Monitor going black at high load with increased voltage/overclock

[Xickle]

I'm having this very annoying problem, that I can't seem to fix. Whenever I set the core voltage to higher than +25 in MSI afterburner, and I run a game or benchmark, the monitor which is connected with DisplayPort starts going black randomly, for a few seconds. I have a 3-monitor setup, but the other two monitors(DVI) work completely fine.

My two crossfired graphics cards are both reference XFX R9 290's. They're watercooled, and do not reach a temperature higher than 55°C at high load. I am also sure that I can achieve a much higher overclock with increased voltage, but the monitor flashes just get worse, up to a point where it doesn't even turn on for 5 minutes at a time.

The PSU is a high end Seasonic 1000W platinum rated. Before I had a 850W one, and the black flicker was also there. Using the latest AMD drivers and updated BIOS.

I would appreciate any kind of help, to see what I am dealing with here. I really want this to go away, so I can overclock the cards further. Thanks!

 

[Xyos]

Cards can't handle the overclock ,causing the driver to fail which makes the screen go black. Just because they are watercooled does not mean you can overclock.

First off, you rarely need to tweak voltage when overclocking the graphics card unless you are going for 100+ mhz or so higher than standard clock. Even then do it in very small increments.

With that said, its quite possible that your particular cards cannot overclock (or one cant handle it and since its SLI they both cant handle it). GPU's are a mixed bag, some are more suited to overclocking more than others, its the luck of the draw. Jays2cents on youtube had 290's that he liquid cooled but could barely oveclock, he just got unlucky.

 

[Xickle]

Cards can't handle the overclock ,causing the driver to fail which makes the screen go black. Just because they are watercooled does not mean you can overclock.

First off, you rarely need to tweak voltage when overclocking the graphics card unless you are going for 100+ mhz or so higher than standard clock. Even then do it in very small increments.

With that said, its quite possible that your particular cards cannot overclock (or one cant handle it and since its SLI they both cant handle it). GPU's are a mixed bag, some are more suited to overclocking more than others, its the luck of the draw. Jays2cents on youtube had 290's that he liquid cooled but could barely oveclock, he just got unlucky.

But the driver doesn't seem to be failing, otherwise all the monitors would go black. I've had it fail at a much higher overclock, when all the monitors shut off, and windows played the "device disconnected" sound.

Something important that I forgot to mention is also that the black flashes will also stop after 10min or so of playing/benchmarking.

 

[hang-the-9]

If you are getting those flashes you cannot overclock the card to the speeds you are doing. If you keep trying you will likely damage the card at some point. If you want to see how high you can overclock, do it on a single card at a time, and a single monitor. It may be an issue with SLI and the overclock as well where the two cards are out of sync and cause flashing.

 

[Xickle]

If you are getting those flashes you cannot overclock the card to the speeds you are doing. If you keep trying you will likely damage the card at some point. If you want to see how high you can overclock, do it on a single card at a time, and a single monitor. It may be an issue with SLI and the overclock as well where the two cards are out of sync and cause flashing.

It just seems so weird to me that because I use a DisplayPort connection, my cards don't want to function correctly. The DVI monitors both work, and I've tried changing the DP connector to the other monitor, but then the flashing just switches to that one.

If I run it in crossfire, with only one DVI monitor, there is no flashing, driver problems or artifacts showing. So if I only had one monitor, I could overclock it like I want it to, but I wouldn't need it like I do with 3 monitors. I also haven't seen anybody have the same problem as I. There were a couple of similar posts with suggested solutions, but sadly none of them worked for me. I don't personally belive it's a simple too-much-overclock problem, but rather something more heinous.

 

[hang-the-9]

If you are getting those flashes you cannot overclock the card to the speeds you are doing. If you keep trying you will likely damage the card at some point. If you want to see how high you can overclock, do it on a single card at a time, and a single monitor. It may be an issue with SLI and the overclock as well where the two cards are out of sync and cause flashing.

It just seems so weird to me that because I use a DisplayPort connection, my cards don't want to function correctly. The DVI monitors both work, and I've tried changing the DP connector to the other monitor, but then the flashing just switches to that one.

If I run it in crossfire, with only one DVI monitor, there is no flashing, driver problems or artifacts showing. So if I only had one monitor, I could overclock it like I want it to, but I wouldn't need it like I do with 3 monitors. I also haven't seen anybody have the same problem as I. There were a couple of similar posts with suggested solutions, but sadly none of them worked for me. I don't personally belive it's a simple too-much-overclock problem, but rather something more heinous.

