Help....just did something incredibly stupid. (R9 290 blackscreen after mem tweak)

[chihlidog]

So I was toying with memory settings in CCC. Set the memory to 1500. As soon as I hit apply, it blackscreened. I've been keeping my memory at 1200 to avoid any blackscreens and it has been fine.

Here's the problem, and I'm sure I should know how to fix this but I dont. I have to hard reset to get the display up again. As soon as CCC loads back up, it blackscreens, which is, I assume, because it saved the memory setting in CCC.

I booted into safemode and from MSCONFIG disabled CCC at startup. If I manually start CCC, of course I immediately get the blackscreen. All is well until I do that.

I just uninstalled the CCC program, but not any of the drivers, and re-installed. Sure enough, as soon as CCC starts, I get a blackscreen.

There has to be a config file somewhere I'm missing - right?

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[chihlidog]

Now it wont display at all. Switched it out to onboard CPU graphics to get it running. Ugh.

The fans are running and the blue Sapphire lights are on on the side of the card, but I'm wondering if I bricked it.

 

[chubbyfatazn]

Now it wont display at all. Switched it out to onboard CPU graphics to get it running. Ugh.

The fans are running and the blue Sapphire lights are on on the side of the card, but I'm wondering if I bricked it.

I had a friend whose 290 did the same thing (ignoring everything else in your OP), it just refused to show anything. Not sure why at the moment, but flipping the BIOS switch on the card seemed to bring it back to life.

 

[chihlidog]

Completely uninstalled all drivers while using the onboard graphics. Re-installed CCC. Hooked the 290 back up, it has booted now, still too afraid to go into CCC and try to downclock it again..

 

[.vodka]

290/x blackscreens when you OC the memory too much for the actual voltage the GPU is using. Memory voltage is linked to GPU voltage.

If you want to stabilize 1500 MHz download an OC tool like afterburner, unlock voltage control, give it a little overvolt (+25-50mV) and try again. If you end up using afterburner do not set it to apply OC settings at startup or you'll run into the same issue.

 

[chihlidog]

Oy.

I re-started, and got blackscreened again as soon as CCC appeared in the taskbar. Re-booted and somehow I had enough time to get in to CCC to downclock to 1200. Applied and for now it seems stable.

After a full uninstall, it STILL showed 1500mhz when I went back in it. Where is this stored?????

Thanks for the advice guys. That was a little scary. I thought I bricked my card.

I'm not going to try and OC again. It's not worth it, not for 1080p, this thing is already a beast at this resolution.

 

[chihlidog]

290/x blackscreens when you OC the memory too much for the actual voltage the GPU is using. Memory voltage is linked to GPU voltage.

If you want to stabilize 1500 MHz download an OC tool like afterburner, unlock voltage control, give it a little overvolt (+25-50mV) and try again. If you end up using afterburner do not set it to apply OC settings at startup or you'll run into the same issue.

The 290s/290x blackscreen in general from what I understand. At bone stock clocks it would blackscreen on me while just web browsing. Never while gaming though, always perfectly flawless when gaming. I never had the blackscreen coming out of sleep mode either, that seems to be common. Only while light web browsing.

After a little research I found that downclocking the memory to 1200 might do the trick, and it has for me. I still dont like the idea of having to downclock my card, but for what I play at 1080p it crushes everyhting so I cant complain much. It's also the best looking card I've ever seen and as dumb as that sounds, aesthetics do matter to me to a degree. I like seeing a good looking rig.

I suppose I'll forgive it and leave well enough alone. Definitely not going to try and even bring it back to stock.

 

[SolMiester]

Oy.

I re-started, and got blackscreened again as soon as CCC appeared in the taskbar. Re-booted and somehow I had enough time to get in to CCC to downclock to 1200. Applied and for now it seems stable.

After a full uninstall, it STILL showed 1500mhz when I went back in it. Where is this stored?????

Thanks for the advice guys. That was a little scary. I thought I bricked my card.

I'm not going to try and OC again. It's not worth it, not for 1080p, this thing is already a beast at this resolution.

You will have to uninstall CCC, check for ini setting etc in folder or search the registry for the full name of the AMD CC software, backup the key, then delete. Restart and re-install CCC

 

[master_shake_]

Use msi afterburner to force the clocks back to normal. Just install the display driver. Or user driversweeper to get rid of it then run ccleaner to take always everything else.

 

[.vodka]

The 290s/290x blackscreen in general from what I understand. At bone stock clocks it would blackscreen on me while just web browsing. Never while gaming though, always perfectly flawless when gaming. I never had the blackscreen coming out of sleep mode either, that seems to be common. Only while light web browsing.

