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R9 280x booting in blue until welcome screen. I would love to know why

nikijb

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Hi there,

I do regret buying this used XFX R9 280x, as it caused me a lot of paranoia. I've had it about a year now, and I've tried several times to find answers, and XFX don't want to give me any information on it, apart from "it's a fault".

Occasionally, it will boot with a blue background, and the image quality is bad (windows logo for example) when that occurs. Once the welcome screen appears, it is normal. Now I cannot for the life of me notice any performance issues, but that's not to say I have on far too many occassions been disappointed with shadows in games and wondered if it was the card. Would anyone here be able to explain what is "wrong" with it? I have tried replacing the v-bios, but that did nothing. If I just do simple restarts without removing any USB devices, it will boot with the normal black start-up screen. However, if I do a hard shutdown, like a crash or power cut, or even mess around with USB plugged-in devices, it will often boot back up in blue, correcting itself when the OS has loaded. This happens when booting with a live USB too.

Any ideas guy please? I would be really grateful. Someone's got to use this card, as clearly it is "working". When I see that horrible blocky flickering shadow that is all too common in today's graphics , or that sudden texture pop, I always wonder.... and I hate it!

Thanks!
 
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Just sell it and buy another card, not worth it to make you always stressed.
 

eidairaman1

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What monitor are you using and how is it hooked up?
 

nikijb

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Thanks for the replies.

Yes, I could sell it, but that means someone else will suffer it. If I could understand exactly what the fault is and what the consequences are (if any), I could live with it. Would like to keep it for another year.

I have an LG TV. 49lh570v and it's connected with an HDMI into the card. I also have an LG monitor that is plugged in to the mobo via VGA connection. The card is only in control when displaying through the TV. This did not happen when my R9 270x was in it.
I re-flashed the v-bios when I got the card, and that was a headache in itself.

Thanks for any other info
 

eidairaman1

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Thanks for the replies.

Yes, I could sell it, but that means someone else will suffer it. If I could understand exactly what the fault is and what the consequences are (if any), I could live with it. Would like to keep it for another year.

I have an LG TV. 49lh570v and it's connected with an HDMI into my graphics card. I also have an LG monitor 19 inch that is plugged in to the mobo via VGA connection. The card is only in control when I displaying through the TV. This did not happen when my R9 270x was in it.
I re-flashed the v-bios when I got the card, and that was a headache in itself.

Thanks for any other info

Yeah never flash a gpu unless instructed to do so by card maker.

The 270, who was the maker of the card?

Have you tried another gpu video output?

Have you tried reversing the 2 monitor cables?

Have you updated motherboard chipset drivers?

What about gpu drivers?

Have you tried resetting tv to default?
 

nikijb

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The 270x was Saphire, which died on me. I then upgraded to the XFX 280x. I really thought it was a v-bios issue, but atleast I am wiser about that now. The blue coloured screen has never shown itself during normal operation, only early in the boot process, and only when USB devices have been disturbed or after a hard shut down.

UPDATE: I will have to respond to those questions tomorrow, and perhaps try your suggestions. GPU drivers and TV settings are not the issue, but I would be interested to try another monitor plugged into the card and see it if happens. XFX did tell me they knew about the fault with that card, but they wouldn't tell me anymore about it

Oops. Sorry, I need to correct that. The TV is plugged in via DVI-HDMI, so not using the actual HDMI sockets on the card. I tried to use them, but my pc case blocks those sockets, I could probably get around that somehow with some tinkering about, and perhaps I should try it soon so I can eliminate it.
 
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eidairaman1

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The 270x was Saphire, which died on me. I then upgraded to the XFX 280x. I really thought it was a v-bios issue, but atleast I am wiser about that now. The blue coloured screen has never shown itself during normal operation, only early in the boot process, and only when USB devices have been disturbed or after a hard shut down.

UPDATE: I will have to respond to those questions tomorrow, and perhaps try your suggestions. GPU drivers and TV settings are not the issue, but I would be interested to try another monitor plugged into the card and see it if happens. XFX did tell me they knew about the fault with that card, but they wouldn't tell me anymore about it

Oops. Sorry, I need to correct that. The TV is plugged in via DVI-HDMI, so not using the actual HDMI sockets on the card. I tried to use them, but my pc case blocks those sockets, I could probably get around that somehow with some tinkering about, and perhaps I should try it soon so I can eliminate it.

How do you know the gpu drivers and tv settings are not an issue?

Try them anyway.

Take a picture of the pci slot area on back of case.
 

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I don't think this issue would be related to GPU drivers, because he doesn't get a blue background in Windows, only before Windows is fully loaded... if anything, that suggests to me there's some sort of fault somewhere that the drivers are correcting when loaded.
 

eidairaman1

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I don't think this issue would be related to GPU drivers, because he doesn't get a blue background in Windows, only before Windows is fully loaded... if anything, that suggests to me there's some sort of fault somewhere that the drivers are correcting when loaded.

Could be EDID tabling or that cable he is using.

The WHQL drivers just launched recently too
 
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