R9 290 constant crashing. Do I have a bad card?

dlee098

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Sep 26, 2013
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Hi everyone,

Wondering if I possibly have a bad card that I should rma. I've been experiencing constant crashing during games like metro:last light and devil may cry. When starting up my computer cold and playing, the game will work fine, but after a short time, anywhere from 5-30 minutes, I experience a crash from which I have to restart my computer. Running the game again results in another instacrash. This is with stock clocks and Max fanspeed in ccc set anywhere from stock to 60%.

I thought it was a heat issue so I decided to just set fan speed at a constant 50-60% using msi afterburner. Doing this allowed me to play for a couple hours at times, which seems to confirm to me that it's a heat issue, but I haven't been able to find anyone with the same issue online. I do still get crashes, although not as quickly or as often.

I am also unable to get almost any over clock from the card. Even setting it to 1000mhz on the core leads to instability during last light.

So my question is, is the card bad and should I rma it? Could it be my psu? Something else? I've been planning to install the Arctic accellero xtreme 3 on it but want to make sure the card is not just bad first.

Sorry for any typos, I'm typing from mobile. Thanks in advance.

Specs:

Phenom ii x4 955
8gb Kingston hyper blue
650w Zalman gold psu
Asus m5a97 evo
 
Solution
I had a similar issue with my 290. Mine would crash at random times. It would either black screen or completely freeze. Only a hard restart would fix it. Also, there was nothing in the event viewer when the system would freeze/crash.

I had a 7870XT (7930) in my system before the 290. I had to use DDU ( http://www.wagnardmobile.com/DDU/ ) to remove the display drivers. Then ran CCleaner to clean up anything DDU missed. After that, I installed the newest 13.12 AMD driver link for Windows 7/8 64 bit ( http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop?os=Windows+7+-+64 ) Now, I only have the occasional rare crash.

Also, do not use CCC for anything. Download the newest beta version of Afterburner. Version 3.0.0, the regular version 2.3.1 does...
what gpu did you have previously? if it was nvidia then you best do a repair or fresh install of windows to fix the base drivers issue caused by using a different gpu to what was used when you first installed windows.
if it was ati then go into bios and load optimized defaults. set peg1 (primary pci-e), hpet (if your using win 7/vista) and drive boot order, save and quit. let the pc reboot and see if the problem persists.

if it does
either...
download and run bluescreen viewer. creat a log an post it to a file host (linking it here)
or
press F8 at boot time splash screen to get windows boot menu, turn off automatic restart and when windows crashes again write down the 0x00000000 error and error text.

post it here or google it.
 

ish416

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I had a similar issue with my 290. Mine would crash at random times. It would either black screen or completely freeze. Only a hard restart would fix it. Also, there was nothing in the event viewer when the system would freeze/crash.

I had a 7870XT (7930) in my system before the 290. I had to use DDU ( http://www.wagnardmobile.com/DDU/ ) to remove the display drivers. Then ran CCleaner to clean up anything DDU missed. After that, I installed the newest 13.12 AMD driver link for Windows 7/8 64 bit ( http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop?os=Windows+7+-+64 ) Now, I only have the occasional rare crash.

Also, do not use CCC for anything. Download the newest beta version of Afterburner. Version 3.0.0, the regular version 2.3.1 does not support and will cause issues with 290 cards ( http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/download.htm ). Once it's installed, go into settings and enable force constant voltage and disable ULPS. That should take care of most issues. Also, use Afterburner to make any needed fan adjustments.

The main issue is how the card controls temps, voltages and clock speeds dynamically. Once the card gets hot, it starts throttling itself by dropping the voltage and clock speeds. Sometimes it does this too abruptly and then crashes or freezes the system.

If you have a regular 290, it should boost to 947 Mhz, not 1000 Mhz (290X).

One more thing, that Phenom is seriously going to hold this card back, a lot. Even at 4.36 Ghz, my Phenom 965 bottlenecked my regular 290, severely.
 
Solution

dlee098

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So I've tried everything that ish416 suggested, haven't got around to your suggestion yet Hexit, but I'm still getting the crashes. I bump the fan speed in Afterburner to 60%+ which keeps my temps below 75 degrees, so I don't think my gpu is throttling due to heat. Same situation - game runs well for few minutes up to 30 minutes or so, then crash to desktop. This requires a restart for all the graphic related things to start working properly again.