If you stop the overclock or at least lower it, does the flashing go away? If it does, it's would not be anything the cards are doing outside of the overclocking issue.

Did you try overclocking just one card and trying that on display port see if it does the same thing or not.

I think the issue is combination of all 3, overclocking which is not guarateend to work perfectly anyway, SLI and display port.

 

[Xickle]

If you are getting those flashes you cannot overclock the card to the speeds you are doing. If you keep trying you will likely damage the card at some point. If you want to see how high you can overclock, do it on a single card at a time, and a single monitor. It may be an issue with SLI and the overclock as well where the two cards are out of sync and cause flashing.

It just seems so weird to me that because I use a DisplayPort connection, my cards don't want to function correctly. The DVI monitors both work, and I've tried changing the DP connector to the other monitor, but then the flashing just switches to that one.

If I run it in crossfire, with only one DVI monitor, there is no flashing, driver problems or artifacts showing. So if I only had one monitor, I could overclock it like I want it to, but I wouldn't need it like I do with 3 monitors. I also haven't seen anybody have the same problem as I. There were a couple of similar posts with suggested solutions, but sadly none of them worked for me. I don't personally belive it's a simple too-much-overclock problem, but rather something more heinous.

If you stop the overclock or at least lower it, does the flashing go away? If it does, it's would not be anything the cards are doing outside of the overclocking issue.

Did you try overclocking just one card and trying that on display port see if it does the same thing or not.

I think the issue is combination of all 3, overclocking which is not guarateend to work perfectly anyway, SLI and display port.

The flashing actually stops completely, if I decrease the voltage to around +30 in MSI Afterburner, while keeping the overclock values as high as the voltage allows.

I have tried your suggestion, and disabled crossfire, plugged out the two DVI monitors, and only left the DP monitor on. Suprisingly enough, the issue returned as soon as I ran a game with increased voltages. I did not even change the overclock values. I only turned up the voltage, and the screen went black as soon as the graphics card had a higher load.

 

[hang-the-9]

Only thing I can suggest here is leave the cards working at the speed they work.

The more you try to force things when there are issues the greater chance of breaking something.

 

[Xickle]

Only thing I can suggest here is leave the cards working at the speed they work.

The more you try to force things when there are issues the greater chance of breaking something.

I'd be willing to try something more risky if there's a chance that it will fix my problem, but I'll leave them running at the working clock until somebody suggests something I can try.

 

[hang-the-9]

Only thing I can suggest here is leave the cards working at the speed they work.

The more you try to force things when there are issues the greater chance of breaking something.

I'd be willing to try something more risky if there's a chance that it will fix my problem, but I'll leave them running at the working clock until somebody suggests something I can try.

The thing is, it's not a "problem" LOL, not all card or systems will overclock the same way. It's like saying having only 100 million in the bank is a "problem" because the guy down the street has 105.

Overclocking works very simply, you up the speeds till you see issues, then you lower the speed to when you have no issues and that is the speed you run at. Now if the cards had issues at stock speeds, then it's an issue, if the issue shows up when you try to run the cards at over rated speeds that is not at all a problem with the cards or your system.

 

[tsmith154]

Only thing I can suggest here is leave the cards working at the speed they work.

The more you try to force things when there are issues the greater chance of breaking something.

I'd be willing to try something more risky if there's a chance that it will fix my problem, but I'll leave them running at the working clock until somebody suggests something I can try.

The thing is, it's not a "problem" LOL, not all card or systems will overclock the same way. It's like saying having only 100 million in the bank is a "problem" because the guy down the street has 105.

Overclocking works very simply, you up the speeds till you see issues, then you lower the speed to when you have no issues and that is the speed you run at. Now if the cards had issues at stock speeds, then it's an issue, if the issue shows up when you try to run the cards at over rated speeds that is not at all a problem with the cards or your system.

This is a very old post but I thought I would just document that I have the exact same problem and I really mean exactly the same problem. Down to the description of the display port being the monitor that shuts off. The other two monitors with the other connections do not turn off. But now I want to throw in this information. I never had this problem before one of my water blocks leaked and fried one of my gpu's. I bought a another gpu but used from Ebay. Just a note: R9 290X three cards. One thing strange is all my 3 cards listed 290X. After I replaced one card that new card listed as 200 series. I think something is wrong about this new card. I don't know if this was helpful in anyway if someone stumbles across this old thread but I figure I would share since my problems is exactly the same as the original post.