Asus DirectCU II TOP r9 280x artifacting

[GreiverBlade]

what the???.....280 also has artifacts?.....but its both mem and clock speeds are really low dont know much about its mem voltage but I haven't heard anything bad about 280 till now. So you say I should stay away from asus then

most of the time ... Cryptominer GPU .... don't jump on conclusion, nearly all good deal on Ebay or cheap priced 280/280X/290/290X are in that case (after that it depends from the miner and the condition the gpu was used to mine) my ASUS R9 290 is perfectly fine, i got it cheap but it wasnt a miner card, it seems clock with ease 1100/1500 but i keep it at 1000/1300

also 65% fan all the time (and its a reference) never got past 70° in any games i play

noticed a funny thing when i switched from a 990X+FX-6300 to a Z97+i5-4690K Mantle on BF4 produce weird result xD but oh well DX11 all maxed out is a breeze

 

[OneMoar]

are you sure your monitor/cable ins't the problem
or your power supply is crapping out ?

 

[boozzer]

My Gigabyte R9 290 at 1100/1500, +80mV voltage (~1.1v) runs around 75-80c with the stock Windforce 3 450W cooler at 75% fan speed in a well ventilated Fractal Design Define XL R2. Card power consumption easily hits 200-220w under Folding@Home load, haven't tested gaming much but could be even higher. I dislike my reference HD 7970's fan noise, so it stays at work for Folding@Home, so good luck keeping an R9 290 cool on the stock cooler. Reference AMD cards are cheaper second-hand for a reason.

he spent 325 when non reference custom ones cost 275 to 300. he got cheated and lied to. spent 100$ more than he needed.

are you sure your monitor/cable ins't the problem
or your power supply is crapping out ?

how do I test my monitor/cable? cuz I have had zero, absolute zero problems with my old ass 460 1gb. computer restart or game restart gets rid of the artifacts. that alone should be good indication that it isn't monitor/cable problem right?

 

[odemmah]

he spent 325 when non reference custom ones cost 275 to 300. he got cheated and lied to. spent 100$ more than he needed.

actually its market value is 613$ in here. my country's tax is really high and with our currency, it becomes a lot more expensive than its default value. believe me, its cheap for me.

 

[RealNeil]

I have an ASUS R9-280X DirectCU II TOP.
I have had no problems at all with it. Ever. I'm sorry that you guys are.

It's in Crossfire with an HIS R9-280X IceQ X-2 in an older system. (i7-2600K, 16GB DDR3-2133 RAM, SSD for OS, Win7-64 Bit. They've been in Crossfire for a few months now.
The HIS is on the top slot because it is a little thinner, and I wanted it to breath easier with the additional room between the GPUs.

Both cards are set to 1070 MHz GPU Clock, and Memory is at 1600MHz.

I get good bench scores with them together, but I had just the ASUS card for a month and there were no artifacts then in the same system.

They are inside of a Rosewill Blackhawk Case with a lot of 140mm and 120mm fans.

It sounds like some of you may be having PSU issues or the VRMs on your cards are not cooled properly. (this is just my guess) If there is a way to test the cards with another PSU installed, it may be woth a try.

 

[boozzer]

It sounds like some of you may be having PSU issues or the VRMs on your cards are not cooled properly. (this is just my guess) If there is a way to test the cards with another PSU installed, it may be woth a try.

I don't have a spare psu, I would need to buy one. and could you explain in more detail in how a psu can affect artifacts in a gpu? my psu is 650w antec tru power, non modular version, 3 years old. 650w is more than enough for a measly 280x right?

actually its market value is 613$ in here. my country's tax is really high and with our currency, it becomes a lot more expensive than its default value. believe me, its cheap for me.

ahh ok, forgot about countries and diff prices, I just assume usa. my bad

 

[RealNeil]

I don't have a spare psu, I would need to buy one. and could you explain in more detail in how a psu can affect artifacts in a gpu? my psu is 650w antec tru power, non modular version, 3 years old. 650w is more than enough for a measly 280x right?

650W is more than enough, but the quality of the unit is paramount to how it works. Good, steady, and clean power is essential to stability. I'm running two 280x GPUs on one 750W Semi-Modular PSU. It's almost brand new.

Some PSUs go out in small increments, and other just die all at once. Sometimes when they go, they take out other components at the same time. It isn't pretty to see, and It's happened to me before so it's something that I'm sensitive to. (there is nothing worse than a huge flash - and then smoke pouring out of your computer) The one that got me good was an Antec with Bad Caps in it. This was a problem with that brand for a while. I never bought another Antec after that, because they refused to replace my gear, and my PSU.
A partially failing PSU can undervolt certain areas of your motherboard's components, while still powering everything else properly.

