MSI 290X Lightning Black Screen

Hardware GPU
1

Hey guys, i have the above mentioned card and it has recently decided to give me some headache. For some odd reason, the card has now decided it will not output any display signal if it is under minimal load( meaning the desktop or random internet browsing). So this is how it goes:

  1. I boot my system
  2. System POSTS, windows login screen
  3. Russian roulette on when the display will refuse to work. Can be at the login screen itself, or at some random point when doing minimal GPU load

I've had the card for about a year now, and i've never experienced this before at all.

Here's what i've done to try and rectify this:

  1. Undo overclock, remove AMD drivers and MSI afterburner and clean install latest versions of both and not overclock. Didn't solve the issue
  2. Updated motherboard BIOS. No luck
  3. Disable ULPS and Enable Force Voltage on Afterburner. Thought this would work, but nope.
  4. Replaced the motherboard. Nada

And here's the best part - i'm on an AMD rig. Meaning i have no way of getting any display output apart from the GPU. So imagine my frustration when i am trying to diagnose the problem when i lose my display. Nothing works until i hard reboot the PC.

If by some random luck the display decides to hold until i can load a game up and it is under a considerable load, i have no problems then at all. It just works as nornal. When i end that gaming session, i am basically gambling on when the display is going to turn off on me. And oh, i'm on Windows 8.

Has anyone experienced this before? If so, were you able to solve it yourself?

2

haven't met with this issue on my msi 290x lighter...

do you have same issues with oc enabled? which bios do you have enabled on card?

3

Have you tried installing an earlier driver to see if it still happens?

4

Sorry about that. Forgot to mention about the card bios.

Updated it. I've tried both normal and LN2 modes. No change in behaviour.

I've got a TX750W V2 PSU.

@Fouquin, that thought has not occured to me at all as this problem did not occur after updating anything. It just sort of did. Only then did i update to see if my drivers were the issue. Maybe i should try this

5

Okay, I haven't had the time to test what @Fouquin mentioned, but does anyone else have any ideas as to what might be causing this problem?

6

Do you have any other HDDs to try and run a fresh windows install on?
Also check if it does the same thing in safemode.

1 Like
7

Where I would start troubleshooting this is make sure its not your display that is the problem. It sounds like it shouldn't be because the crashes are based on the card idling but it would be a good place to start.