Firstly: hello! I've been lurking in the forum for a while and reading what other problems people have been having with the R9 290x (seems like quite a lot). I haven't been able to find a solution myself, so I thought I would make a post. Any help would be appreciated. My specs should be on the left <<<< Short summary: My 290x crashes in different ways when playing games (sometimes BSOD, sometimes just crash to desktop, sometimes with looping sounds and artifacts... often with the "your ATI drivers have stopped working and recovered" message). About 2/3 of games crash regularly. About 1/3 of games (including BF4) run almost fine, with maybe the odd crash every 5 hours or so. I've recently installed a friend's Radeon HD 4850. Games now run without any crashes, HOWEVER I'm still having driver issues, and I've had a blue screen of death crash. I'm wondering whether A) the 290x is just faulty, or B) there's something about my PC setup that is causing problems with my graphics drivers, and the problem is simply less extreme with the 4850. I'm planning to RMA my 290x soon, but I just want to make sure I've covered every option first. It may also be relevant to mention that this is my first PC build. ----------------- Anyway, here's more detailed info: For the first few months I had the 290x, it worked fine. But, that’s because I wasn’t playing many games - only playing Battlefield 4, and even then, not often - and was running drivers optimised for Battlefield 4. Some other games worked fine too, like Dishonored, but that’s a pretty low-spec game. The games did crash every now and again, but probably about once every 4 hours. I didn’t think much of it. Then, I realised that most other games crash far more regularly. X-Com works fine until one particular level… when it crashes at the same point; when a new enemy is introduced. Minecraft works for about half an hour, then crashes. The Witcher 2 literally only lasts for 5 minutes max before crashing, with looping sounds and full-screen artifacts. T his doesn't happen every time. Each crash is different for each game, I find. Even VLC media player ****s up in weird ways sometimes. Now, often a little pop-up appears that says “your AMD driver stopped working, but has recovered”. Sometimes this is true; the game quits but the PC carrys on. Other times it is a lie (like in the video), as the PC fully crashes shortly after. The main thing I need to figure out is whether this is a driver issue or not. If not, I’m sending the card back to Overclockers UK, as it’s still in warranty. But I’d like to double check first. Any light you can shed on this would be much appreciated. Here’s some info: > If you google search "290 crashing" you get a load of people with similar issues. As far as I can tell I can’t see a solution. Most people just say they RMA’d / sent back their card, it was declared working and returned to them, so they’re essentially left with a brick. This may happen to me, I fear. > A lot of forums say that it could be the PSU. But, my PSU is a Corsair 750w, so I think it should be fine. > I ran a memory tester thing, that checked my RAM (it ran outside of the operating system and took a good half hour). It said my RAM was OK. I also double checked that voltage and CAS latency were correctly set up in BIOS. I don’t think it’s a RAM issue. > My CPU cores don’t get too hot, so I don’t think it’s that. Usually run at 30something. At their hottest, maybe low 60s. I’ve never any in the 70s. > The card pretty much always runs at a temperature of 95. This is very hot, obviously, but it’s supposed to be like that:. The card throttles down performance when it gets to 95. However, the crashes don’t necessarily happen when the card is at 95, sometimes it can be cooler, at around 70. > When I was first investigating the problem, I uninstalled Windows 8 and installed Windows 7 (with a reformat) and installed newer drivers than I previously had. Though, it was still within the AMD 14.xx range. The problems not only persisted but immediately got worse. Crashes were far more regular in most games. Might be a windows 7 thing. > Recently I borrowed a spare graphics card that my friend had. It’s a Radeon HD 4850. I uninstalled the AMD drivers, and used an AMD auto-detect thing to install the Radeon drivers. So far I’ve not had a single crash, with any game I’ve played (I played Witcher 2 for a whole 30 minutes!). What DOES crash, however, is Photoshop. It says it has an error with graphics drivers when I load it up, then crashes a few minutes later. I didn’t have this problem before. Might be just because of the old drivers. > I recently realised that my Intel HD 4600 driver is running alongside my current one. Do you think the two drivers could be conflicting? I think I tried messing with this before, as it came up in a forum, but I only today realised you can disable it in Device Manager ( I think I was disabling it in the taskbar). However, disabling it in Device Manager doesn’t stop Photoshop crashing. I just ordered some more fans for the top of my case, so I think when they come I will reinstall the card, do any final tests, and also reinstall windows 8, before I finally give up and send the card back. Any help before then would be much appreciated. ALSO I've found some dump files from recent crashes: Okay, so I analysed the crash dumps using Windows Dev Kits and downloaded symbols (I don't really know what any of that means) R9 290x crash #1: Key points: DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID: GRAPHICS_DRIVER_TDR_FAULT PROCESS_NAME: System FAILURE_BUCKET_ID: X64_0x116_IMAGE_atikmpag.sys R9 290x crash #2: Key points: DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID: WIN7_DRIVER_FAULT PROCESS_NAME: System FAILURE_BUCKET_ID: X64_0xA0000001_atikmdag+26c6e Radeon HD 4850 crash: Key points: DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID: WIN7_DRIVER_FAULT PROCESS_NAME: chrome.exe FAILURE_BUCKET_ID: X64_0x50_win32k!vCleanupPrivateFonts+6f At a glance, it's clear the first two crashes were because of the ATI driver (which I knew already). The recent crash - the Radeon one - was caused by an unknown driver, but interestingly it links to Chrome as the process (which was indeed the program I was using when it crashed - I think I just closed a pop-up twitter window) with the failure bucket ID (I have no idea what that is) linking to some sort of private font. Do you think the last crash could be related to the first two? Or do you think they're unrelated?