To be fair, they're (Antec) not selling PSUs with bad caps anymore, and lots of people trust them. Bad Caps was a problem across the whole industry for a while, but most manufactures made it good with their customers.

Maybe someone you know has a spare PSU that you can use to test with? It's worth it to check.

 

[Jstn7477]

650W is more than enough, but the quality of the unit is paramount to how it works. Good, steady, and clean power is essential to stability. I'm running two 280x GPUs on one 750W Semi-Modular PSU. It's almost brand new.

Some PSUs go out in small increments, and other just die all at once. Sometimes when they go, they take out other components at the same time. It isn't pretty to see, and It's happened to me before so it's something that I'm sensitive to. (there is nothing worse than a huge flash - and then smoke pouring out of your computer) The one that got me good was an Antec with Bad Caps in it. This was a problem with that brand for a while. I never bought another Antec after that, because they refused to replace my gear, and my PSU.
A partially failing PSU can undervolt certain areas of your motherboard's components, while still powering everything else properly.

To be fair, they're (Antec) not selling PSUs with bad caps anymore, and lots of people trust them. Bad Caps was a problem across the whole industry for a while, but most manufactures made it good with their customers.

Maybe someone you know has a spare PSU that you can use to test with? It's worth it to check.

There are still defective cards floating around too, my Gigabyte 280X from eBay being one of them. It runs fine with a 100MHz reduction in memory speed, and the Gigabyte 290 I got from a reputable seller on these forums works perfectly in the same exact PC, even with a heavy OC to 1100/1500 at +75mV vcore.

I think part of the issue is that these cards with memory issues don't always show issues until the card has been running a game for a while (a few minutes of Guild Wars 2 for my 280X), or even web browsing under Folding@Home load where I would get a small section of artifacts. I don't think the RAM is legitimately bad in all cases, sometimes it just can't seem to run at the out of box speed manufacturers are enforcing. My laptop's 2GB GDDR5 on its GTX 765M can only be overclocked by 75MHz before showing artifacts, and it's only clocked at 1000MHz (4000 effective) by default. My Gigabyte HD 7950's RAM can't be overclocked at all from 1250MHz, and it also has a horrible VID of 1.250v so it could be the memory controller even.

 

[boozzer]

650W is more than enough, but the quality of the unit is paramount to how it works. Good, steady, and clean power is essential to stability. I'm running two 280x GPUs on one 750W Semi-Modular PSU. It's almost brand new.

Some PSUs go out in small increments, and other just die all at once. Sometimes when they go, they take out other components at the same time. It isn't pretty to see, and It's happened to me before so it's something that I'm sensitive to. (there is nothing worse than a huge flash - and then smoke pouring out of your computer) The one that got me good was an Antec with Bad Caps in it. This was a problem with that brand for a while. I never bought another Antec after that, because they refused to replace my gear, and my PSU.
A partially failing PSU can undervolt certain areas of your motherboard's components, while still powering everything else properly.

To be fair, they're (Antec) not selling PSUs with bad caps anymore, and lots of people trust them. Bad Caps was a problem across the whole industry for a while, but most manufactures made it good with their customers.

Maybe someone you know has a spare PSU that you can use to test with? It's worth it to check.

so, how does that relate to my 280x giving me artifacts after 1 to 3 hours of gaming? a game restart or pc restart fixes it? if it was bad caps, wouldn't it stay bad once it goes bad? or am I not understanding how it works?

 

[RealNeil]

Heat buildup may be an issue. i'm just saying to try out a different PSU if you can.
If you can't then consider an RMA.

 

[boozzer]

Heat buildup may be an issue. i'm just saying to try out a different PSU if you can.
If you can't then consider an RMA.

rma is not an option. the artifacts would not show up in benchmarks the asus techs would run. it takes anywhere between 1 to 3 hours of full load for the artifacts to show. I would be out 50$ for shipping and super high chance of getting the same unfix card back. if only this artifact shit is consistent, then I can at least rma it. with my problem, I am better off putting the 50$ towards a new card when I decide to upgrade. I am 100% sure it would never be another asus.

 

[RealNeil]

I'm sorry that it's so. I have two ASUS cards and they're both great. (GTX-570 and R9-280X)
I plan to get another R9-280X and it will be one just like either of my two Radeons. The third R9-280X will go into my M-ITX case.

 

[boozzer]

me too bro. but this is a well known problem judging by google results. I honestly never thought of this problem till I got hit by it. shit luck I guess, nothing I can do about it. the one thing I learned is to buy from hwswap. if I have to buy from ebay again, I would probably do extensive tests before giving positive feedback.