Hello everyone. I just built a new machine for my friend. The specs are: Core i7-5820K; Asus Radeon R9-290X DirectCU II OC; 32 GB of DDR4-2133 RAM. This thing is a beast, could run Crysis 2 on ultra settings, never dropping under 60 FPS. Now, after running several tests and benchmarks on PassMark PerformanceTest 8 (did some DirectX 11 on max settings, lol), I'm getting the same issue over and over again. The image starts to flicker and artifact, and the graphic driver crashes after like 5 seconds. The driver is fresh, I just updated it, doesn't seem to help. The temps aren't getting anywhere over 70°C, too.
While not an excessive issue the DCUII cooler was made for nvudia and does not do so well on AMD but you said temps are not even 70 so we will skip that for the moment, if all else fails we will.come back.
Have you taken the card out and reseated it back in the slot?
Are the power cables secure?
Are they actual 8 pins if it needs than rather than 6+2 (some PSUs just double up on two of the pins rather than have a full 8 if you get me).
Is the PSU strong enough for all of this? I did not see one mentioned, also even if it is strong enough is it a reliable brand?
DDU the drivers and fresh install the latest stable and or beta drivers depending on which you have right now.
Cooler may not be seated in the card perfectly? Not much you can do here with out voiding the warrenty.
Card may be defective, not super sure how to test for this reliably.
Worst come to it, RMA for a new one.
Edit: Personal opinion it sounds like either a defective card or you are drawing more power than you have.
I personaly dont understand, why Asus has never respond to these issues. With making a Revision 2.0 of this card. The 290X Asus cards do have some particular issues with cooling.
But if the cards stays at 70C, which i´m a bit doubting... then its not overheating.
All the things I mentioned may not be issues, in fact I would not expect them all to be issues. Just things to check out. Hope it works out. My 290 us also running off a 6+2 just some are cheaper than others, as far as I know the RM PSUs are good and 850 is plenty.
Alrighty, just made sure the cards gets enough power. It definitely does. Tried a different PCI slot. Reinstalled the latest driver. Still the same issue. :/
Also, I'm hearing coil whine, especially when the cards renders 3D graphics.
Coil whine is not uncommon in working cards as well, but you are right to say it, it could also be part of an issue.
Sorry at this stage I am out of ideas. Either contact Asus and see if they recommend any other thing to try or just plain return it for another. Sounds defective unfortunately.
unfortunately Asus and Gigabyte had worst models in 290's series. ~ from what i've read ~ most likely you had bad memory bank or something ~ ram was most likely Elpida. (Hynix are the good ones) or one of the following was below spec or above spec resulting in artifacts: - resistors (too big? not enough power. too much? going to break something.) - failed capacitor (all above)
Sounds to me like an issue with VRMs, and like everyone has previously said the DCUII coolers were not done well as far as VRM cooling. When I had those coolers on my cards even a slight overclock caused artifacts and driver crashing due to poor cooling of the VRMs. When I changed to water and got full VRM cooling the artifacts went away and I gained stability at overclocks 250+mhz over stock. So if that card has a weak point in the VRMs that cooler certainly won't help it and will cause the problems you mentioned. Hopefully your new card will be more robust, and if you get the chance to watercool it, do it. Your card will love you.
You might consider doing a little study and see if it possible to slap an aio and some heatsinks on your gpu's pcb. If you dont mind voiding your warranty. It may or maynot be possible. So research carefully. If possible? Problem solved for alittle added expense and time and more than likely run much cooler than the orginal cooling solution.