290x Causing PC to Lock-Up/Freeze

Nihsnek

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 30, 2008
Messages
137
Had issues with my 290x Bf4 edition, so I did the following to troubleshoot:

-RMA'd the card. Got a brand new Sapphire 290x Tri-X OC. Only hitting 35-42 idling, fan usage 20%
-Upgraded PSU to EVGA Nova G2 750W
-Completely uninstalled all old drivers and installed new AMD drivers
-BIOS/Chipset up-to-date
-Windows 7 SP1 up-to-date

System Specs:
MSI 790GX-G65 motherboard
AMD 1090t CPU
Sapphire 290x Tri-X video card
G.Skill DDR3 8GB
Windows 7 64-bit, SP1
m4 256gb SSD
EVGA Supernova G2 750w PSU

I have NO problems with my old card (MSI HD6950), only the 290x's are giving me problems. Is my motherboard just not compatible with them? Driver issues---but I'm not blue/black screening.

Thoughts???
 
Well, you did updated your power supply and it does have 62.4A on the +12V line. Not sure if it's single or multi rail. I had issues like this when I upgraded from a GTX 7XXX series to the GTX 8800 series with my Antec True Power back in the days. The solution was upgrade to PC Power and Cooling power supply back then. That resolved my lockup issue, also in rare instance a full OS re-install fixes these issues. Also I assume you're not overclocking like crazy and resort to default after the lockup to see if that could be the culprit right?
 
did you try running the cpu on stock voltage/settings?

the video card might be stressing your CPU if its OC'd, if it doenst have enough voltage it will freeze up your PC.

but you could be right about the mobo not supporting that video card, ive seen people having issues like yours.
 
I blame shitty drivers that can't handle any OCs. I am betting on the 880 GTX to back to nVidia. Performance differences aside, their drivers and support were 1000x better. At least on nVidia, when I had issues I could raise a ticket and talk to tech support. AMD just tells me to submit a bug report.
 
I had the same issue with my 290x until I realized that the 290x is actually stressing the system a whole lot more than my previous cards, which meant that my OC was no longer stable. I upgraded my cpu cooler, and that's it, the CPU got more stable, and the freezes / bluescreens I had previously are a thing of the past.

And I went through the new PSU, RMA bullshit too. Well actually I was only thinking about RMA but didn't because I noticed that the system was stable with stock CPU clocks. First I thought that the VGA can't handle the increased BCLK, but the improved cooling proved that it was a stability issue all along
 
I blame shitty drivers that can't handle any OCs. I am betting on the 880 GTX to back to nVidia. Performance differences aside, their drivers and support were 1000x better. At least on nVidia, when I had issues I could raise a ticket and talk to tech support. AMD just tells me to submit a bug report.

Lol good luck with that. it took 3 months for my 780 to finally stop driver crashing and I could never get shadowplay working but one time. it is funny raptrs gvr works though on my 780. on a windowed screen too at that.
 
That sounds like the hotplug issue.

Mine locked up on 14.1 and 14.4, but 14.6 and 14.7 have been fine. Just the annoying install/uninstall racket.
 
I had the same issue with my 290x until I realized that the 290x is actually stressing the system a whole lot more than my previous cards, which meant that my OC was no longer stable. I upgraded my cpu cooler, and that's it, the CPU got more stable, and the freezes / bluescreens I had previously are a thing of the past.

And I went through the new PSU, RMA bullshit too. Well actually I was only thinking about RMA but didn't because I noticed that the system was stable with stock CPU clocks. First I thought that the VGA can't handle the increased BCLK, but the improved cooling proved that it was a stability issue all along

I think this may be the solution. I have up'd some voltages (safe limits) and hopefully that will help. Still monitoring temps.
 
Well, still no luck. Dialed back on over lock, upped voltages, and the system still hard freezes randomly. Tonight I will try the default settings..I was being stubborn thinking I could tune it.
 
be a bit more precise , freezing while on desktop freezing during browsing freezing during gaming?
 
Restored everything to default in bios and still freezing. Freezing during browsing, during no browsing, during idle. I did leave my computer on overnight on the Windows 7 user login screen (not logged in) and it didn't freeze...

Not sure what's going on. Windows 7 is up-to-date, using current AMD drivers...
 
Are you using the standard bios or the uefi bios?

