Issues with my 270X (Validating Cards' stability)

Discussion in 'Videocards - AMD Radeon' started by moeppel, Jun 30, 2015.

  1. moeppel

    moeppel Guest

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    Sup folks,

    recently I ditched my ol' 560 Ti for a 270X to somewhat enjoy Witcher 3. I picked up a used card for $100 and am generally quite happy with it.

    Sapphire Dual X 4GB.

    However, ever since the GPU swap (all drivers/games mentioned onward have been re- and uninstalled numerous times) Dota 2 causes the card to crash. More precisely the driver crashes and must be restored. So far no other game created the same error. Witcher 3 runs just fine.

    The card is still under warranty, so if possible I'd like to undoubtedly proof that the card is faulty, but I seemingly cannot outside of playing Dota 2.

    In Dota 2 my screen will go black but the game continue as though nothing happened. No crash, no freeze, just a blackscreen. Whenever this occurs I need to kill Dota 2 and restart it.

    The solution I've found is to manually underclock the card. Stock is 1070(maybe 1050)/1400. Witcher 3 runs fine with those settings. Dota 2 crashes. Dota 2 runs stable @ 950/1300, though, which suggests a card issue to me.

    Furmark also does not provoke such errors or artifacts, even after 30 minutes of torture. Temps are sub 70°C. Are there any more tools aside from Furmark and your typical gamer "pls buy our products to unlock all settings" - Benchmark to torture the card in other ways Furmark does not?

    Any input would be greatly appreciated.

    For reference: A reddit thread on the subject I created a while ago, to no avail mind you.

    www .reddit .com/r/learndota2/comments/37u6pv/technical_issues_black_screens_during_playing/ (lacking 5 posts)

    Cheers,
    Moeppel
     
  2. PrMinisterGR

    PrMinisterGR Ancient Guru

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    If you can RMA, do it now.
     
  3. moeppel

    moeppel Guest

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    Issue is that I'm beyond the 6 month mark. Unless my vendor plays nice due to being accommodating I'll need to provide somewhat of a proof that the card is malfunctioning. I'm not sure if "Go ahead and play some Dota 2 till it crashes" suffices if things such as Furmark/Witcher 3 cause no problems, which is why I'm interested in a method to absolutely, undoubtedly recreate the problem.
     
  4. PrMinisterGR

    PrMinisterGR Ancient Guru

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    You have it, and that's playing DOTA 2. Show it and explain that it will only work when you downclock it. Have you registered the card with Sapphire? They have a more than 6 month guarantee for sure.
     

  5. CalculuS

    CalculuS Ancient Guru

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    Yeah having to underclock a GPU for stability is reason alone for RMA'ing.
     
  6. MatrixNetrunner

    MatrixNetrunner Guest

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    In our local forum members recommended Unigine Heaven for testing the stability of OC on Tahiti cards. You have a Curacao (Pitcairn refresh) so it might not apply, but it's free.

    Are you using Vsync? Dota without Vsync can go into 100s of FPS, and that can put additional stress on your GPU for nothing much.

    You did not specify what driver version you are using. Since I saw you using DLL injection on the Reddit thread, try one of the latest versions, because there are some low level changes. Latest drivers are the 15.15 betas for 3xx series (you can use the DLLs without issue) and the 1040 driver.

    Before that install some real-time monitoring software, something like HWInfo for the whole system and MSI Afterburner for the GPU. That way you can see if there is something wrong with the temperatures (HWInfo can read VRM temperatures for me). Temperatures should be under 80 Celsius at worst for the GPU (around 70 on full load), and maybe a bit higher for VRMs. Since you bought a used card, some maintenance might be needed (clear out the dust, reseat cooler with new TIM) if you are experiencing high temperatures.

    If you are suspecting that PowerPlay is causing problems (Dota not utilizing the card sufficiently, so it tries to downclock, but then it ramps up again, rinse and repeat), try making a custom Catalyst profile for Dota and forcing more Antialiasing to improve GPU utilization. I'm not sure that will work, because those settings are dependent on the game engine (some engines are not compatible). Keep in mind that you need to remove the AMD DX11 DLLs from the Dota folder, because DLL injection is not compatible with Catalyst settings.
     
  7. lexer98

    lexer98 Guest

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    Yeah, try with Unigine Valley / Heaven 4.0 with everything in Ultra without AA, let it runs for like 2 o 3hs with MSI Afterburner with the log enabled (so if crash you have some data).
    Some preoverclocked cards doesn't runs stable ... because if the chip has a bad ASIC need extra voltage
     
  8. moeppel

    moeppel Guest

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    I run with VSynch disabled but my screen only delivers 60hz. I've not increased the limit thus I'm on permanent 60 fps when playing dota.

