R9 290X and 290 Owners Club

[ivanlabrie]

I suspect the top guys that are sponsored by manufacturers already have access to these sorts of adjustments to bioses. As soon as he puts out an improved 290x bios, I will see if I can get some benching numbers. I suspect that the bioses he puts together, since they are tuned for mining at a pretty specific ram speed would not be the best for benching, unless you are at close to that same speed.

I will send him a pm asking him if these improvements could translate to benching improvement and will request a good benching bios .

I'm sure he could make one...look at the fx superpi perf boosts he published earlier.

 

[xsuperbgx]

I got a reply about reworked bios from stilt, he did say that results with high speed and cold might be improved. It also sounds like there will be very few BIOSes that he may put out due to driver signing that makes it so all drivers have to be run through AMD for release. So don't hold your breath for anything, unless it comes through a card partner.

 

[bluezero5]

argh, frustrating money.

My black screen problem is back, this time at STOCK clocks.
I am on R9 290 x 2, disabled Crossfire, and mining at 947 / 1250
now I am getting black screens every 30 mins... adding offset voltage doesn't appear to help..

any ideas?

is it really cause of the GPU?
I am starting to wonder if the RAM of the computer has anything to do with it.

 

[xsuperbgx]

I think it is gpu ram. Elpida ram.

 

[Woomack]

I think it is gpu ram. Elpida ram.

it was already mentioned many times that the same issues are happening on every memory, no matter if it's Elpida or Hynix ... also the same memory chips you can find in Nvidia cards and somehow there are no issues like that

 

[bluezero5]

it was already mentioned many times that the same issues are happening on every memory, no matter if it's Elpida or Hynix ... also the same memory chips you can find in Nvidia cards and somehow there are no issues like that

I would like to confirm this.
i have BOTH Hynix and Elphida memory, and they BOTH black screen at similar frequencies.. funny thing is.. sometimes it can go on a day or 2 mining with no issues, then suddenly, every freaking 30 mins for a whole day.

I wonder what triggers it.
know that, might prevent it.

 

[xsuperbgx]

From what I read it is more prevalent on the elpida ram variants, but it does happen on both.
I am just bitter at my 290x. FLickers at desktop and will blackscreen if mem is overclocked. Fine at stock speeds, so far.
My new card is a afr hynix, I haven't seen a flicker on it yet. Just came yesterday. I wonder if there is an updated bios or soimething like that?

 

[shadowdr]

From what I read it is more prevalent on the elpida ram variants, but it does happen on both.
I am just bitter at my 290x. FLickers at desktop and will blackscreen if mem is overclocked. Fine at stock speeds, so far.
My new card is a afr hynix, I haven't seen a flicker on it yet. Just came yesterday. I wonder if there is an updated bios or soimething like that?

I think that it is. One bios blackscreens at login and the other works but BSOD's about twice a day. It really flipped out when I updated MSI AB to the latest beta, at least I think it was MSI AB. I am in the same boat as you, works OK at stock but no OC on the memory at all, nada. I would be willing to bet that there are some vendors cards that do not have these issues because of a tweaked bios. I asked XFX if there was an updated bios because of the problems my card seems to have and their response was long drawn out form letter of how to reinstall drivers, nothing about a bios update, I'm not sure they know how or go to the trouble of bios updates.

 

[Thekamikazepr]

I haven't had a black screen in a while, now my hinyx card do crashes more often than my elpida (but not blackscreen).

Now i do see blackscreen if I start the PC with stock settings 1000/1250 (since they are flashed) but if I offset with +3mv its all good

 

[Woomack]

Elpida is now in maybe 90% AMD and Nvidia cards so I think it's not anything unusual that more users are complaining on Elpida
2 days ago I got 2nd GTX780. 1st was on Elpida and 2nd is on Hynix. Both memory are overclocking almost the same. Hynix makes about 50MHz more and both are black/brown screening in the same way when I set too high clock.
If you check AMD and Nvidia cards then now many of them have the same memory. Somehow R9 280X are not crashing so often unless you set too high memory clock. The same is with Nvidia GTX670/80, GTX760/770/780/...
It looks like wider memory bus, so also new memory controller is causing issues at higher memory clock. Memory rated at the same clock on other cards than R9 290/X is overclocking higher.

 

[bluezero5]

same here, I got my GTX780Ti the other day.
and the user experience on how smooth everything runs is almost not comparable to AMD... anyway... I still own more AMD cards than NVDA cards cause of the mining speed difference...

and if anyone know how to reduce black screen problems, PLEASE let me know.

 

[shadowdr]

same here, I got my GTX780Ti the other day.
and the user experience on how smooth everything runs is almost not comparable to AMD... anyway... I still own more AMD cards than NVDA cards cause of the mining speed difference...

and if anyone know how to reduce black screen problems, PLEASE let me know.

Have you tried both bios positions? I only have it on the bios away from the video connections, the one closest doesn't black screen. If you only use for mining you might try the 12.4 drivers, mine ran fine on the older drivers left from my 6950. I didn't have black screens until I updated the driver.

 

[bluezero5]

let me try to switch the bios. i m desperate for any fix.

as of today i m still black screening every 30mins


edit: switch the bios of one of the card appeared to have halted the black screen... 1 hour without now..
will leave it overnight and update again tomorrow.

 

[manu2b]

You can try adding 25mv.

It helped with my 290(x).

 

[Bad ConNecTioN]

Any reason why my Asus brand R9 290 shows 2816 Shaders in GPU-Z? My MSI R9 290 shows the correct shader count. Also, through frustration and stupidity my x-fire setup is running at 8x/4x (PCI-E 3.0). How much of a performance hit am I going to take? Can't change it, I have it buried under water cooling.

GPU-Z 0.7.5
Asus


MSI

 

[manu2b]

That's a GPU-z bug. It happens when crossifring 290's. It shows memory bandwidth with 32bits too.

 

[bluezero5]

update... switching bios works..

now I have a bios that gives black screen in 30 mins, and one that can run for 24 hours at least.... shouldn't this.. already give us the answer for what caused this if we compare the two bios?

 

[shadowdr]

update... switching bios works..

now I have a bios that gives black screen in 30 mins, and one that can run for 24 hours at least.... shouldn't this.. already give us the answer for what caused this if we compare the two bios?

I think that it would, remember that AMD rushed out a bios to replace the primary one that was supposed to just have more aggressive fan settings. I think that they recognized that there were other problems, I can't see AMD putting out a newer bios just to add fan stings, and why would one have black screen problems and the other not.

 

[EarthDog]

zOMG, guess who is going to be joining the club... Keep an eye on the front page for a MSI 290 Gaming review.

 

[bluezero5]

I think that it would, remember that AMD rushed out a bios to replace the primary one that was supposed to just have more aggressive fan settings. I think that they recognized that there were other problems, I can't see AMD putting out a newer bios just to add fan stings, and why would one have black screen problems and the other not.

precisely. am I late to the party? cause this kinda totally fixed this.. for now. (at least 24 hr stable, yes it did black screen eventually, but I reboot it and again fine for another 6 hours already.. )

I will be trying OC on this bios setting next on stability...
so it does look like it is a bios problem more than anything. but to be fair, no one tried 512 width on mem before, so I guess AMD deserves some trail and error slack..