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A few months ago , AMD R290 users were complaning about "black screen" issues. Possible a hardware error, forums ,newegg comments were full of negative comments.

Is this still a issue? is it safe to buy a R290 now?
I'm thinking about Sapphire 290 Vapor X.

Anyone with black screen issues that didn't get their card exchanged are just whining for the sake of whining IMO.

It's only safe if fromage is involved.

[/inside joke]

Captain Ned wrote:

It's only safe if fromage is involved.

[/inside joke]

Omelette du fromage?

Sorry for the derail, back to your regularly schedule topic.

--SS

Four people voted no, and no comments whatsoever as to their reasoning. That my friends is super helpful.

I just did a google search and it seems it was a common trend with overdrive enabled (usually the memory being OC'd as a common factor). Most of what I saw was from December and Jan. I don't think you should be worried about it now.

If you're happy with the price, then I say go for it.

It's the best price/performance card on the market right now (if priced close to 400$) and with a custom cooler from Asus, Gigabyte, MSI or Shappire.



Edit: Added graphic for price/performance perspective.

I voted no because they're still too expensive in Canada. The coin bubble pop price drop hasn't hit us much at all yet.

It's safe.
Every new GPU silicon released in the history of dedicated GPU silicon has had teething issues. That's why there are warranties and firmware/driver updates.

In other news, my GTX660 suffers from black screen issues over HDMI too. I could probably solve the issues but I've decided it's probably just easier to turn the machine off rather than relying on a complex level of hardware/software sleep/suspend/resume interactions to fight over what goes to sleep or not when I walk away for four hours.

Waco wrote:

Anyone with black screen issues that didn't get their card exchanged are just whining for the sake of whining IMO.

I actuall own one Asus R290 , bought late december. It has this black screen issue. I sent it to RMA once, and they didnt see the error. I sent it again. no response yet. So it is not that easy to exchange the card if u have random black screens, bsod's.

Now i gotta buy another card. Sapphire seems to be doing the best R290's . I guess i will give it another shot once the Vapor X model becomes available.

I bought mine in November when Newegg was charging $399.99 + $5.99 shipping. It's been great.

Sounds to me like something in your PC is faulty.

RMA departments aren't flawless but they typically test in a bunch of clean bench systems and I'd imagine a company as large as newegg would have enough people in the RMA department that you wouldn't get an RMA tested by the same person twice.
If it comes back to you again with no fault, see if you can work out how to reproduce the issue, I found that in doing so in the past I was usually able to pinpoint the problem, and it's not always faulty hardware.

Chrispy_ wrote:

Sounds to me like something in your PC is faulty.

RMA departments aren't flawless but they typically test in a bunch of clean bench systems and I'd imagine a company as large as newegg would have enough people in the RMA department that you wouldn't get an RMA tested by the same person twice.
If it comes back to you again with no fault, see if you can work out how to reproduce the issue, I found that in doing so in the past I was usually able to pinpoint the problem, and it's not always faulty hardware.

Who says , i bought it from newegg?

Actually the service i sent is a good one, but they do very routine tests , they may not have seen the problem during this time. Even i can't produce the problem at will. Last time i left a 3d benchmark (heaven benchmark) for 2 hours, and it worked without a flaw. And i tought the problem is fixed with new drivers or something. Then another day, after 10 mins of Witcher 2 , another black screen.Black screen isn't the only problem, there are other problems which indicate its the R290. I'm %99 sure. without that card , system works without a single flaw.
of course , to be %100 sure, i gotta have another similar computer or another R290 under hand,but i don't.

feel so ripped of getting one for almost 600 but oh well good performance and now the prices are around 450 so i say go for it

The easiest thing to do for testing if you don't have a second machine is to find a friend with a PC that can take your R9 and offer to swap cards for a week.

Even better if it's a radeon and you can keep the same drivers/software installed.

I've come across what I though was graphics card issues before and found that they're caused by weird external issues like a faulty DVI cable, faulty DVI-to-DisplayPort adapter, Motherboard BIOS settings that incorrectly handle the IGP or primary graphics card after resuming from sleep, and even a faulty board that didn't like a particular quadro in a particular PCI-E slot.

I'm not saying your card isn't faulty, but there are just so many other factors that can cause the issue, which is why Newegg may not see a problem when they run the card through their testing suite.

Chrispy_ wrote:

I'm not saying your card isn't faulty, but there are just so many other factors that can cause the issue, which is why Newegg may not see a problem when they run the card through their testing suite.

I didn't buy it from newegg. Tech services do it all the time. Last time i had a faulty Sony cellphone, i had to send it to RMA 3 times. And last time , i delivered it personally and showed them the problem personally. And phone was restarting every 5-10 mins , it was an obvious malfunction.but they didnt see it until i showed them.