Starting to think I may just have to rma the card to at least rule that out and see if it's possibly something else causing the problems and not the 290.
 

digitalpeer

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Jan 18, 2014
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Hi guys. i bought a r9 290 as well and had a similar problem, i backed my cpu oc off a little bit, and now i don't get any issues.
I have a i7 870(2.93) that was at 3.9 and i backed it off to 3.66. now no issues at all, its a great card!
 

dlee098

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Yea I actually found the same thing. After adjusting some of my cpu OC voltages, everything has been working. Thanks for the reply!
 

Lithium Snake

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I also had exactly the same GPU usage spikes/crashes as everyone else. But I did this and now everything is stable, I believe forcing constant voltage has fixed the issue. Not sure if it's relevant but I have OC'd my CPU quite a bit which may have been causing the issue in the first place. Anyway, nice fix.
 

Pastaga

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I just want to said thank to ISH 416.
3 month i try to make work correctly my Gigabyte R9 280X. Black screen, artifacts, drivers crash ...
So i install Afterburner 3.0;0 and i just enable force constant voltage.
Until this morning i play few games and i don't ave no more problems anymore.
So a BIG thank ISH416 ;)
 

ish416

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ULPS stands for Ultra-Low Power State. It's basically the video card shutting/slowing down certain parts of it to only do what is necessary for the task at hand, in order to save energy.

The R9 290's and all newer AMD cards have this so they can be more efficient in normal tasks.

To disable it, install MSI Afterburner ( http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/download.htm ) then open it and on the bottom right of the main window will be a settings button. Click it, a window will pop up and all you need to do is click on the box that says "Force Constant Voltage" and the box that says "Disable ULPS". Hit ok, restart the computer, open MSI Afterburner and it should be done.
 

davis28905

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Thanks man! I really hope this stops with my 290.
 

vVonder

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ish416, I have this card (Sapphire R9 290) and have constant random reboots. Do you think that doing what you suggested, that fixed the other people's freezes would stop my random reboots as well? I think i have a faulty GPU, but i would do almost anything to avoid going through a RMA process. Your help will be very much appreciated, as i have been dealing with this issue for about 7 months now...
 

davis28905

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Mine is doing the same thing. I thought what ish said would help, unfortunatly it didn't help this situation. I hope someone can figure out what is wrong with these cards.
 

davis28905

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My card also will freeze during games or just normal use and sometimes recover and say that the driver had stopped responding and had recovered. Sometimes even Windows 7 blue screens with it. Very frustrating.
 

Acidfix

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I have a Gigabyte R9 290 OC Edition. I have it running at about 1090 Core / 1250 Mem and I just had to turn up the mv to +31 and it runs great.

I keep ulps on and don't mess with anything else besides the clock being 1040 stock on my OC Edition 290.

I can run it at 1100 to 1120 but the temps start to hit 74-76C and I like to keep it no higher then 71C.

The card does run great at its stock clock but I figure if I can run it at 1090 it will be fine.

I use GPUID to monitor the core and memory temps. Just keep them under 85 on the memory and 74 on the core.

I'm going to play BF4 in a bit to test out my AfterBurner profile again.

I was wondering what's a safe max MV to use in afterburner?

I'll let you know.
 

Acidfix

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After playing BF4 for two hours with no issues. Then for about 3 hours tonight. I haven't had any issues. Though sometimes I don't turn on MSI AfterBurner and run at my stock 1040 as I feel that it's more then enough.

There is also something I learned today. About what I thought were artifacts. When playing BF4 I see little white boxes sometimes. I llearned that it's because I'm running two monitor's.

And when I have other things running like GPUID Sensors, ect. It somehow messes with with GPU's memory.

It's a relief that it's not artifacts.

Anyway I just wanted to report back. And let others know my findings on the white little boxes.

Take care everyone.
 

imwesshd

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hey. i got a r9 290 yesterday, but it won't work constant freezes/restards don't know what to do. my cpu is at 3.3ghz (AMD FX 6100)
And i really wan't this card to work any tips I could do diffrently?
 

dlee098

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Try putting everything back to stock (cpu, ram, gpu) and see if it still happens. My cpu overclock was causing my gpu to crash and once I set it at stock everything was fine.