I had a 290 that only lasted 6 months: it just died on me one day (it was a used card though so whatever). Then I bought a Tri-X 290 (also used) and right out of the gate it was giving me problems, crashes almost daily... So I lowered the clocks on the card to stock (it was factory OC'd) this helped quite a bit, from BSOD daily to every other day if I was lucky. I also swapped around the power-cords coming from my PSU (just in case some of them weren't as efficient at sending the Watts needed as other cords). I also had to disable any kind of screensaver, it would always BSOD after being idle, or losing connection to the monitor. But ultimately I get rid of the card after a week, I was tired of dealing with a clearly faulty GPU. Now I'm on a 290X, and have almost no issues with it. The only thing this card seems to get pissy about is when I try to change inputs on my receiver, from PC to Xbox. When I go back to my PC, it's always a BSOD. But this seems to be a Kernel problem (a windows issue). If I were you, I'd get rid of the card right away. There's no reason to keep a lemon. It doesn't sound like software issues, unless BF4 has 100% absolutely never once crashed on you - then it might slightly be a software issue; but even with my Tri-X I was able to play BF4 for 4 or 5 straight hours with no issue... But other times I would still occasionally BSOD, so I got rid of it.
Thanks for all the replies peeps. Nah, nothing's overclocked. I tried the 290x on my friends' rig... which had a 650w power supply, and his GPU is pretty beefy. We did a complete wipe of his Nvidia drivers using Driver Sweeper, then installed the latest stable AMD drivers. Any games we played, including CS:GO and Rome:TW, ran fine for about a minute and then crashed his whole PC, in a very similar way to what happened on my rig. Except, the crashes were a lot quicker for him. I'm gonna RMA the card this week, I think. I'm also gonna try running my PC with intergrated graphics only, to see if I still get Photoshop crashes etc
Man that def sounds like a reference card. Don't get reference get one with decent cooling, Tri-X or Vapor-X or MSI Gaming.....anything is better than the crapola stock fans.. You could also save money by overclocking a 290......
Yeah, it's a reference card. I do wish it wasn't. The one small fan is pretty measly considering the card runs hot enough to melt a hole in my floor.
Here is what you can do. RMA the card or try one of them 3 fan ARCTIC GPU coolers if you are comfortable taking off the reference cooler and have the extra cash to purchase one of them.
OP I just reread your post and noticed the bugchecks. Just to let you know, the top 2 basically mean the GPU stopped responding, not that surprising given the 290x's history. One was reported by the OS (prob after a BSOD) and the other was reported by the driver (prob after black screen or VPU recover).
Thanks for all the help, I really appreciate it. I've sent back the card now. I'm guessing this voids the warranty? I'd be tempted to do something like that, just to help cool down the card, but if the card screws up again I guess I'm on my own. If they send me a replacement reference card, is there anything else I can do to increase it's longevity? Alternatively, if I have to buy a new one, does anyone know what the most reliable(!!!) high end cards are? I want a good card, but I'm more interested in having everything run smoothly, and having no problems like overheating, than getting crazy-awesome performance. I should have researched the 290x more before I bought it. I don't think I would have got it, if I'd known it runs so hot, and people have so many problems with it.
Yes it is possible that changing the cooler voids the warranty. I am not sure. Who is the manufacturer of the card such as XFX, Sapphire, HIS etc? It is possible who ever the manufacturer of the card is that they will probably send a non reference card depending on if they still make them or have any available. I have read reviews on the 3rd party cooler solution and some had positive results.
I searched the manufacturer and they have a dual fan card so cross your fingers that you get that card instead of the reference card.
VTX & PowerColour are owned by TUL. Their GPU's are generally cheap crap. @OP if that's a VTX 290x you should RMA it immediately. Don't buy another one.
Yeah, I RMA'd it today. It's been over a month though, so if they agree that it's faulty, I'll just get another VTX card I guess. Hopefully Fender's right and I have a chance of getting a non-reference card back. If they refuse to repair or replace it I'm just gonna superglue it to a big chain and wear it as ****ing expensive bling
Don't let them play you man, only the refund period is 30 days. After that u still have 6mths to get a replacement. OCUK don't need to agree on anything, it's on them to DISPROVE the fault, not on you to prove it. Insist on a replacement non reference even if you have to pay the difference, u do not want to be stuck with that card. If they act like dicks & give another VTX you still have 6mths to return it, at which point they MUST replace it with something else. Most of their staff won't know the laws anyway. Just be stubborn, quote them a few lines from below and they should cave. http://www.theguardian.com/money/2011/apr/17/consumer-rights-refunds They have many enemies here..... Good luck. .
If they offer you something else you can get a 290 and OC it, better value if u overclock. Post back and let us know how u get on. TriX and Toxic I think are guaranteed to have Hynix memory which is a bonus.