Gigabyte r9 280x rev 1.0 Grey screen / flickering

[kn00tcn]

underclocked at 850/1400. As soon as I try to go back to the stock clocks 1050/1500, the flickering returned with a vengeance

that does not sound promising

 

[Mussels]

i've got matching pictures myself, i just bought a 280x (fresh card from warranty) with the same issues. i've returned it under warranty (again).

These cards just seem to fail this way, you can ignore the people blaming your PSU - i get it on a corsair 750W and 1000W - its a flawed card design. Mine was V2.0

non sense complete and utter
if I had to wager I would say its powerplay/ULPS misbehaving no need to mess with the voltages in AB simply go into the options and disable ULPS;change the overclocking mode to unoffical without powerplay reboot and re-test
if it checks out you can go ahead and make a custom 2d/3d profile set for power savings
else a vbios update may be in order ( you can use another vendors bios if its a reference board else you will need to contact gigabyte and have them send you one)
as for the youtube related bsods disable flash hardware acceleration

having the same card and same problems, you are spot on. gigabyte cheaped out on the software voltage control, and something has changed (drivers?) since they launched and their chosen voltages are too low.

Problem is, you cant really raise them easily on these cards as the ones causing the problems (2D idle, UVD) are locked. forcing 3D clocks and voltages at all times allows it to 'work' (some cards need 1GHz/1450 to be stable) but at a massive cost to power, heat and noise at idle.

 

[Dolenc]

I had similar problems on my msi 280x ... First I thought it was the beta driver, went back to original, didnt help. Then I blamed my 400w psu, but the thing is, under load (whole day of witcher 3) there were no problems.

So I started playing around with bioses, goal beign to try the 0db fan profile. I saved my current bios, changed the fan profile and reflashed. And my card sometimes wouldnt boot. So I said... well if the same bios file can give different behaviour wont hurt triing some other ones, I used an older version(from what I had on the card) found on the msi forum.
https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=253013.0 (use the one labeled "TV277MH.302")

Trouble free ever since

 

[Pill Monster]

That's unstable VRAM bro, those stripes only appear if GDDR5 locks up. Usually from high memclocks or low voltage but Elpida has a problematic history even at stock settings.

lthough if you can get 1350-1400 OK I wouldn't lose much sleep over it.

The black screens are driver resets which get triggered when the GPU hangs, so could be a couple things going on there.....
You can try this BIOS from Gigabyte, it's for your card and the power limit is higher than your current bios. May or may not help.



@Mussells: nice wallpaper, where can I download it?

 

[Mussels]

@Mussells: nice wallpaper, where can I download it?

comes free with gigabyte 280x with elpida ram

 

[OneMoar]

mines a reference card so the voltage control works for both ram and core
and elpida are poo never had any luck with ANYTHING with elpida RAM chips
AMD's powers saving scheme has a history of just not working worth a shit ... best to take the power consumption hit and turn it the fk off
I have yet to own a AMD card ever where it has worked 100%
my 3870 had it
my 4850 had it
my 5750 had it
and this 7970 has it ... all suffered from flicker or crashes or black screens of death at some point or another it would go away with one driver revision and come back with a vengeance with another

 

[Mussels]

mines a reference card so the voltage control works for both ram and core
and elpida are poo never had any luck with ANYTHING with elpida RAM chips
AMD's powers saving scheme has a history of just not working worth a shit ... best to take the power consumption hit and turn it the fk off
I have yet to own a AMD card ever where it has worked 100%
my 3870 had it
my 4850 had it
my 5750 had it
and this 7970 has it ... all suffered from flicker or crashes or black screens of death at some point or another it would go away with one driver revision and come back with a vengeance with another

fortunately for me, this is the bad one. From what i've been able to gather, all non-reference cards without the voltage control run a risk of these issues - i think something changed in the drivers (the addition of the power slider?) that caused these fuckups to appear after they were designed and released. the non reference with elpida seem to be the absolute worst.

