Sapphire R9 390 Nitro overheating

I have a Sapphire R9 390 Nitro (with backing plate) in my gaming machine, which until recently never had a problem. I got No Man's Sky (another story) recently and have been finding that after anything between 15 and 60 minutes of play, the screen would go off, I'd get the "no signal detected, check display cable" message from the monitor and some fans in the machine would spin right up to maximum speed.

Initially I thought it must just be an issue with the game because it wasn't happening with anything else I play, mostly Elite Dangerous and Mirror's Edge Catalyst just now but the other night it happened while playing Elite too.

The card is not overclocked (beyond the factory OC for that edition) and it's in a Corsair Carbide 540 Air case with two 140mm Noctua fans right in front of it. The fact that it's been fine until the past few weeks makes me wonder if whatever thermal transfer material they use from the factory has gone bad maybe?

Any suggestions etc. welcome...

Any warranty left?

What are your CPU temps? Case air intakes clear of dust?

GPU temp @ idle/loaded would be handy to know OP plus say room ambient temp.

Have you tried a frh install of drivers for the card ? Maybe it got an update with a problem ?

Warranty - should be some yeah, I bought the card in November last year. Hoping it doesn't come to that though.

Temps - so I just played No Man's Sky for a little while with MSI Afterburner logging temps. The last recorded GPU temp was 77C and graphics card fan speed was 63%. CPU temp at that time was 52C (i7-6700K @ stock 4GHz under a Corsair H90 AIO water cooler). Idle temps right now are 40C for the CPU and 45C for the GPU. I cleaned the intake air filter on the case just recently so no issue there.

I have the latest AMD drivers (16.8.3) installed but I've had this problem with the last beta driver (16.8.2 I think, the first one that stated support for No Man's Sky) and the one previous to that, 16.7.something. Each has been installed by first cleanly removing the previous version with Display Driver Uninstaller. I always get an error message when installing new AMD drivers about a package install failure but I think that's just the control panel failing first time, the drivers do seem to install.

I did look on the Sapphire website to see if there was a new BIOS or custom driver for this particular card but didn't see anything very helpful.

You've reseated the card and disconnected and reconnecte d the power wires ? (just in case someone accientally knocked it)

77 degress is 5 higher than Hexus said review card reached, but I doublt that'd be enough to cause the crashing - (just from comments on the net).

@OP

You're GPU temp I would regard as a non issue IMO, I've had 4 Hawaii cards in the past (2x Tri-X 290, 1x Vapor-X 290X, 1x DCUII 290X). My uses were gaming/folding@home (at times 70hrs continuous runs).

Install HWiNFO, besides GPU temp it will give you VRM temp/Amps/Watts. Here's an example screenie of data I monitored for a 70hr+ run of my Vapor-X 290X OC'd to 1100/1525 via custom ROM with stock cooler.

The temperatures are fine - they are well under 90C which I believe is the point AMD Hawaii based cards start downclocking.

If you have overclocked your CPU,I would run it at stock clockspeeds.

OK, so if it's not actually overheating then I guess the question is why does it suddenly shut itself down and spin the fans up to max speed? I can still hear the game sounds through the speakers when this happens so pretty sure it's just the GPU being shut down.

@CAT, CPU is at stock speed.

Comes across as "black screen" issue, there are varying reasons / fixes for it. Usually tends to be lack of GPU voltage or RAM clock to high, try adding a bit of GPU voltage via MSI AB/TriXX and/or lowering RAM clock a bit. Try these 2 things even if you are not OC'ing card.

OK thanks, I'll give that a shot later.

When I first got my Sapphire Tri-X 290 I started viewing the Sapphire forum, my reason was to see if I could find an official OC edition bios to flash to my STD edition card. I found 2 sets ROMs members were sharing via PM, first was say "out of box" ROM which had no additional voltage offset being applied to all DPM states and second had +25mV (supplied by Sapphire support to an owner). Basically the one with the +25mV was what members shared in the "black screen issue" thread.

Once you've done testing if GPU core voltage addition fixes it you contact Sapphire support via this link to get permanent. Explain the issue you had and fix, they will ask for your original ROM and send you one with extra voltage.