After a little research I found that downclocking the memory to 1200 might do the trick, and it has for me. I still dont like the idea of having to downclock my card, but for what I play at 1080p it crushes everyhting so I cant complain much. It's also the best looking card I've ever seen and as dumb as that sounds, aesthetics do matter to me to a degree. I like seeing a good looking rig.

I suppose I'll forgive it and leave well enough alone. Definitely not going to try and even bring it back to stock.

It depends. 290/Xs using Hynix memory usually are less troublesome than the ones equipped with Elpida, at least in overclocking. The blackscreening is caused by too little vGPU. While gaming these cards run at higher voltage and that keeps the memory stable, once you go back to the desktop and the card enters idle mode, voltage drops. If the memory clock is too high for this voltage, you get blackscreens (if you check gpu-z while on the desktop, you'll see the core at around 300 MHz while the memory jumps from idle clocks to whatever it's set at 3D clocks while browsing the web, for example) and you have to hit the reset button.

Use DDU to clean your rig back to a blank slate regarding AMD's drivers, reinstall the latest beta (15.5? 15.6 is just for batman AK), and stop using CCC to do your tweaking. Download afterburner, unlock voltage control, overvolt by a little +25-50mV and you should be able to enjoy your card at stock memory clocks... even overclock your card better if its cooling is up to the task. (A Vapor-X I see, that card has lots of cooling for at least 1100MHz on the core without getting noisy)

If not, by all means keep the memory at a trouble free 1200MHz as it is right now, you're not losing too much performance by doing that.

 

[chihlidog]

It depends. 290/Xs using Hynix memory usually are less troublesome than the ones equipped with Elpida, at least in overclocking. The blackscreening is caused by too little vGPU. While gaming these cards run at higher voltage and that keeps the memory stable, once you go back to the desktop and the card enters idle mode, voltage drops. If the memory clock is too high for this voltage, you get blackscreens (if you check gpu-z while on the desktop, you'll see the core at around 300 MHz while the memory jumps from idle clocks to whatever it's set at 3D clocks while browsing the web, for example) and you have to hit the reset button.

Use DDU to clean your rig back to a blank slate regarding AMD's drivers, reinstall the latest beta (15.5? 15.6 is just for batman AK), and stop using CCC to do your tweaking. Download afterburner, unlock voltage control, overvolt by a little +25-50mV and you should be able to enjoy your card at stock memory clocks... even overclock your card better if its cooling is up to the task. (A Vapor-X I see, that card has lots of cooling for at least 1100MHz on the core without getting noisy)

If not, by all means keep the memory at a trouble free 1200MHz as it is right now, you're not losing too much performance by doing that.

That's why I figured I might try giving OCing a shot, since it really does run very cool. However, it was a real pain to try and get it back to a stable 1200, it was really just blind luck I was able to. Not worth it really, like I said at 1080p this thing crushes most of what I throw at it and it was OC'ed out of the box anyway. I'll leave it where it is and be happy with it. Not worth the risk for a little FPS I wont even subjectively notice.

Appreciate it and it's tempting. And when I built this rig my intent was to overclock both the CPU and GPU as far as I could get them, but for my needs, realistically, it wouldnt be worth it. It's plenty fast. Lesson learned.

 

[Headfoot]

It depends. 290/Xs using Hynix memory usually are less troublesome than the ones equipped with Elpida, at least in overclocking. The blackscreening is caused by too little vGPU. While gaming these cards run at higher voltage and that keeps the memory stable, once you go back to the desktop and the card enters idle mode, voltage drops. If the memory clock is too high for this voltage, you get blackscreens (if you check gpu-z while on the desktop, you'll see the core at around 300 MHz while the memory jumps from idle clocks to whatever it's set at 3D clocks while browsing the web, for example) and you have to hit the reset button.

Use DDU to clean your rig back to a blank slate regarding AMD's drivers, reinstall the latest beta (15.5? 15.6 is just for batman AK), and stop using CCC to do your tweaking. Download afterburner, unlock voltage control, overvolt by a little +25-50mV and you should be able to enjoy your card at stock memory clocks... even overclock your card better if its cooling is up to the task. (A Vapor-X I see, that card has lots of cooling for at least 1100MHz on the core without getting noisy)

If not, by all means keep the memory at a trouble free 1200MHz as it is right now, you're not losing too much performance by doing that.

Yeah. My 290 has Elpida RAM and it literally won't take even a single Mhz more than stock or it artifacts and crashes. Even with extra voltage.

However, I can get my core to 1125 on +31mV and I get a corresponding increase in FPS. So it seems that memory bandwidth is not the bottleneck at my resolution (3x1080p eyefinity). Worse comes to worse, just don't overclock the memory and overclock the core to the max instead.