Help! Is my R9 290x defective? I really don't think so...

So I recently bought a R9 290x, wiped my previous 6950 drivers with DDU, and installed 14.12 omega drivers. For the most part the card seems to run fine...I think. But I CANNOT stop my core clock from dipping in bf4. With practically any game, or benchmark, the card is completely fine. I'm starting to think this is purely an in game problem, but I have seriously tried everything and I cannot get the core clock to stop dipping periodically. When it dips I sometimes get a 30-40 fps drop or I might freeze for 1-2 seconds and I immediately notice a dip of of sometimes 600 MHz from my core clock. I don't believe my CPU is a bottleneck as it is usually around 80% usage during load. I'm running the card at 50% power in AB and also have the power options set to high performance but I cannot stop the core from dipping like this.

As for bf4, I have origin in game disabled and get the dips at any resolution...so if this is a bf4 problem does anyone have any suggestions?

Also a side note, I did not do a fresh install upon receiving the card, but when I flashed the drivers before wiping I noticed WAY more instability, but it has improved ten fold since wiping...but the dipping still seems to be an issue.

If my specs aren't listed in my sig here they are, I'm new to guru3d

i5-2500k @ 4.2 processor
16 gb 1333MHz ram
AMD R9-290x video card
240 GB SSD(for os)
2 TB 7200 HDD(storage/programs/games/etc)
win 7 ult 64 bit

I cannot post a screenshot of the dips since I'm new...can someone remove this?

 

What temps are you seeing the GPU hit ?

Throttling ?

 

I thought throttling might be an issue too, but after some research not only does it look like AMD released drivers fixing this problem, but I ran for about an hour on 100% fan during full load which brought the temps to around 70c at 1440p and I still saw the dips.

 

95c is the throttle temp of the 290X so if it's only hitting 70c, that's not the problem

Tried different drivers to rule that out?

 

I tried 14.12 that was posted here I believe as a very relatively stable driver and still saw it.

Sorry I deleted it. I believe it was 14.3? Not 14.12 since that is the recently released one. Got confused

 

What PSU have you got?

Seems like it is BF4 related if nothing else does it though

EDIT - 14.4 was the best driver for the 290(X) when I owned mine, but if you've tried 14.3 and it's the same, I doubt it's drivers

 

I'm running a 1KW. I'm really beginning to think it is just this game, which I really brought for this card and it seems others are running just fine, but these freezes seriously want to make me kill a baby.

 

Not a fan of babies, so kill away

1kW which brand / model?

Yea, sounds like BF4, I rarely play the game so you'll have to wait for someone who knows it back to front to chime in

 

PS is a LZ-1000 from Kingwin.

 

The only other thing I can suggest, and depending on how fast your net is, is reinstalling BF4, or at least verify files to make sure nothing has become corrupt

Reinstalling C++ Redistributables etc too

Great tool for that here, couple clicks and it reinstalls them all for you
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=393405

 

I'll give that a go. I literally just did a clean install on a brand new 240 GB SSD yesterday though.

 

Running DX? Have you tried mantle?

And double check that Origin in Game is off.

 

I am running mantle in game, but have tried dx11 and mantle and still see the core dips. I definitely get much better performance using mantle though.

 

Have you set the power limit in Afterburner to 50%? Set it as high as it'll go.

 

Your CPU is just fine for BF4, I get with 7970 80+fps, no dips ever with some minor details lowered.
1333MHz memory with 2nd gen i5 is not optimal, but not source of your problem.

I would run taskmgr in background with displayed kernel times (red line on CPU) if that spikes, then some of drivers is bad.
In that case I would look for more details in ProcessExplorer. Or look directly for alternative realtek drivers for NIC/sound as they have some versions which are perfectly capable to cripple any system.
In case your CPU overheats game may be affected by lower fps, but 1-2s freeze looks like caching of data or bad driver interrupt.

 

You really think this would be a problem after a clean install though? I have only installed my mobo drivers, full windows update, video card driver, and direct x, and bf 4 I think.

The specs between 2nd gen and ivy bridge etc are practically identical except for lower tdp. From what I've seen the caches and everything for the most part are the same, are there differences I'm not seeing?

 

It is set to 50% in AB.

 

I also have a 980 coming tomorrow. So I'll plug that in and update when it is all said and done. It will be interesting if the dips disappear.

 

80% CPU load is pretty high man, what's your individual core load? I wouldn't be surprised if you were hitting 90%< on at least one.

PSU prob isn't helping either, 1000W doesn't mean a lot with cheap units. I will check it out.

 

Here are some screenshots of bf4 play. The dips are quite obvious. When the core clock dips, the usage goes to almost 0%, the cpu increases to 100%. Temperatures look fine the whole way through.

http://imgur.com/lKNZp5e

http://imgur.com/4uCc0mZ