 

[OneMoar]

fortunately for me, this is the bad one. From what i've been able to gather, all non-reference cards without the voltage control run a risk of these issues - i think something changed in the drivers (the addition of the power slider?) that caused these fuckups to appear after they were designed and released. the non reference with elpida seem to be the absolute worst.

I agree its usually on the vendors when the clock scaling bugs crop up
what I have long suspected is that its a issue with the voltage regs and the power play table
either the VRM's can't switch fast enough causing a intermittent flicker or crash
or power-play table requests a voltage not defined in the VRM's control table e.g bios wants 0.802v but the controller interpenetrates that as 0.800 cause the power-play table to bounce around trying to find a happy medium ...
at the first sign of issues with AMD cards my first recommendation is to terminate power-play with extreme prejudice
then again this a 100% reference 7970 with XFX's logo on it and it still had issues out of the gate

 

[Mussels]

my sapphire 7970 has no issues, if i had a reference 280x (they keep changing revision/memory every time i warranty it) i'd just flash a 7970 BIOS to it and resolve the damn issue.

 

[spicca]

Well, after shelling for a new PSU (Xfx 750w 80+ Gold) I can confirm that power supply is not the problem. BSOD are still there, gray/blue stripe screens, screen tearing, the whole package. After this I can say I've tried everything:Afterburner tweaks, bios changes, voltage tweaks, underclocking you name it, I've tried it. I'm pretty much sure that this is a defective VGA, and I can blame only me for this, bought it used from eBay after all. So I'm gonna try the bios I've seen posted here, and then I'm gonna save some money to buy an NVidia 770 GTX. AMD no more.

 

[Mussels]

Well, after shelling for a new PSU (Xfx 750w 80+ Gold) I can confirm that power supply is not the problem. BSOD are still there, gray/blue stripe screens, screen tearing, the whole package. After this I can say I've tried everything:Afterburner tweaks, bios changes, voltage tweaks, underclocking you name it, I've tried it. I'm pretty much sure that this is a defective VGA, and I can blame only me for this, bought it used from eBay after all. So I'm gonna try the bios I've seen posted here, and then I'm gonna save some money to buy an NVidia 770 GTX. AMD no more.

dont blame AMD, blame gigabyte. there is two other threads on the forum right now, one made by me - all about rev 1.0 and 2.0 gigabyte 280x cards failing with the same symptoms.

 

[spicca]

dont blame AMD, blame gigabyte. there is two other threads on the forum right now, one made by me - all about rev 1.0 and 2.0 gigabyte 280x cards failing with the same symptoms.

Actually my VGA it's a Visiontek, and I've seen threads all over the web with the same problem, different brand

 

[Mussels]

Actually my VGA it's a Visiontek, and I've seen threads all over the web with the same problem, different brand

ugh, worse than i thought then. disapointing because my 7970GHz edition is fabulous and its basically the same card.

 

[spicca]

I have to correct myself. The one thing I haven't tried yet is flashing other bios on the VGA. I mean, I've tried a few of the existing ones for the R9 280, but none of them seem to work. How can I know which bios to download? Or it is a matter of trial and error until you find the right one?

Report/rant to keep the topic alive: grey screens, flickering and screen tearing continue to this day, along with weeks of stability with no problems. I'm currently playing GTA V along with other not so demanding games, like KSP, with the VGA underclocked at 850/1300 and 13.X Catalyst drivers. Usually weeks pass without a single problem (I don't power off my rig overnight) and then it starts: BSOD's, flickering, the whole thing. Sigh

 

[Dolenc]

I also had an episode ... so tried some other bioses(a bunch), so far so good, but will see in the long run, will report.

 

[Mussels]

I've just noticed something in common with my two machines and the OP's, we have i5/i7 2x00 series CPU's that are PCI-E 2.0, on PCI-E 3.0 motherboards.


It's just a hunch, but i wonder if these issues are not present for pure 2.0 boards, or 3.0 boards with 3.0 CPU's...