    Occasionally the card does not cause a black screen when playing Dota 2 it however feels as though the card throttles. Rather than the constant 59/60FPS it'll jump to 65 and then back to 59/60. It feels as though there was a mini freeze and then the game speeds up for a second.

    I've tried the latest 14.x WHQL, 15.5 and am currently running 15.6. None of them changed anything about the behavior.

    I'll give this a shot, thanks.

    I'll do some longtime test, thanks.

    I'll get in touch with the vendor and see how he responds.

    Thanks everyone.
     
  9. MatrixNetrunner

    MatrixNetrunner Guest

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    Since you are not using Vsync, but still get only 60 fps, the game itself is limited to 60 internally. Since you have decent PC, try setting the fps limit to 120 fps (to minimize tearing), and then use Afterburner to see the GPU utilization and GPU clock. If PowerPlay was causing the issue, with fps_max=60 you should see clock variations, while you should have a nice flat graph for the clock (AMD introduced a more granular Power Play with GCN 1.1). 270X is already a bit overclocked as it is, so it could be fussy about constantly changing GPU clocks.

    I found this link for the DotA 2 setting optimization, but it might be out of date: http://steamcommunity.com/app/570/discussions/0/35220315578081548/
     
  10. moeppel

    moeppel Guest

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    Hey everyone,

    thanks for the ideas so far.

    I've tried Dota 2 anywhere from max to minimal settings. Problem persists.

    I went ahead and set fps_max to 200. Dota 2 ran on ~90fps for this attempt.

    Here's a screenshot of the MSI afterburner

    http://imgur.com/QmuaFzG

    Categories from top to bottom:

    • GPU Usage
    • Core Clock
    • VRAM Clock
    • FPS
    • Frametime
    • VRAM Usage
    • GPU °C
    • Cooler Spd %

    I also had Unigine Valley run for an hour flat without any issue. Ultra Settings , max AA/AF on 2560x1440.

    Dota 2 generally causes a blackscreen / driver crash anywhere from immediately to 20 minutes in.

    The things that stand out to me is that the GPU usage ran close to 100% (may be due to uncapped FPS rather than 60 FPS locked) and the VRAM spike when the crash occurred.

    EDIT: Lastly, I've checked for the card's BIOS.

    The most recent one appears to be
    015.044.000.012.000000

    I'm on
    015.041.000.000.000000

    However, as I can't find any changelogs I'm not really fancying the idea of a BIOS flash given that'd void the warranty.
     
    Last edited: Jun 30, 2015

  11. MatrixNetrunner

    MatrixNetrunner Guest

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    GPU:
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    The high GPU utilization is to be expected when the frame rate is unlocked (since you are not CPU limited). Everything else looks OK (apart from the crashing, of course).

    This should eliminate PowerPlay weirdness from the investigation. It seems like a software issue to me. Have you tried verifying the Dota 2 instalation from Steam, just to eliminate any additional variables?

    Also, the VRAM did not spike. The spike is from the frame time graph caused by the driver crash.

    Try opening the Sensors window of HWInfo, and leave it running to see if you hit high temperatures for GPU VRMs. And close any programs that use GPU acceleration (video players, browsers,...). Any video driver restarts I ever had were caused by browsers and video players.

    Other ideas include running some general stress tests (Prime95, IBT, ...) to see if you have any memory issues. Perhaps a VRAM test of some sort?

    Try looking through R9 270X owner threads on this forum and others, to see if they have any additional information on the BIOS change.
     
    Last edited: Jun 30, 2015
  12. moeppel

    moeppel Guest

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    There seem to be VRAM dedicated sensors from what I gathered.

    Here are the results either way. Blackscreen took around 20 minutes to occur.

    http://imgur.com/VqYipzU

    Nothing out of the ordinary as far as I can tell.

    Are there any tool that specifically test a card's VRAM? Running Unigine/Furmark with max AA/AF does not do anything.

    EDIT: Eventviewer entry if a crash occurs

    Translates into

    There is a windows TDR registry hack I tried a while back to increase the timeout. That however was a bad idea as instead of crashing I'd see artifacts all over the place - so the crashing itself seems to be in fact of preventive or 'good' nature.
     
    Last edited: Jun 30, 2015
  13. lexer98

    lexer98 Guest

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    Try with Unigine Valley 1.0 please, don't use any type of AA so in that way you have more FPS (more load).
     
  14. moeppel

    moeppel Guest

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    Did it. Crashed after about 15 minutes give or take. Avg FPS 25-50 dependent on scene. No AA/AF but Ultra @ 2560*1440.

    http://imgur.com/EShuGoR

    I suppose this settles it. Looking at the stats I again cannot see any thing out of bounds.

    Thanks!
     
  15. lexer98

    lexer98 Guest

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    Yeap ... send the card to RMA
     

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