OK so I just tried this with No Man's Sky while logging with GPU-Z. The display black--screen crashed after less than two minutes' play and the figures at the time of the crash are at the bottom of the following:

Code:

---

        Date        , GPU Core Clock [MHz] , GPU Memory Clock [MHz] , GPU Temperature [°C] , Fan Speed (%) [%] , Fan Speed (RPM) [RPM] , GPU Load [%] , Memory Controller Load [%] , Memory Usage (Dedicated) [MB] , Memory Usage (Dynamic) [MB] , 12V [V] , VDDC [V] , VDDCI [V] , VDDC Current In [A] , VDDC Current Out [A] , VDDC Power In [W] , VDDC Power Out [W] , VRM Temperature 1 [°C] , VRM Temperature 2 [°C] ,
2016-09-12 22:11:28 ,            1040.0  ,              1500.0  ,              62.0  ,              37  ,                1581  ,        100  ,                      19  ,                        1417  ,                        52  , 11.63  ,  1.180  ,  1.047  ,              19.8  ,              162.5  ,          233.8  ,            190.0  ,                  50  ,                  60  ,
2016-09-12 22:11:29 ,            1039.2  ,              1500.0  ,              62.0  ,              37  ,                1586  ,        100  ,                      20  ,                        1417  ,                        52  , 11.63  ,  1.180  ,  1.047  ,              20.3  ,              161.0  ,          241.5  ,            197.3  ,                  51  ,                  60  ,
2016-09-12 22:11:30 ,            1040.0  ,              1500.0  ,              62.0  ,              39  ,                1616  ,        100  ,                        4  ,                        1417  ,                        52  , 11.63  ,  1.195  ,  1.047  ,              16.2  ,              140.5  ,          233.8  ,            186.8  ,                  51  ,                  60  ,
2016-09-12 22:11:31 ,            1040.0  ,              1500.0  ,              62.0  ,              39  ,                1635  ,        100  ,                      15  ,                        1418  ,                        52  , 11.63  ,  1.164  ,  1.047  ,              19.6  ,              166.0  ,          191.5  ,            155.3  ,                  51  ,                  60  ,
2016-09-12 22:11:32 ,            1018.8  ,              1500.0  ,              63.0  ,              39  ,                1645  ,        100  ,                      45  ,                        1418  ,                        52  , 11.63  ,  1.172  ,  1.047  ,              20.3  ,              169.0  ,          224.3  ,            166.5  ,                  51  ,                  60  ,
2016-09-12 22:11:33 ,            1040.0  ,              1500.0  ,              63.0  ,              39  ,                1648  ,        99  ,                        3  ,                        1418  ,                        52  , 11.63  ,  1.180  ,  1.047  ,              17.2  ,              147.0  ,          229.3  ,            189.3  ,                  52  ,                  61  ,
2016-09-12 22:11:34 ,            1040.0  ,              1500.0  ,              63.0  ,              39  ,                1645  ,        100  ,                      20  ,                        1418  ,                        52  , 11.63  ,  1.180  ,  1.047  ,              18.6  ,              159.0  ,          242.8  ,            190.0  ,                  52  ,                  61  ,
2016-09-12 22:11:35 ,            1040.0  ,              1500.0  ,              63.0  ,              39  ,                1648  ,        99  ,                      12  ,                        1420  ,                        52  , 11.63  ,  1.180  ,  1.047  ,              18.5  ,              159.0  ,          240.0  ,            190.3  ,                  52  ,                  61  ,
2016-09-12 22:11:36 ,            1040.0  ,              1500.0  ,              63.0  ,              39  ,                1661  ,        100  ,                      20  ,                        1420  ,                        52  , 11.63  ,  1.188  ,  1.047  ,              19.8  ,              166.0  ,          252.8  ,            223.0  ,                  52  ,                  61  ,

---

The GPU and VRM temps look OK to me? Not sure what the VDDC values should look like, I can't post much more data than that because of the 15,000 character limit in Hexus forums...

As regards GPU voltage, Sapphire Trixx seems to default to +19mV. Obviously because the card is <1year old I don't want to risk damage, are you saying I should increase it by another 25mV or up to 25mV?