 

[spicca]

I've just noticed something in common with my two machines and the OP's, we have i5/i7 2x00 series CPU's that are PCI-E 2.0, on PCI-E 3.0 motherboards.


It's just a hunch, but i wonder if these issues are not present for pure 2.0 boards, or 3.0 boards with 3.0 CPU's...

Well, my motherboard its a P8B75M-LX Plus, PCIe 3.0, and the CPU its a I5 Intel, so IDK. Gotta say that this VGA has left me kinda scared of upgrades, I've made up my mind to buy NVidia now, but I'm checking reviews and troubleshooting threads left and right for the model that I want. I've been a PC gamer my whole life and never had so many problems with a VGA

 

[Mussels]

Well, my motherboard its a P8B75M-LX Plus, PCIe 3.0, and the CPU its a I5 Intel, so IDK. Gotta say that this VGA has left me kinda scared of upgrades, I've made up my mind to buy NVidia now, but I'm checking reviews and troubleshooting threads left and right for the model that I want. I've been a PC gamer my whole life and never had so many problems with a VGA

i just saw another thread with an AMD user complaining of similar issues, so that theory may not hold up. i'll have to grab out my old athlon II x4 when my 280x comes back under warranty and see if it behaves.

 

[spicca]

i just saw another thread with an AMD user complaining of similar issues, so that theory may not hold up. i'll have to grab out my old athlon II x4 when my 280x comes back under warranty and see if it behaves.

I have asked this before, and since is the only thing I haven't able to do, I'll ask again: do you happen to know what bios will work with my 280? What do I need to check, the serial?

 

[Mussels]

I have asked this before, and since is the only thing I haven't able to do, I'll ask again: do you happen to know what bios will work with my 280? What do I need to check, the serial?

i do not know sorry. i've only owned a 280x myself for a few weeks, and i've had it functional for less than 10 hours of that time. some of them work with a variety of BIOS, some are fussy.

 

[Dolenc]

Yes, there might be different revisions of the same card, so safest bet is to provide a serial number, try on your card manufacturer forum.

 

[spicca]

Yes, there might be different revisions of the same card, so safest bet is to provide a serial number, try on your card manufacturer forum.

I have tried that. The good people at Visiontek informed me that there wasn't any bios updates for my card.

 

[Mussels]

I have tried that. The good people at Visiontek informed me that there wasn't any bios updates for my card.

since you have dual BIOS on the card, you can always find a similar one from another brand and try flashing it - just be prepared to flip the BIOS switch and flash back the stock BIOS if something goes wrong.

 

[rinkeeh]

Hi again,
I know this thread is old but I just figured out my problem with the card, what basically happens is caused by the weight of the card, its getting pushed down and artifacts occur, just ran a lot of tests with my computer on its side so that the card is stable (physically) and nothing has happened.

I'm currently at work, when I get home I'll upload a video, for now if any of you are still having problems just try flipping your case on its side and trying that way before RMA'ing, or you can cable tie the card.

It might seem like a joke of a solution but so far it has been working for me, as promised I'll upload a video demonstration soonish.

 

[spicca]

Hi again,
I know this thread is old but I just figured out my problem with the card, what basically happens is caused by the weight of the card, its getting pushed down and artifacts occur, just ran a lot of tests with my computer on its side so that the card is stable (physically) and nothing has happened.

I'm currently at work, when I get home I'll upload a video, for now if any of you are still having problems just try flipping your case on its side and trying that way before RMA'ing, or you can cable tie the card.

It might seem like a joke of a solution but so far it has been working for me, as promised I'll upload a video demonstration soonish.

No joke, actually I thought about that too, since each time I hit the desk there was some flickering on my screen. So I did put the case on its side and there was some improvement on the stability, but nothing dramatic. Periodically I still have gray screen/flickering/blue screens, but with the underclocking, AB tweaks and everything else that I tried, the VGA is more or less stable. Waiting for more updates from you, R.