Problems with the R9 295x2

[CatStoletheCrown]

Welp, I told myself I would save up money for this when I heard about it, so it came out, and I got one. Before I tell you my problems I shall tell you about my set up.

AMD FX-9590 4.7Ghz Eight-Core AM3+
ASUS Sabertooth 990FX AM3+ AMD 990FX SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD (Only PCI 2.0)
16GB Corsair Vengence DDR3 Ram
Nvidia GTX 660ti (overclocked edition) 2GB ( my Previous card! Switched to R9 295x2 now)
1050w Corsair power supply
240 GB Corsair Force 3 Solid State Hard Drive
500 GB 7200rpm Hard Disk Drive
1000 GB 7200 Hard Disk Drive (in which I install all my games on)
H100 Corsair Water Cooling System
HAF932 Red Edition Full Tower

In my opinion a pretty powerful system. Ran everything in medium/high settings perfectly fine. Perhaps back then I didn't pay too close attention to the FPS of games, but now that I switched to a card that can supposedly handle anything I started to look at what was happening.

Initially when I installed this on my Windows 7 64b machine I was getting BSOD whenever I would turn off my monitor... very frustrating, my only choice was to fresh install Windows because I was not going to sit around trying to figure out the details. I decided to upgrade to Windows 8.1 which has indeed solved my BSOD issues.

However now that I finally am over that and able to sit down with my games I feel as if this card is simply not performing the way it should. Keep in mind I am only gaming at 1080p, not 4k.

The only game I am actually able to get great, and expected, performance out of is Tomb Raider. Max Settings all the way through, I can get about 140 FPS. and if I turn off the TressFX Hair I can even get up to 260 FPS. HOWEVER, I have had random crashes during game play.

Thief also runs relatively great, but I can only get up to 60 FPS is seems, or perhaps a little higher. Just thought it should be more running with 8GB of Video Memory at only 1080p

Dark Souls 2 I am downsampling from 4k to 1080p, and it also runs pretty smoothly, If I don't downsample I get a constant nice 60 fps.

I hear that Guild Wars 2 is horribly optimized, but I love it, so I ran it anyway, At MAX settings, which this card should EASILY do I can get any where between 20 and 40 FPS depending on the areas. Sometimes 60 if there is no one around. However, my laptop which has a 765M can also run the same, and even better, and it only has 2GB of memory for the graphics. So what's up with that?

Warframe won't even run! It crashes right after logging in.

Firefall, I know its in BETA, but I have horrid artifacts every where, its completely unplayable.

Bioshock Infinite looks gorgeous at MAX settings but hiccups an awful lot for a card of this power. I feel like it shouldn't, It even crashes, especially during scene changes (Think of the end game, when going from light house to light house scene.)

Skyrim runs alright, but I am also getting a bunch of artifacts, and I feel like the loading time are crazy, when on my 660ti they were not bad at all. Admittedly, I do have it heavily modded, so I might have to tweak that.

Heaven and Valley Benchmarks, I can max out the settings but I feel like it hiccups a bit too much, and at 1080p I can drop to 30 FPS sometimes, Average around 70ish, and maxing at 120 FPS. The hiccups are the problems.

TLDR; I feel like the R9 295x2 is not performing the way it should. Especially for all the power that it boasts. My thoughts on the problem:

Could it be my PSU isn't powerful enough? Despite being 1050watts, I am thinking perhaps because I have a power-hungry AMD FX 9590, cooled with an H100 closed-loop liquid cooling system, that maybe my PSU is hitting its limits?

Could it be because my MOBO is PCI 2.0? Although I heard that it shouldn't matter, and even 3.0 might have lacking performance at this point in time.

Could it simply be that the drivers just aren't mature yet?

In any case, for now I am simply not impressed! I could SLI two 780tis and get better performance and save a few hundred bucks. But I really want to gives this card a chance.

Thanks for all the help anyone can give. There are still a few tests I'd like to perform, like turning off that Raptr gaming app that runs in the background, although I think my system should be powerful enough to handle all that I throw at it.

PS) Should I be checking off the "Crossfire" option in AMD Catalyst? I know this card is "Two in One" is it considered Crossfire??? I have had it checked for now, and do believe I notice a bit of a difference with it on.

 

[lonewolf7]

How about a MB BIOS update ?

 

[CatStoletheCrown]

How about a MB BIOS update ?

Pretty sure I have the most recent update, I will check again when I get home. Thanks.

-Edit-

In other forums I am being told that my performance is lacking because I am not pushing the card to its full limits by continuing to play at 1080p. I can see how that might make sense, but I still don't exactly understand why it can't kick butt with ease if its technically not being pushed so hard.

-Edit-

Well I did a fresh install BACK to Windows 7, this time I completely formatted all my hard drives, 100% clean. Everything is playing MUCH MUCH better. I still feel like it was too much of a hassle. I also feel as if some games are still not playing as well as they should, but I am just going to have to accept I might be bottlenecked by a few factors (my amd processor, PCI 2.0, maybe a bit my PSU) So for now I am quite happy. Just figured I'd update everyone. Thank you.

 

[Mtoes]

I recently bought the Sapphire R9 295x2, and I just wanted to report my issues.

Computer Specs

ASRock OC Formula LGA 1150
Intel i5-4670k (overclocked to 4.4)
16GB Corsair Vengeance 1600mhz
Samsung 840 Pro 256GB
Corsair AX1200i PSU
Soundblaster Z
Coolermaster Nepton 280L
Sapphire AMD R9 295x2
2x ASUS PB27Q 2560x1440p Monitors

So after getting the card and installing drivers, etc, I decided to benchmark some games in ultra with everything tuned up to max, including aa. I was expecting the card to pretty much smash everything.

World of Warcraft

• 
  ■ I know gfx cards wont do much for it, ran it in max, stayed at 60-70fps range during peak at the main town.
  ■ Whenever I played in windowed, whether it be in borderless or not, the game would either cause a display driver crash (during playing) or freeze, if I alt-tabbed. The only fix I have for the freeze issue if you Ctrl+Alt+Del, hit restart or shutdown via the red button on the bottom right, and when the popup for "Force Restart" or "Force Shutdown" comes up you cancel the restart or shutdown, it doesn't resume the game but it will force close it.

Max Payne 3

• 
  ■ In Directx 10, max settings, the game runs smoothly.
  ■ In Directx 10.1, max settings, the game runs a little slow, but not in a stutter like behavior, more like it's slow and smooth.
  ■ In Directx 11, max settings, the game was using 5.8gigs out of the 8gigs of VRam that the video card has, and it was definitely slower than 10.1.
  ■ The game would sometimes freeze upon start-up, similar to what was happening with WoW. It would work after 2-3 attempts.
  

There were other games I played, such as Battlefield 4, League of Legends, Diablo 3, Wildstar Beta, and Heroes of the Storm Alpha. None of those games had issues as much as the two I listed above.

It seems like the issue could be the driver, and with no update yet it may be awhile till that gets a software fix. It shouldn't be such a hassle to run games, like reformat, clean install, etc. I may end up doing just that regardless because if you say its "Much Much" better then maybe thats all it needs. Plus, I need to justify getting a 2nd Samsung 840 Pro for RAID 0.