EDIT to add - I tried increasing from +19mV to +25mV and the game lasted a couple of minutes longer but still crashed.

VRM temps are sweet :) , they tend have a very high rating ie 100C+. As temp increases output capacity/efficiency is effected, at your logged temps they are very cool and a non issue.

GPU temp non issue.

Voltage depends to a few things (listing as simply/short as I can):-

i) the ROM is never set to manual voltage it is more like "auto calculated", so depending on GPU properties each may differ as to what VID/VDDC per DPM is set.
ii) Electronic Variable Voltage (EVV), even when card is in same DPM state (ie DPM 7 1040MHz) loading GPU with differing apps you will see differing VID/VDDC.

Upto +75mV is not an issue IMO, if you don't feel comfortable doing that then try upto +50mV. You could always lower RAM clock and just test.

So after recovering from that crash last night I fired up Mirror's Edge: Catalyst which played perfectly for about an hour until I'd had enough and saved and quit, no crashes in sight. I was running the GPU-z logs, I'll have a proper look at home this evening but I think the VRM temps were sitting around the mid 80's for most of that time with the GPU in the mid 70s.

If it wasn't for that single Elite Dangerous crash the other night I'd be thinking this was purely a software issue with No Man's Sky. I'll play about a bit with power and memory clocks on the card this evening under No Man's Sky and see if I can get it running stable, but it really should cope fine under the factory OC (which is pretty minimal above normal clocks IIRC) so am tempted to try and RMA the card while there's still some warranty.

As you bought card Nov 15 you will have warranty til Nov 17, so yeah RMA if you like. Yeah card should hold factory OC, I would expect that as well.

They do test GPU in factory but not sometimes to the extent we may think. As it's an OC edition card, Sapphire have set a +19mV GPU core voltage offset, it maybe over time now the card needs a bit more. In the RX 480 they have setup voltage recalibration, as the silicon ages it may require more juice than when new (marketing slide link), previous gen GPU had no such feature.

I tried the game last night with the card set to standard, reference clock speeds and voltages for a regular R9 390 and it crashed pretty quickly there too. I've opened a ticket with the developer as I'm thinking this might be an issue with the game now but I'll do some further testing with Elite tonight since I saw a similar crash there too.

Surprised the card crashed at reference clocks.

When you say set it to standard voltage how would you know for the LeakageID,etc what is the VID of the GPU for a DPM state? Below is a table for 290X (Hawaii XT), this is the AMD GoldenDB data that can be found in a ROM, if we view DPM 7 (highest state) we can see a Low LeakageID GPU will be 1.281V VID and a high LeakageID 1.206V. There are not only 3 LeakageID bands, so more intermediate VIDs exist.


http://i.imgur.com/u2wJIMv.jpg


Like I said before the ROM & the driver assesses what to set the GPU's VID per DPM, using several factors. Another factor is GPU clock in ROM, for example deviation of AMD stock clocks in ROM will create VIDs which may not be "true" VID of the GPU. Take the 290, AMD stock DPM 7 is 947 MHz, when a ROM has 1000MHz on a OC card the DPM 7 VID will differ to 947MHz, usually it reduces as GPU clock is increased in ROM from testing I did, hence OC cards have the + voltage offset.

We can use AiDA64 to gain the EVV VID per DPM, view this video. You must enable status bar in the view menu to be able to right click it to bring up registers menu. Even trial version will get you the info, download and use latest version. The registers dump excludes global voltage offset set via ROM/IR3567B (the voltage control chip), ie the +19mV you see in TriXX.

If you do set the card at reference clocks don't adjust the voltage IMO.

Just wondering can you run say Heaven or Valley looped on your system approx 30min?

Re. standard voltage, I mean setting the GPU Voltage control in TRIXX to 0mV - I presumed the default +19mV was over and above standard voltage for a non-OC'd card, maybe that was wrong.

I just tried the Valley benchmark and it ran for about four minutes before the black screen of death. I was out of the room at the exact time of the crash but I've pasted the last 30 seconds of GPU-Z output which was running at the time. Nothing looks worrying to me, only thing is the 12V value is slightly under 12 volts but I don't know if that's an issue. This was run with the card at default settings, 1040MHz GPU, 1500MHz VRAM and +19mV.

