find the 13.4 and 13.12 do the best for me the 14.xx drivers cause me unresolvable issue even after falling back to the 13.xx drivers -- thanks amd

 

[Automatiic]

Both companies have had driver issues over the years, but it does seem from comments I've read recently that AMD is having a lot more problems with theirs right now. Have you tried running a single card? Have you tested to see if the issue is related to Crossfire? A single R9 290X should have no difficulty maxing out games on a single 1920x1080 monitor.

Yeah I ran different games on each one separately and the problem continued. The weird part is if I turn my PC one when I get home and boot up a game, I'll be able to run it no problem for 15-30 minutes before it freezes (Audio continues for a few seconds in the background then goes silent). At that point, I have to do a hard restart as it is completely unresponsive. If I turn it back on and play, I can play for hours upon hours with no issue. I'll turn it off when I go to bed around 1 or 2 AM and come back after work the next day to the same problem. I don't get why that pattern exists. It makes no sense to me.

 

[Automatiic]

AMD's drivers really this awful overall--- what do you think??

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/all.html?refine=amd+14.

I find the 13.4 and 13.12 do the best for me the 14.xx drivers cause me unresolvable issue even after falling back to the 13.xx drivers -- thanks amd

Wow. That's a ton of issues with AMD drivers. Thanks for the link

 

[Onus]

Test your RAM, one stick at a time, and make sure your sound drivers are updated. Yes, AMD drivers are problematic for some, but crashes are not necessarily caused by AMD's drivers. Do the Windows Event Logs contain any useful entries at the time of the crashes? I've known unstable sound drivers to cause stability issues.

 

[junkeymonkey]

I use amd and NVidia, as with all brands you can get the good or the bad its just a vid card to me in the end all I ask is it works as advertised or close to it

 

[Automatiic]

Test your RAM, one stick at a time, and make sure your sound drivers are updated. Yes, AMD drivers are problematic for some, but crashes are not necessarily caused by AMD's drivers. Do the Windows Event Logs contain any useful entries at the time of the crashes? I've known unstable sound drivers to cause stability issues.

Updated sound drivers as well from the MOBO site. Correct me if I'm wrong but don't Hawaii GPUs have "True Audio" that takes the place of onboard Audio?

The event logs regularly reference atimkdag.exe

 

[junkeymonkey]

I think only when you use hdmi for sound through the card that's all I beleave

 

[Automatiic]

I think only when you use hdmi for sound through the card that's all I beleave

Ahh I see. I installed the Radeon drivers before without the audio driver and it didn't change anything. Just curious though.

 

[Coolboy951]

AMD is great because with mantle youll get an exxtra 30-50fps boost on games and there new drivers are amazing and their older cards like the 7950 is one of the best cards out there still that can run most games at 1080p maxed out with over 60fps

 

[smeezekitty]

Do you know what was the faulting module on the blue screen? (bluescreenview might tell you)

Can you test what happens if you try a game on the onboard graphics (I know its awful but just to see if it freezes)

 

[Automatiic]

AMD is great because with mantle youll get an exxtra 30-50fps boost on games and there new drivers are amazing and their older cards like the 7950 is one of the best cards out there still that can run most games at 1080p maxed out with over 60fps

Mantle leaves much to be desired IMHO. I turned it on with BF4 and my average FPS went from 160 to 168 with everything on ultra but the colors looked washed out.

 

[Automatiic]

Do you know what was the faulting module on the blue screen? (bluescreenview might tell you)

Can you test what happens if you try a game on the onboard graphics (I know its awful but just to see if it freezes)

I would try but the i7-4930k lacks integrated graphics.

As far as BSOD's go, since I reverted back to the original Hawaii drivers, I do not have BSOD's anymore, only freezing while in games which result in a hard restart. So no new dump files have been created and I have no log of them because I did a fresh install of Windows a few days ago :/

 

[junkeymonkey]

lol -- AMD is great because with mantle bla bla bla

I bet NVidia fanboys says the same thing about there gimicware to.. lol


anyway how do each of the card do out side of that x-fire set up ?? same issues??

 

[smeezekitty]

I bet NVidia fanboys says the same thing about there gimicware to.. lol

All the time. Don't buy GPUs for gimmicks alone

If it doesn't work with one card..can you either try one in another PC or borrow different card?

 

[junkeymonkey]

I'm thinking its a x-fire issue in some way ???

 

[jjb8675309]

I don't know anything about that Rosewill PSU in particular but have you considered that this is the culprit? This might be off base but that's the first thing that came to mind.

EDIT: Nevermind I didn't see OPs most recent post. So was this purely an AMD driver thing?

 

[junkeymonkey]

johnny guru claims its ok -- super flower platform

http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story5&reid=258

a rebranded one of these

http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story&reid=240

 

[Automatiic]

Yeah same issue with each card out of crossfire. I don't have another PC to try anymore, unfortunately. I think focusing on the fact that the first few minutes of gaming causes the PC to freeze and then hours of gaming after rebooting has no issues will lead us to the problem. What would cause that?

 

[Automatiic]

I don't know anything about that Rosewill PSU in particular but have you considered that this is the culprit? This might be off base but that's the first thing that came to mind.

EDIT: Nevermind I didn't see OPs most recent post. So was this purely an AMD driver thing?

I don't know if it's an AMD driver issue. The BSOD's certainly were. But the freezing is still consistent.

 

[smeezekitty]

I just looked and ... DDR4 RAM? Is it out already?

...

I just looked holy * look at the price!

The fact that it happens in the first few minutes might indicate a thermal triggered thing. How do your CPU and GPU temperatures look?

22 fans (!) I would hope they are okay but it is worth checking.

 

[Mousemonkey]

I don't know anything about that Rosewill PSU in particular but have you considered that this is the culprit? This might be off base but that's the first thing that came to mind.

EDIT: Nevermind I didn't see OPs most recent post. So was this purely an AMD driver thing?

I don't know if it's an AMD driver issue. The BSOD's certainly were. But the freezing is still consistent.

Get yourself a cheap Nvidia card and swap them over, if the problems magically disappear then you will know for sure that it is all down to AMD's drivers. I have a 7790 and whilst the hardware is fine (despite the suggestions of several AMD fanboi idiots) the drivers are pants and the only semi stable one is 14.2, which came out ten months after I bought the card.

 

[smeezekitty]

Get yourself a cheap Nvidia card and swap them over

I agree with MM here. Even a GT630 or something

Although it was still never proven that the 7790 you have doesn't have hardware issues.

 

[Mousemonkey]

Get yourself a cheap Nvidia card and swap them over

I agree with MM here. Even a GT630 or something

Although it was still never proven that the 7790 you have doesn't have hardware issues.

Really? I don't recall you being present when I was going through things so how the hell do you know what's been tried? And how do you explain a driver that "magically" fixes the monitor sleep issue?