MSI R9 290 not detected after computer falls asleep or shuts down?

[penn919]

I recently bought an MSI R9 290 which I've encountered a peculiar issue with my computer. It doesn't get detected after it either falls asleep or when it's shut down after being extensively used. When it first happened it was after my computer fell asleep when I forgot to turn my computer off before taking a rest. When I woke up and tried pressing the power button to wake the computer I couldn't get a signal even after swapping it's HDMI cable to a different monitor.

Anyways, I found this forum post by someone who had the same exact issue so I did what he did and opened up my computer, disconnected the GPU from the pci express slot and connected it again. It worked, so I simply disabled sleep mode which didn't bother me much anyways because bizarre behavior from my PC after coming out of sleep mode is pretty common.

It later happened again after I played a game for about an hour except I shut down the computer instead. The next time I powered it on my monitor wouldn't get a signal but it does detect the card because when I disconnect it the monitor displays "No connection" or something like that. I've confirmed it with two separate monitors.

Switching off the power and unplugging the cord does nothing. I have to physically remove the card from the PCI-E slot and re-connect it to get it to work again. Any ideas about what's causing this?

I've got a 700W OCZ GameXStream PSU with all the proper external power connectors plugged in so i don't think it's for lack of power. My motherboard, however, is kind of old with only a PCI-E 1.1 slot. Do you think that could be the cause?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[ta addict#2]

the last bios for that motherboard may be best
will it reset if you unplug the psu from the wall

 

[primetime]

i don't know if its related...but the newest amd betas did the same thing to mine....computer would wake except screen would never come on....went back to the last whql and been problem free
edit: i was wrong...did it today waking up from sleep.....i did recently enable all power savings, speed step, and core parking for lower temps.....i wonder if this was a factor....cause sleep hasn't been a problem until recently...
Anyways i guess we have different issues since mine is only sleep related.....never a problem with cold boots or reboots

 

[Starrbuck]

More AMD driver fun! Good luck, boys!

 

[Blacklash]

You could try setting PCI Express Link State Power Management in Windows to off. It's under Power Options.

 

[penn919]

the last bios for that motherboard may be best
will it reset if you unplug the psu from the wall

Unfortunately, my motherboard is OEM and no new bios was ever released for it. I already tried unplugging the PSU from the wall and switching it off, but that does nothing. only thing that works is disconnecting the Graphics Card from the PCI Express slot.

i don't know if its related...but the newest amd betas did the same thing to mine....computer would wake except screen would never come on....went back to the last whql and been problem free
edit: i was wrong...did it today waking up from sleep.....i did recently enable all power savings, speed step, and core parking for lower temps.....i wonder if this was a factor....cause sleep hasn't been a problem until recently...
Anyways i guess we have different issues since mine is only sleep related.....never a problem with cold boots or reboots

I almost never use betas for that very reason. I don't have time to deal with all the troubleshooting. I'm using the stable 14.4 driver. And yes, it does seem like our symptoms are a bit different. If it's truly a hardware issue, I'm hoping it's only with the board because it's old and I was thinking about replacing it anyways.

You could try setting PCI Express Link State Power Management in Windows to off. It's under Power Options.

You know what? I never even knew that. Thanks! I'll give it a try tomorrow.

 

[primetime]

Originally Posted by Blacklash View Post
You could try setting PCI Express Link State Power Management in Windows to off. It's under Power Options.

let us know if that works...if mine does it again ill give it a try

 

[penn919]

Alright, after an entire week of having the card disconnected, I decided to plug it back in and try turning off PCI Express Link State which does seem to have an affect. It seemed to be working fine after I tried restarting my computer a few times, but then whilst watching a video on youtube all of the sudden for a very brief moment I saw artifacts on my screen followed by a BSOD: (I apologize in advance for the size of the image)

After the computer reset, yet again, I wasn't getting a signal from the video card; however, unlike before it started working again the next time I powered on the PC without me having to open up the tower and re-seating the graphics card. I googled the error code in the image above and there seems to be a consensus that the problem is some sort of funky graphics driver issue...but i think it probably has something to do with my bios as well. Like I said earlier, my mobo is old (LGA775) and there was never bios update released for it. Given that the R9 290 only came out a little over a year ago, I guess I should've expected this. However, I did try a GTX 780 and that worked without any issues.

 

[primetime]

Alright, after an entire week of having the card disconnected, I decided to plug it back in and try turning off PCI Express Link State which does seem to have an affect. It seemed to be working fine after I tried restarting my computer a few times, but then whilst watching a video on youtube all of the sudden for a very brief moment I saw artifacts on my screen followed by a BSOD: (I apologize in advance for the size of the image)

After the computer reset, yet again, I wasn't getting a signal from the video card; however, unlike before it started working again the next time I powered on the PC without me having to open up the tower and re-seating the graphics card. I googled the error code in the image above and there seems to be a consensus that the problem is some sort of funky graphics driver issue...but i think it probably has something to do with my bios as well. Like I said earlier, my mobo is old (LGA775) and there was never bios update released for it. Given that the R9 290 only came out a little over a year ago, I guess I should've expected this. However, I did try a GTX 780 and that worked without any issues.

One of 2 possibility, the 290 is defective or there's a strange incompatibility with that motherboard and the 290. Without a different pc to test it in its hard to say and there's no way you could have known on way or the other

 

[penn919]

One of 2 possibility, the 290 is defective or there's a strange incompatibility with that motherboard and the 290. Without a different pc to test it in its hard to say and there's no way you could have known on way or the other

Yeah, you're right.I have a spare rig in the garage with an open PCI-E x16 slot in it. I'll probably use it to test out the card. The only problem is that that one is even older than the LGA775 rig. My main rig has an AM3+ mobo but I'd really rather not mess around with it because it's the computer I primarily use for everything.

For now, I'm waiting on receiving a HDD for the spare rig so I can load windows on it and test to see if Card is any good. I guess if it's bad it wouldn't be the end of the world though. It was bought in February and the card apparently has a 3 year transferable warranty ( I bought the card from the original owner).

I'll let you know how it all goes.

 

[penn919]

Alright, it seems the problem lies with the motherboard because the R9 290 worked in another computer. I subsequently tested another GTX 780 (ASUS) card in the same board and it also worked perfectly fine with no issues the same as the other GTX 780 (EVGA) I tried before. I grew curious and did a quick google search on the problematic motherboard (Ecs Mcp73vt-Pm) and it seems as though it has problems with only AMD video cards. Not only did I test two other AMD cards (R9 270s) which gave me the same problems but I also found three forum threads reporting the same exact issue with AMD cards. The board I'm using is a pull from an Emachines ET1810-03 desktop which was the same model as the one being discussed in the threads:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/315791-33-emachines-et1810-radeon-5770-display

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-1781382/emachines-et1810-display.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/3...10-newly-installed-saphire-radeon-6950-signal

This seems to be very strong evidence that the board is the culprit here which makes sense given that there was never a bios update released for it. It's not too big of a deal though. The computer with that board is only used for experimentation.

As of now, I declare this mystery solved. Thanks to everyone for their help!