Code:

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        Date                GPU Core Clock [MHz]          GPU Memory Clock [MHz]          GPU Temperature [°C]          Fan Speed (%) [%]          Fan Speed (RPM) [RPM]          GPU Load [%]          Memory Controller Load [%]          Memory Usage (Dedicated) [MB]          Memory Usage (Dynamic) [MB]          12V [V]          VDDC [V]          VDDCI [V]          VDDC Current In [A]          VDDC Current Out [A]          VDDC Power In [W]          VDDC Power Out [W]          VRM Temperature 1 [°C]          VRM Temperature 2 [°C]
2016-09-14 22:28:26        985        1500        77        56        2280        100        48        1129        58        11.63        1.094        1.047        19.1        170        228.3        178.5        83        77
2016-09-14 22:28:27        984.6        1500        77        56        2285        99        36        1120        58        11.63        1.148        1.047        23.1        177        271.5        221.3        83        77
2016-09-14 22:28:28        1030.8        1500        77        56        2280        99        48        1120        58        11.5        1.141        1.047        22.6        181.5        297        224.8        83        77
2016-09-14 22:28:29        985.2        1500        77        56        2280        100        55        1120        58        11.63        1.094        1.047        20.9        181        263        209.8        83        77
2016-09-14 22:28:30        1031.7        1500        77        56        2275        100        14        1120        58        11.5        1.133        1.047        24.6        189.5        287        204.5        83        78
2016-09-14 22:28:31        1034.8        1500        77        56        2275        100        45        1120        58        11.63        1.156        1.047        24.3        201.5        290.5        215        84        78
2016-09-14 22:28:32        1014.8        1500        77        56        2280        98        39        1120        58        11.5        1.141        1.047        22.7        186.5        302        220.5        84        78
2016-09-14 22:28:33        994.9        1500        77        56        2275        99        37        1120        58        11.63        1.086        1.047        19.7        150.5        216.8        180        84        78
2016-09-14 22:28:34        995.8        1500        77        56        2275        99        38        1120        58        11.5        1.141        1.047        24.4        174.5        265.5        223        84        78
2016-09-14 22:28:35        1029.1        1500        77        56        2280        99        26        1121        58        11.5        1.141        1.047        22.6        177        279        228.5        84        78
2016-09-14 22:28:36        1027.4        1500        77        56        2280        99        53        1122        58        11.5        1.141        1.047        24.8        185        263.5        206.3        84        78
2016-09-14 22:28:37        992.6        1500        77        56        2270        99        27        1122        58        11.63        1.078        1.047        19.7        170        238        171.5        84        78
2016-09-14 22:28:38        997.8        1500        77        56        2275        99        24        1122        58        11.63        1.086        1.047        19.9        164.5        218.5        168.3        84        78
2016-09-14 22:28:39        1034.5        1500        77        56        2280        100        26        1122        58        11.5        1.063        1.047        20.3        158        233.8        189        84        78
2016-09-14 22:28:40        1015.7        1500        77        56        2275        100        50        1122        58        11.5        1.141        1.047        22.8        180.5        283.5        229.8        84        78
2016-09-14 22:28:41        1023.7        1500        77        56        2275        100        34        1122        58        11.63        1.148        1.047        26.6        195.5        293        222.3        84        78
2016-09-14 22:28:42        1015        1500        77        56        2269        96        39        1122        58        11.5        1.141        1.047        25.6        191        266.5        208        84        78
2016-09-14 22:28:43        1014.9        1500        77        56        2280        99        22        1122        58        11.63        1.078        1.047        19.5        153        221.3        180.5        85        78
2016-09-14 22:28:44        991.4        1500        77        56        2280        100        50        1122        58        11.5        1.148        1.047        23.2        195        294        222        85        78
2016-09-14 22:28:45        1028.3        1500        77        56        2274        99        23        1122        58        11.5        1.141        1.047        23.6        180.5        284        223        85        78
2016-09-14 22:28:46        826.4        1500        75        56        2290        100        18        1145        58        11.63        1.023        1.047        17.8        148        193.8        160.8        85        78
2016-09-14 22:28:47        986        1500        77        56        2280        100        45        1132        58        11.5        1.141        1.047        23.2        180        284        225.5        84        78
2016-09-14 22:28:48        1009        1500        77        56        2280        100        34        1125        58        11.63        1.078        1.047        20.6        168        219.3        169        84        78
2016-09-14 22:28:49        981.4        1500        77        56        2280        100        44        1118        58        11.63        1.078        1.047        23.7        186        270        206.3        84        78
2016-09-14 22:28:50        1008.8        1500        77        56        2274        100        83        1118        58        11.63        1.148        1.047        25.5        204        308.5        221.3        85        78
2016-09-14 22:28:51        984.8        1500        77        56        2274        100        66        1118        58        11.63        1.094        1.047        19.7        173.5        261.5        188.3        85        79
2016-09-14 22:28:52        985.4        1500        77        56        2275        100        25        1118        58        11.63        1.086        1.047        18.9        157.5        242        217.3        85        79
2016-09-14 22:28:53        992        1500        77        56        2274        100        35        1118        58        11.63        1.094        1.047        18.9        163        245.8        194        85        79
2016-09-14 22:28:54        1021.6        1500        77        56        2274        100        67        1118        58        11.5        1.148        1.047        25.6        203.5        319        224.3        85        79
2016-09-14 22:28:55        984.7        1500        77        56        2274        100        45        1118        58        11.63        1.094        1.047        18.9        164        243.8        190.5        85        79

