R9 280x Artifacts problems, tried everything, help?

Michael Moore

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Oct 2, 2013
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I bought an MSI R9 280x 3G from Overclockers a month ago, after installing the card it gave me artifacting and random crashes while playing games such as Guild Wars 2, League of Legends, and Hitman: Absolution. I sent it for an RMA to Overclockers and they said: "no fault found, perfomed fine on benchmark/stress tests for 24 hours", they gave me advice such as reinstalling windows and downloading the latest directx runtime from Microsoft. So I got the card back and yeah... I was still receiving artifacts while playing Guild Wars 2 and one crash from the Titanfall Beta which had gave me a frozen screen with artifacting and reset my computer.

I have a video of the artifacting happening in Guild Wars 2 if anyone is interested. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzpjO5d4izI

I have also installed MSI Live Update 5 to install any of the latest utilities and drivers from MSI.

Overclockers say that they tested it for 24 hours on benchmark software, Battlefield 4 and the other latest games, they also seem to not care about my having problems on Guild Wars 2 and League of Legends because they are either old or do not run on an intensive engine such as Frostbite from BF.

Any help?

Edit:
My specs are
CPU: AMD FX4100 3.6GHz overclocked to 4.2GHz
Mobo: Asus M5A78L-M USB 3
GPU: AMD MSI R9 280X 3G (14.2 BETA DRIVERS, have tested other drivers)
RAM: Corsair Vengeance 8GB @ 1600MHz
PSU: Corsair RM850 850 Watts.
 

ihog

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Try downclocking both the core and memory clocks by 100 MHz and see if the problems persist. If they do, set the clocks back to normal. If they don't, well, then there's you problem.

You wouldn't happen to have access to another computer to test it in, would you?

Do these problems happen even when your CPU is at its stock clocks?

Have you tested it with the drivers that were on the disc that came with the card (if a disc did come with your card)?
 

Michael Moore

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Oct 2, 2013
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I'll give it a go, and no I don't have another computer to test it in, unless I give it a friend, but it'll be a bit of a fuss. Yes the problems happened before I overclocked it, I was hoping overclocking the CPU would help the problems, but no.
I've tested it with three different drivers from amd, the new 14.2 beta driver which I'm currently running now, the latest non beta driver which I think is the 13.11 or something and then I've tried rolling it back to early 13.1+ drivers.

 

themadtaxi

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Jun 3, 2012
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Hey, I have the same card with the same issue and was able to resolve it. Inside the GPU box I found a scrap of paper that showed a small physical switch on the the bottom of the card that toggles between "hybrid" bios and Legacy bios. The hybrid bios, which is on by default for some reason, is supposed to help improve wake times from hibernation and reboot. I found my switch on the underside near the very front (closes to the display ports) and toggled it to Legacy. That solved all of my artifact and frame rate issues. Hopefully you still have the card!
 

b0un7yhunter

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Mar 26, 2014
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I had similar problem with my XFX R9 280X. This seems to be common problem due to low memory clock when idle.
I managed to temporarily fix the problem by forcing the card to have constant 1500Mhz memory clock using Catalyst.

What you need to do is create a new preset in catalyst, then open C:\User\user name\AppData\Local\ATI\ACE
open Profiles.xml with notepad, copy the whole content and paste it into your newly created profile in the Profiles folder.
In the new profile xml,
find CoreClockTarget and change the "want_0" value="50000"
find MemoryClockTarget and change "want_0" value="your GPU full load memory clock"
Save changes, then activate the new profile from Presets tab in Catalyst.
Finally, enable Overdrive and set the overdrive GPU clock and memory clock to your GPU full load clock.
This "fix" the problem for me, if there is newer Vbios from MSI website. It might be better to update your Vbios first to see if it fix your problem.
 

Michael Moore

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Oct 2, 2013
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Yep, still have the card, and it's still pretty bad lol, I've tried switching between the two bios options, no luck.
 

Michael Moore

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Oct 2, 2013
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Don't quite understand, are you asking my to overclock the card even more even though it came heavily overclocked out of the box? How do I find out my GPU full load memory clock?
 

b0un7yhunter

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Mar 26, 2014
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The source of my GPU's flickering problem is due to the idle clock. The default idle clock is 300Mhz for core and 150Mhz for memory. These clock speeds apparently cause the flickering problem. Therefore, by using the presets I explained above, we make sure the the memory clock won't fluctuate.
You can check your full load Core and Memory clock from the default setting of your Catalyst's Overdrive tab, or use HWINFO64 to check the GPU clock while gaming. I hope this answer your question.
 

Michael Moore

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Oct 2, 2013
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Either it didn't work or I did something way, either way I think I'm gonna ebay the card and buy a evga 770 when I get some money
 

johnnypig

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Jun 20, 2014
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Hi, Thanks for this! Got rid of that annoying glitch.

To clarify when you make a new profile it will be in a new folder called /ATI/ACE/profiles. Don't edit the NamedProfilesIndex.xml or Profiles.xml :D
 

TWJunky

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Aug 24, 2014
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I have adding a new profile in catalyst. but i when i open appdata//ATI/ACE/ there is no profile nor a folder. can you guys point me in the right direction.
 

enamak

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Jan 24, 2014
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Almost all R9 280X have artifact problems, i had to RMA 2 asus 280x. You shouldnt overclock or underclock to get rid of the artifacts, rma it fast as you can and get a GTX 770, its the best you can do.