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R9 290X or Wait.... or ...
- Thread starter ITAngel
- Start date
- Joined
- Jun 28, 2012
w00t!!! You'll love it!
Do your heart a favor and have your wife apply and sign for your mortgage
- Thread Starter
- #83
Do your heart a favor and have your wife apply and sign for your mortgage
LOL! Funny! .... Man I wanted to get the G1 but after looking at my case with my current power supply and cables space. I was like na. I won't enjoy the looks of that card unless I had a nice case to show it off. So I settle for the EVGA GTX 970 SSC. I figure I can't go wrong with good Customer Service, Warranty, and step-up program if I ever decide to take advantage of something like that.
- Joined
- Feb 9, 2002
Yes , Ever since AMD decided to ignore the black screen issue or just flat out pretend it doesn't exist.
I have a super hard time recommending 290(x)'s , Both the X and non X do it.
Its common , And it hasn't been completely solved and it likely never will be as i suspect its a engineering level problem.
Mine have stopped black screening @ average clocks thank god but i also stopped trying to OC the cards much either and they are both on Full blocks and back-plates which to me just seems wasteful that i cant OC them without issues They will not do 1100+ anymore.
I will have a hard time also recommending their next line but i have a hard time believing they will make the same mistake twice.
Its one thing for them to not recall because of the black screen issues so they don't go broke. its an entirely different thing if the next series cards have the same issues , So i doubt that will happen.
With the Sure amount of RMA's that happened over the issue i think they should have definitely learned their lesson on the subject.
I have a super hard time recommending 290(x)'s , Both the X and non X do it.
Its common , And it hasn't been completely solved and it likely never will be as i suspect its a engineering level problem.
Mine have stopped black screening @ average clocks thank god but i also stopped trying to OC the cards much either and they are both on Full blocks and back-plates which to me just seems wasteful that i cant OC them without issues They will not do 1100+ anymore.
I will have a hard time also recommending their next line but i have a hard time believing they will make the same mistake twice.
Its one thing for them to not recall because of the black screen issues so they don't go broke. its an entirely different thing if the next series cards have the same issues , So i doubt that will happen.
With the Sure amount of RMA's that happened over the issue i think they should have definitely learned their lesson on the subject.
Was the "black screen" issue really that wide-spread? I have owned 8 290(X)s (4 PCS+ 290s, Tri-X 290, 2 reference 290Xs, and a 290X Lightning). I had black screen issues with one of the PCS+ 290s, but I was under the impression that it was specific to that particular Powercolor model? I ended up RMA'ing it and Powercolor sent me back the same card (same S/N). It no longer had issues with black screens and the BIOS revision number had changed, so I figured a simple flash to an un-released BIOS must have done the trick.
My own assessment of the issue was that there wasn't enough "buffer" in the voltage level (Powercolor was trying to keep it as low as possible to reduce heat). So when you hit an instance where the core clock boosted up under load, but the voltage didn't ramp up quite fast enough to match it, there wasn't enough "buffer" to cover it.
Maybe I'm wrong and the issue was more widespread, but I never considered it to be a flaw in the 290(X)s. They are just power hungry and attempts by some companies to try and limit the voltage caused issues.
- Joined
- Feb 9, 2002
Oh yea it was big.
They made a thread on Ocn regarding it and i think its like 145 pages (1450 posts) (and ongoing still on their front page of GPU/AMD section) or something crazy.
This post
Understand After the 6850/70 and the 7950/70 cards i was hugely impressed with the direction AMD was leading .. so impressed after owning both of those generations and while owning a great 7970 that ran 24/7 @ 1295/1850 easily i ran out and bought a 290x on release.
and then another for crossfire and i ended up having many black screens and poor overclockability.
It was a terrible experience tbh, nothing at all what i had come to expect.
They made a thread on Ocn regarding it and i think its like 145 pages (1450 posts) (and ongoing still on their front page of GPU/AMD section) or something crazy.
This post
Understand After the 6850/70 and the 7950/70 cards i was hugely impressed with the direction AMD was leading .. so impressed after owning both of those generations and while owning a great 7970 that ran 24/7 @ 1295/1850 easily i ran out and bought a 290x on release.
and then another for crossfire and i ended up having many black screens and poor overclockability.
It was a terrible experience tbh, nothing at all what i had come to expect.
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Black screen, vertical stripes etc issues were common in 7970, 280X, 290/X and AMD did nothing about it. I had 3 7970 Lightnings, 2 of them had vertical stripes issues and random black screens. It was also one of reasons I didn't want 290/X even though results in benchmarks were great.
Did you guys ever try increasing the voltage to your cards that had issues? I think I remember that even before the flash, if I bumped up the voltage a bit, the problem would go away.
I don't think that increasing voltage should be required in a high end product which supposed to pass long hours of quality/stability tests.
But no, in my case it wasn't helping. I got 1st card, couldn't replace it so I returned it. Got 2nd card from other store with the same issue, they didn't want to replace it so I made RMA and after 3 weeks waiting I got 3rd card which was working good but was overclocking really bad so after some benching I sold it.
But no, in my case it wasn't helping. I got 1st card, couldn't replace it so I returned it. Got 2nd card from other store with the same issue, they didn't want to replace it so I made RMA and after 3 weeks waiting I got 3rd card which was working good but was overclocking really bad so after some benching I sold it.
- Joined
- Feb 9, 2002
Voltage increase cause's the problem quicker as it does in most peoples from the research I've did looking for answers.
I've done every fix you can think of ninjacore I've been dealing with the problem since November 2013 (when they released) So basically if you can think of something I've likely already tried it.
The problem is also worse on Dual link DVI which is the case for most people (meaning Certain video outputs cause blackscreens more than others).
I have mine manageable now after dozens of different bios versions , Drivers , clock's ect.
I can literally leave clocks stock and bump voltage and the card will blackscreen , First it will flicker - sometimes turn pink/purple get lines and then eventually blackscreen out.
I'm far from the only one that has these issues but i'm one of the lucky ones that has a manageable version of the issue many have the issues at stock everything.
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