Help! An inch from throwing that card away! Blackscreen reboots with r290

It is very common but reinstalling Windows won't help. Knowing what I know about Powercolor I would just RMA the card and ask for a refund.

 

says it all .... send it back even powercolor have suggested it ....

from all the hassle I had from my 2 r9 290x's (7 months of try this try that blah blah blah) from now on if I buy a gfx card and it fails to work out of the box its being sent back for refund or replacement right away. I cant be ass'd with all the bollox it can entail anymore just to end up with it being a faulty card in the first place lol :/ sometimes ya just wasting ya time.

wonder how many percent of the R9 2xx series cards have been sent back out of the total r9 2xx series sold world wide due to black screen issues ?

 

Hey guys,

just dropped in to give you a short update. I knew before that reinstalling wouldnt help the issue but the system was kind of a mess and I wanted to do it for a long time anyways.

No suprise: the issue was still there after reinstalling WIN7.

However two things have happened meanwhile:

1. Raymond from Powercolor wrote back and send me a link along with instructions to flash the Bios. Since the card seems to be ****ed, I may aswell give it a try.

2. I went to a PC store and had them check the card (without telling them that I have a problem) Just to check how the card behaves in a totally diff. system.
They told me that they were able to install the driver and even test it under stress (gaming) But the card crashed after 10min. They wrote in their report, that the card got way too hot way too fast and therefore was in fact faulty. Whats odd about this is that I can not even get it to run for 5 min after I installed the driver and reboot my system. (EDIT: I monitored the gpu temp before it crashed in my system and it was running at 38 degrees celcius)

I was told, since the card is faulty, it just reacts diff. in every system. Which seemed to me like a lazy explanation.

I can not return the card since I bought it in used condition over ebay for 190€ (spare me the lectures, I am a poor student!)
The seller still claims the card worked fine in his system and refuses to refund. I can get a lawyer involved but that will cost me at least 80€ for him sending a letter and if the seller doesnt cave in, I am facing additional costs, so I might end up putting it on ebay again but of course as "faulty" this time. Prob. still get 60 - 70€ for it.

In addition I bought another card (Asus 290) and hopefully it will arrive tomorrow!

EDIT: I have tried to flash my card but the ATI winflash tool cannot find my card because its running as a "VGA standard" Is there anyway around it? Because I cannot run the card after installing the drivers.

EDIT2: I installed GPU-Z and its behaving weirdly which I think has to do with the card. The program freezes for about 15sec than reacts again. I can hardly move in the program due to the freezes. Very weired. The card seems to be ****ed badly!

 

Try ATIflash if ATIwinflash doesn't work.

 

I have owned 5 of them, 2 of them had the black screen issue....

 

Update:

I just received and installed my brand new (store bought) Asus r9.

And wouldnt you know it: .... the same problem! Still breakdowns after restart.

Could it be some sort of incompatibality with my RAMs? I was playing around with them before the whole gfx snafu started?

Mainboard incompatibility? Re-install drivers?

 

Got another PC, friends / families, that you can test the GPU in ?

 

I will take it to a shop tomorrow to have the gpu tested. Will put me down another 25€ but what else to do? There is not much left to swap besides the mainboard and RAM I guess.

Cant be a driver incompatibility because I reinstalled windows, and before all else installed the GPU.

 

Okay update time The mainboard did the trick. The new card is working flawlessly now. Thanks for the help! Thread can be closed

 

Nice one

Enjoy gaming with pictures on the screen

 

Yes, most likely the Powercolor card was used 24/7 for mining, overclocked heavily etc. Those cards have been heavily abused, NVIDIA cards would be no better off under those circumstances.

It overheated at the store because they aren't the best card, they're a budget solution. The previous abuse may have meant the thermal paste on the cooler had 'dried' out. Maybe it could be fixed with a simple heatsink removal and new thermal paste.

Anyways, glad to hear you have found the solution.

 

That Powercolor card probably has some serious VRM damage and crashes on P-state changes.

Those 190€ on eBay just cost you a new Asus 290, new PSU, new MB and 2x25€ on testing... Ouch!

 

My father always used to tell me: If you are poor, do not buy cheap, buy quality.

 

nice one. thanks for sharing.

 

How do you afford quality if you are poor?