Serious issue with my new ASUS R9 280x-DC2T - Please help!

[Kratos47]

I purchased this graphics card few days ago and i ran benchmarks on it and everything was okay and even the temps are as advertised. But when i started playing skyrim i'm getting these sorts of graphical corruption:

I reinserted my old sapphire HD 5870 and it runs the game fine. Although the difference here is that this card has only 1GB of video memory and in R9 280x case, which has 3GB of VRAM, whenever the memory goes around 1200 MB or 1300 MB etc then i get these types of corruption.


I ran Sniper Elite V2 and Alan wake also with the new card but they don't exhibit this behaviour since the VRAM consumption is less than 1GB. Although yesterday i did notice some fuzzy behaviour in the screen when i was browsing internet it was sort of like this:
http://puu.sh/44awR (random example from internet)
But a very small recntagle shaped box at the top left corner

 

[Brantyn Gerik]

faulty card, get it replaced simple as that

 

[Kratos47]

I just want to eliminate the chances of having a poor PCI-ex x16 slot or bad drivers. I did try new drivers and uninstalled the latest 14.1 beta drivers but that isn't the cause it seems. Could it be only in this game when running on that card? Flickering can happen due to improper driver which AMD fixes eventually but i highly doubt it, since this isn't flickering. It is digital artifact issue, right?

Can my PCI-ex 2.0 x16 even run a 3GB card? I think it has enough bandwidth to support this card, i'm just very confused and sad right now. Can't think straight.

I doubt it's my PCI-ex 2.0 slot, since slot issue will appear in desktop also i think and my 5870 doesn't exhibit this while gaming in that very same game.

 

[Kratos47]

Btw i also tried the new card on a different PCIex slot, it didn't showed me the same effects but issues in display were still there. Mind you i can't replicate this corruption everytime, sometimes it appears, sometimes it doesn't. Changing the display port in the card also didn't help i think.

I have been up all night and my head hurts now. ASUS ****ed up my weekend. I was looking forward to some gaming, i barely get time to play. 🙁

 

[Jaydev16]

Man...........thats.I'll burst into tears if that happens to me.Seems a bit like tearing from a dual graphics APU setup.Maybe your motherboard graphics are messing with it or smth?Really really sorry this happened to you.

 

[Kratos47]

Nah i have an Intel i7-920 CPU and i don't have onboard graphics. My older sapphire HD 5870 (discrete graphics) which is 4 years and 3 months old still works flawlessly. I'm really teared up inside and i have to decide whether to send it back to retailer and buy another one or RMA this one. I really like this particular card though and i already registered this card so not sure retailer will take it back now or not.

It's unavailable in India also currently and now it will probably take 1-2 months before i ever see another new card which again needs to be tested.

I bought this card specifically for playing skyrim on ultra settings with lots of mods. Though it seems it will only remain a dream...

It seems like i'm not the only one having issue with this specific model:
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1973952/asus-280x-dc2t-severe-artifacting.html
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1996290/280x-artifacts-flickers-problems.html

Now why i didn't see such threads before buying this card. I would've gone with MSI GTX 770 from a different and preferred online website, from where i usually buy.

 

[Jaydev16]

Wonder why all of AMD's new products have to have this dark honour.Seems the best time to buy an AMD product is 12 months after launch.And this hurts since I'm more of an AMD guy.Best of luck bro!

 

[Kratos47]

In 12 months there's probably a new and better product out there and people usually prefer to purchase new and better polished products. Atleast that's what i thought i was getting when i ordered this piece of crap.

Strangely in hitman absolution it takes 1.5GB of VRAM and yet no artifacts there. A guy having the same make and model tells me that it's a driver issue from AMD side and a much older CCC v13.11 9.5b fixed the issues i'm facing. Gonna try that out although i'm a bit skeptical.

Corruption is present in sniper elite v2 bullet cams & witcher 2 as well.

 

[Brantyn Gerik]

well considering the 280x is not a new card at all (rebranded 7970) it doesnt matter that you bought it when you did. Faulty cards happen, but so do driver issues.

try the drivers, then try say underclocking the card a bit.

It is not your pci slot if it works with your older card.

you could try a motherboard bios update, since it is quite an old motherboard by the looks of the cpu.

 

[Kratos47]

My motherboard is compatible with R9 280x and both the BIOS of MOBO (ex-58 extreme) and GPU is updated. I did ask Gigabyte guys before buying the GPU and they said that 7970 runs fine on that board so no reason why R9 280x wouldn't. I also ASUS guys when my card was manufactured and whether it's XTL or XT2 chip, and they told me it was manufactured in January 14 like it says on the box and that it has XTL chip so that's why it won't show 80ºC in any game.

Alright so some interesting things to tell now. Like i said when i run hitman absolution in ultra settings, it takes about 1.5GB of VRAM, it also came close to 2.3 GB of VRAM but the game runs fine.

In skyrim and witcher 2 i'm having these issues. Though i noticed that when i turn off rivatuner's in-game fps\gpu monitor the screen doesn't goes plonkers. When i tried the gaming profile in ASUS GPU Tweak which OCes the card then it freezes skyrim after a few minutes. I thought the card should run fine in OCed state as well since they made that default gaming profile for it?

I noticed artifacts in desktop too after quitting the games.

There is a power saving mode also which downclocks the card, so gonna experiment with those as well. I'm hoping that some BIOS flash or driver might resolve it for me since i just don't want to go through the RMA process which can easily take one month here in India.

But from the looks of it i'm pretty sure now that the G.card is faulty.

 

[Kratos47]

Some screenshots of the problems:

 

[Jaydev16]

Some ironic pictures.Please post these queries on OC.net as well.Its also a good forum and can help you out.Post here:http://www.overclock.net/f/67/amd-ati

 

[Kratos47]

My issue is resolved and it turns out that my graphics card wasn't the culprit here and is actually fine. My system RAM was causing this, it was running at 2000 MHz with 9-9-9-24 timings and command rate 2T. Once i restored my PC into stock settings then graphical issues i was facing were gone, which is strange because the very same profile works perfectly with old HD 5870.

Anyways doesn't matters, since i tweaked my OC settings a bit and put my system RAM in command rate 1T which seems to have fixed everything. After that i played skyrim for 20 minutes in the open world and i didn't encountered any errors. I'm quite relieved since i just loathe the RMA process.
Skyrim on default ultra settings without mods:

 

[Jaydev16]

Relieved to find that out!