Have tried both this evening, just found the switch a few hours ago. I was hopefully when I first switched it, but 30mins later --- BOOM. Hard freeze.

Ran a chkdsk for giggles and it came back clean. Will try MemTest overnight...but I'm starting to think I need to RMA this card...again??
 
probably not. it isn't uncommon to have incompatibility issues when trying to get hardware of differing generations to work together. there are x58 boards that have cf issues with r9 290s and they're from late 2008. the 790 fx chipset is from late 2007.
 
I have been having issues for the past couple weeks with my 290x..

Today, I reseated the the card, blew it out, changed the 6 pin connector on my PSU from the pretty sleeved one to the beefier unsleeved one. I am thinking that that wires in the pretty one may not be up to the task due to age and all the extra current that gets sent through them. I'm using a corsair hx850 psu.

So far, it's been about 2 hours of web browsing, no crashes. Before, it would be 5 minutes to an hour before a crash. It hasn't crashed in games, which is weird.

Before I did all that to the card, I switched the drivers from 14.7 to 14.4. As soon as I reloaded chrome after the driver reinstall, and went to the same combination of pages that I had before, it crashed.

IDK, try reseating the card.
 
Found this on a Linux forum:

This issue is widely reported on AMD 700 and 800 series chipsets, as well as some older Intel boards. As far as I'm aware, neither AMD nor any motherboard/GPU OEMS have admitted any fault. Speculation I've seen includes the R9 290 pulling too much power through the PCI-Express slot, and general incompatibility with PCI-E 2.0 or lower. But honestly no one really knows the reason.

Stability can be improved somewhat by moving the card to an x8 slot (if possible), tweaking the PCI-E clock (be very careful with this) and raising any relevant miscellaneous voltages. I have not yet found a combination of settings that gives more than 24 hours stability, and from extensive research I've not found any reports of success.

From what I've observed, the freezes only occur under certain usage patterns. Intensive games almost never crash, whereas lighter games such as League of Legends and desktop usage freeze regularly.

Unfortunately the fact of the matter is that you need a newer motherboard for the R9 290 to work correctly.

Looks like I'm now shopping for a new mobo/CPU combination. What is the best bang/buck these days coming from an AMD 1090t x6?
 
Most expeditious solution would be to move your gear over to a 970 chipset board they're about $100 these days and you wouldn't need to most expensive one to overclock the x6
 
Found this on a Linux forum:



Looks like I'm now shopping for a new mobo/CPU combination. What is the best bang/buck these days coming from an AMD 1090t x6?

im on a z87 and ive had problems. im not sure how true that is.
 
Found this on a Linux forum:

Quote: This issue is widely reported on AMD 700 and 800 series chipsets, as well as some older Intel boards. As far as I'm aware, neither AMD nor any motherboard/GPU OEMS have admitted any fault. Speculation I've seen includes the R9 290 pulling too much power through the PCI-Express slot, and general incompatibility with PCI-E 2.0 or lower. But honestly no one really knows the reason.

Stability can be improved somewhat by moving the card to an x8 slot (if possible), tweaking the PCI-E clock (be very careful with this) and raising any relevant miscellaneous voltages. I have not yet found a combination of settings that gives more than 24 hours stability, and from extensive research I've not found any reports of success.

From what I've observed, the freezes only occur under certain usage patterns. Intensive games almost never crash, whereas lighter games such as League of Legends and desktop usage freeze regularly.

Unfortunately the fact of the matter is that you need a newer motherboard for the R9 290 to work correctly.

Looks like I'm now shopping for a new mobo/CPU combination. What is the best bang/buck these days coming from an AMD 1090t x6?

http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=4886546&postcount=282

this is Quote from AMD forums by Gipsydanger

*i bought the MSI R9 290 and have the same problem BSOD, the reason is the hyper trasnport timeout, the only way i could make the system stable was to make the pcie clock to 140 in the bios, after that it was stable, my motherboard is a asus m5a78l le, i think this may happen because of our pcie 2.0 ports are not able to handle the load of the r9 290*

And this seems to cure my (and hopefully others) R9 290 BSOD/crashes.

I read this and tried it on my GA-MA790FXT-UD5P at 140 it locked and backup bios kicked in now at 130 it works well so far(4 days now).
 
Last edited:
Back
Top