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I just clocked the RAM back to 1200MHz (all other settings default) and tested No Man's Sky. Played for 35 mins with no crash. Not sure what that tells us though, possible bad RAM chip on the card?

AMD R9 390 stock is supposed to be 1000MHz GPU clock, so I would assume as ROM has 1040MHz the VID for DPM 7 will be lower than if it was 1000MHz, I conducted such tests on my Hawaii cards. There is information like this in a Hawaii bios mod thread I did on Overclock.net.

Don't worry about the 12V rail showing as 11.xxV :) , I had 4 differing cards and none showed correct V in monitoring ;) , I confirmed all was well via using a digital multimeter on the PCI-E plugs :) .

390/X has newer RAM IC revisions than 290/X, they are 1500MHz spec, so only your GPU is OC'd from factory. Currently I don't think you have bad RAM IC on graphics card. I reckon your GPU voltage is too low. If I was in your shoes I would carry on testing upping RAM clock in 50MHz steps until you have the issue and not at all meddle with GPU clock/voltage. I have seen a lot of 390/X owners on OCN achieve easily 1650MHz+ RAM clock as a 24/7 usage OC plus increased GPU clock.

Just wondering have you ever OC'd card? I only ask to see if you've tested what headroom GPU/RAM has plus how it reacts to OC.

No, never overclocked the card at all.

Didn't get a chance to play with this last night, I'll try underclocking the RAM again and see if I get any better result with that Valley benchmark.

So last night I tried this again, underclocked the GPU memory to 1200MHz and ran the Valley benchmark again. It ran for about 25 minutes this time but then black screened as before. Started filling out a support ticket for Sapphire, while checking the motherboard BIOS version I noticed there was a new one available which said it "improved PCIe compatibility" so I decided to try that.

That installed fine so I tried the card at factory clocks etc. and ran the valley benchmark. After about 5 minutes there was a loud POP and all the sockets in the house tripped at the fuse box. I haven't tried firing the machine up again yet but I suspect the power supply has blown.

So I guess this is just a theory for now but maybe the "graphics issues" were just a symptom of a fault in the PSU which causing output to dip when under load before eventually giving up altogether. I think I've got a couple of older power supplies stashed in a cupboard at home, I'll try one of them if it does look like the current one is terminal.

Sorry to read this, hope the rest of the system is OK.

Cheers :) Thankfully the rest of the PC survived intact and it definitely was the PSU that went bang, I swapped in an old Coolermaster 550w one and it's working again. Better yet, the graphics crashes haven't come back, I played No Man's Sky for over an hour last night and ran the Unigine Valley benchmark for about 25 minutes tonight.

Thanks everyone for your help, especially gupsterg. Looks like it wasn't the graphics card after all but I still learned some useful stuff :)