So tech service claiming that the card is not faulty doesn't mean anything. Because, they do very routing tests in a very limited time , it is very easy to miss the error since it doesnt happen frequently.

Those errors are very common in the early R290's and my computer is working fine for the last week with my older graphics card just fine. If they send me the R290 back, im gonna buy a Sapphire R290 Vapor X , if it works fine for a week, i'm gonna keep sending the Asus one until they refund it.
Look at the newegg comments

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814121807
"before you choose to invest this kind of money in this video card (not necessarily asus, just r9 290 in general), do yourself a favor. open your favorite search engine and type in r9 290 bsod, r9 290 instability, or r9 290 black screen. I wish I would have had this advice when I decided to purchase mine. The latest drivers available to run this card are not capable of running this card on A LOT of them. I was torn between this card and Nvidia GTX 780, and after a month worth of completely random bsods, I now own a Nvidia GTX 780."

Don't put too much faith in services, with a few exeptions, my experience with them were always terrible . For example , i called the service (the one in the store chain), the "tech guy" claimed that the R290's maybe incompatible with windows 8 and i should use it with windows 7 .

Price here in Australia has dropped to $449 with an aftermarket cooler so I voted yes.

I would have - There's two from MSI and VTX3D on Overclockers UK at the moment for £319.99. A competing GTX 780 is also reduced in price to just £359.99 now.

I would pay the little extra for the GTX 780 now it's not £419.99 like it was about a week ago. It's marginally faster than the R9 overall, and if you have games that use PhysX it will have added use I guess...

Radeon R9-290 ($380) provides slightly better gaming performance for a much lower price than GeForce GTX780 ($480). See the chart in Jon1984's post.

Choz wrote:

Price here in Australia has dropped to $449 with an aftermarket cooler so I voted yes.

The price isn't the issue, it is the overall stability ,quality of the hardware that is in question.

I sent mine to RMA the second time, and this time they admitted that the hardware is faulty . somehow maybe early R290's have high rate of DOA.

Pointless FUD poll is pointless

Hsldn wrote:

Choz wrote:

Price here in Australia has dropped to $449 with an aftermarket cooler so I voted yes.

The price isn't the issue, it is the overall stability ,quality of the hardware that is in question.

I sent mine to RMA the second time, and this time they admitted that the hardware is faulty . somehow maybe early R290's have high rate of DOA.

I've personally never had a problem with any graphics card over the years - from both camps.

I also consider more than just it's performance. I also look into power and heat usage, compatibility with games I want to play, and any game incentives or deals too. That can sometimes change things slightly, and in my last GPU purchase tipped the scales in Nvidia's favour when I got the 750 Ti. I was actually looking at the R7 265 initially, but the Watch Dogs coupon code my retailer was offering with it, PhysX support and low operating heat swing it for me. This is despite the 750 Ti being slightly slower and more expensive.

But everyone is different.

Bauxite wrote:

Pointless FUD poll is pointless

Nothing pointless in it. Speciall early R290's were full of problems.

Yup I've read quite a bit about stability problems with 290. I've seen coin miners recommend against them from experience. Some say go with 280 instead.

Early on there may have been more problems though because I know AMD has remedied some things via drivers. The black screen issue for example. But I don't think that all black screen issues with some cards were ever fixed.

Data is not the plural of anecdote

Moar FUD pls

Bauxite wrote:

Data is not the plural of anecdote

Moar FUD pls

Maybe AMD will drop us some secret statistics instead right?

If buying a video card, or any other shiny product for that matter, Ive found that warranties are good. Buy locally if you can too to avoid getting pissed off with the waiting game when you luck out with that barely-QA-tested purchase.

Back in November just after the 290 was released I bought one used at a Mom & Pop store down the road for $300. It lasted me until May, and then just stopped working (it was a stock card)

Then I bought a used Tri-X 290 on EBay for $315, it gave me black screens all the time, so I returned it

...Finally on EBay I bought a used stock 290X for $330. And guess what? This card has given me no problems the whole 3 months that I've had it! It's wonderful, and the performance in BF4 is clearly better than the 290. Granted the only thing I changed was 200% up-scaling (at 1080p) instead of ~150). I'm really happy with the 290X

No...it's NEVER safe. But it would be cheaper than buying it last year.

Thanks for all the answers .

i bought another R290 last month (Sapphire R290 Tri-X). It works ok so far, only a driver problem, but seems it is addressed in the new RC drivers .
Great performance. Works a lot cooler than my R290 with first reference cooler.