Defective Gigabyte R9 290?

[thezaza101]

I've bought 2 Gigabyte R9 290 WF3 cards over the weekend (GV-R929WF3-4GD). They worked great for about 3 days but now they crash after 5-10 mins of gaming. Computer freezes and this is shown:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6b_N7sDgjmvRHFlcTN3RVZNd0U/

First of all, these are my other relevant system specs:
-CPU: i7 4770k (not overclocked atm)
-MB: Gigabyte z87x ud5h
-RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws X F3-10666CL7Q-16GBXH
-PSU: Corsair AX860i

I've tested both cards separately and I'm almost certain one of them is defective, but I wanted a second opinion as I don't particularly want to go through the RMA process .

I'll refer to the card I think is defective as 'Card 1' and the other as 'Card 2'. One thing I noticed is that the GV-R929WF3-4GD has a 'bios switch' (which is strange as the R9 290 (non X reference card does not contain this). I've preformed the tests in both switch positions.

Test 1: Bios switch in 'quiet' position, crossfire. Using Driver v 14.6 beta.
Result: crashes after 5-10 mins of gaming (as mentioned in the first paragraph); after 30 mins of normal web browsing screen starts flickering: Computer is useable but restart required to get rid of flickering.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6b_N7sDgjmvY1ZFQ0MxdWFnSmc/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6b_N7sDgjmvYUVVNHgzVnNPd2c/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6b_N7sDgjmvZ3lJX2o2bTVpUDQ/

Test 2: Bios switch in 'uber' position, crossfire. Using Driver v 14.6 beta.
Result: crashes as soon as I try to open anything that tries to access the graphics card (tested several times with MSI Afterburner, GPU-Z, Tomb Raider. Computer restart required to fix.

Test 3: Bios switch in 'quiet' position, Card 1 only (no crossfire). Using Driver v 14.6 beta initially then retested after with v14.4 (current release).
Result: Tomb Raider freezes / furmark freezes, second screen gets black squares over it: Computer restart required to fix.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6b_N7sDgjmvSWFEQ3JXVTZqdkE/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6b_N7sDgjmvYnY1V0pES3JSZHM/
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6b_N7sDgjmvdUd2N0dZczZQSkk/

Test 4: Bios switch in 'uber' position, Card 1 only (no crossfire). Using Driver v 14.6 beta initially then retested after with v14.4 (current release).
Result: crashes when I try to open Tomb Raider / start benchmark on furmark. Computer restart required to fix.

Test 5: Bios switch in 'quiet' position, Card 1 only (no crossfire). Using Driver v 14.6 beta initially then retested after with v14.4 (current release).
Result: benchmark on Tomb Raider work / able to start furmark and is stable after 5 minutes. Computer is ok to use after (no restart required). fans dont speed up as much / card runs about 25 degrees hotter (around mid 80 after benchmarks).

Test 6: Bios switch in 'uber' position, Card 2 only (no crossfire). Using Driver v 14.6 beta initially then retested after with v14.4 (current release).
Result: benchmark on Tomb Raider work / able to start furmark and is stable after 5 minutes. Computer is ok to use after (no restart required)

Is my PSU enough to support these cards in crossfire?
This was a concern of mine when I bought the cards, one of the first things I did was to test this. I ran prime 95 and furmark at the same time for about 10 minutes and monitored the amount of power used using Corsair Link. The max W reached in the 10 min with all cores on CPU at 100% and artificial stress testing using furmark was 810W, the AX860i can handle this pretty easily imo.

Keep in mind this was also powering a Asus Xonar ST, 3 hard drives, 1 SSD, Asus Pce-ac68 and 7 case fans in addition to the specs I listed above.

Are both the cards identical?
No, even though they were bought at the same time, Card 1's BIOS is '015.042.000.003' and Card 2's v'015.043.000.001'. I do not wish to flash both cards to the same version as it will void my warranty.
GPU 1 GPU-z info: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6b_N7sDgjmvRTZfc3Q3eUFpUlk/
GPU 2 GPU-z info: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6b_N7sDgjmvMUhBaEw5bTRyYU0/

the gpuz info was captured when the cads were not running in corssfire and their bios swich was in the quiet position.

Did you overclock the cards?
I've not attempted any overclocking on these cards at all, all tests above were done on the default clock speeds for a GV-R929WF3-4GD.

So what do you guys think, is card 1 defiantly defective?

 

[Alaric]

There have been a lot of issues with the R cards. The last theory I heard was ramping up from an idle state outran the voltage , crashing the card. Unfortunately I can't get to the necessary settings on my card to check this. Worth a look here http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2089881/sapphire-260x-black-screen/page-6.html
I'm waiting to hear from AMD. A quick web search shows a lot of potential returns (and NVidia sales) for AMD if they don't get a fix for this soon.