R9 290X Increasingly Problematic

[EXCellR8]

Returning to AT with yet another issue with my reference R9 290X. While this card was never all that well-behaved, I am now starting to think the thing is on its way out. Here's the problem...

It seems that the DisplayPort on the back of the card is really dodgy at best, and my 34" FreeSync IPS is not receiving a signal from the card after POST. It was working just fine until my machine locked up and crashed a few hours ago. Reverted to all stock settings and even powered everything down for a few minutes. Upon, restarting, the problem persisted... sometimes I see the Windows loading screen but then just black screen. No logon ever appears.

Here's the interesting part. If I connect a regular DVI cable to the card and use another LCD monitor the whole problem magically vanishes; everything is fine. I updated display drivers just in case but once the IPS is reconnected via DP the problem returns. Awesome.

I don't think my 34" acer is to blame, since I can fire up my NVidia GTX 980 with HDMI 2.0 and it works fine.

So, I have been contemplating just replacing the 290X and probably would have done so already if I didn't just integrate it in to my cooling loop, less than a year ago. I'll be pretty frustrated if I have to dismantle the whole thing but I kinda need the system to work.

Any thoughts?

 

[Bacon1]

Do you get output with hdmi from the 290x? It should support 30hz at least but will at least show up.

Might be faulty display port or cable?

 

[ZGR]

What happens if you do DP @ 24 hz on the R9 290?

 

[EXCellR8]

HDMI on the 290 works fine, which would be great if it was 2.0 but yea.

I will admit that when I bought the 290X I was using eyefinity and never really figured I would move to an ultrawide at some point--so I actually lucked out with the DP on the card able to drive the screen.

I might try some kind of adapter on it but for now I am just using my other machine with the GTX 980. Can't use the FreeSync obviously but shit happens.

 

[EXCellR8]

What happens if you do DP @ 24 hz on the R9 290?

I get all sorts of fun little artifacts dancing around all over the place.

 

[Silverforce11]

Do you have any other card with DP to test? Very strange to have a problem on one port on the card and the other outputs work fine. If I had to guess, I would say the solder on the DP output is broken, one of those "oven" fix issues.

 

[EXCellR8]

No, but I did try another DP cable just in case and something... spooky happened that I am trying to figure out.

I powered down the system completely, using the power supply switch but when I connect this other DP cable to the card the 4 rear fan LED and the LCD poster on the motherboard come on?? What?

http://imgur.com/a/ERhmK

I've been assembling computers for awhile now but that's a first for me. How is the board getting power with the PSU off?

Anyway, I still didn't fix my problem so I may just replace the card. The last time I tried to start the machine with the DVI cable that failed as well so my GPU is probably junk. Great, really wanted to invest more money in a 3 year old build.

 

[Silverforce11]

That's really crazy those lights coming on haha.

Well if the DVI is going as well then yes, the card is dying. The last resort is usually an oven bake.

It's actually a terrible time to upgrade from a 290X since faster GPUs are so damn expensive compared to how the 290X were priced and similar stuff isn't cheap..

 

[Eymar]

The capacitors on good PSUs these days are pretty huge so will take a bit before all the power is gone. The fans and board will use the residual power quick so they should of turned off in a few seconds. The weird part is why the connecting the DP will cause a power on sequence.

 

[EXCellR8]

Yea it sucks, and I held off water cooling this card specifically for this reason alone.

Oh well, at least I have an excuse to finish my Skylake build now. I might take a break from liquid cooling too for awhile, as I haven't had a lot of luck with components lately.

I am also considering ditching the 21:9 panel and going back to a multi-screen 1080p setup. Between hardware compatibility and needing 3rd party tweaks for games to work at 3440x1440 I am not too happy with this setup anyways.

I'll post back if I figure something out, but I'll probably start deconstructing this thing during the week.

 

[nerp]

The capacitors on good PSUs these days are pretty huge so will take a bit before all the power is gone. The fans and board will use the residual power quick so they should of turned off in a few seconds. The weird part is why the connecting the DP will cause a power on sequence.

Wondering if you have a short somewhere. Could explain your other issues.

 

[Rifter]

Wondering if you have a short somewhere. Could explain your other issues.

I was thinking the same thing. Check for shorts.

 

[EXCellR8]

I'll open it up tomorrow and poke around, may even be able to re-seat the card as a last ditch effort.

 

[Bacon1]

I'd check out the PSU at this point, it might not be providing solid power to the GPU causing issues. Anyway, sucks man good luck hope you figure it out

 

[EXCellR8]

PSU is a relatively new replacement... 750w Seasonic X-series. I'll make a note to check it out but I still think it's the card honestly.

Turns out I have everything I need for the Skylake machine, just never picked out a CPU. I'll be bummed out if I need to abandon the FX system but it may be time for an upgrade anyway.

Thanks for the help; I will update the post in the next day or so if I encounter anything else... including mysterious parts that come alive on their own :hmm:

 

[EXCellR8]

Sorry to bump this but it's not quite been a month yet haha.

Anyway, I never really found a conclusive culprit for why my system was acting strangely, and my Z170 build is still unfinished lol so I am currently between using the half-broken FX machine and the 4790k, which is fine.

The 290X actually seems alright now but I have been keeping a very close eye on it. Currently using:

Driver Packaging Version
16.15.2211-160321a-301169C

along w/ my Acer ultrawide but I haven't been doing much of anything other than some misc. CAD, Max and photoshop. Machine still acts up if I need to restart without first shutting down but it's better than nothing. I've cleared CMOS, replaced the chip and cmos batt, and even tried default everything with just one drive connected. Same deal. I'm kind of over it now though because I am planning to wrap up the skylake build at some point when I can source a CPU. Since the 8GB 390X and 480X are not leaps and bounds ahead of the 290X, I am really stalling on getting a new AMD card for the FreeSync capable monitor, so I'm just holding out for now.

 

[dark zero]

Yea it sucks, and I held off water cooling this card specifically for this reason alone.

Oh well, at least I have an excuse to finish my Skylake build now. I might take a break from liquid cooling too for awhile, as I haven't had a lot of luck with components lately.

I am also considering ditching the 21:9 panel and going back to a multi-screen 1080p setup. Between hardware compatibility and needing 3rd party tweaks for games to work at 3440x1440 I am not too happy with this setup anyways.

I'll post back if I figure something out, but I'll probably start deconstructing this thing during the week.

Sell them and buy a normal 1440p monitor and a GTX 1070. Is a far better upgrade of the 290X.

 

[Termie]

OP, if the problem always manifested as POST appearing but no Windows logon, this was never a hardware issue. That's a driver issue. Didn't read all the posts, so maybe you lost all display at some point.