- Aug 26, 2014
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- 4,510
I recently upgraded my graphics card to a Radeon R9 280x and have a new problem I'm hoping to resolve. My system specs are as follows: 700W power supply, 8 GB 1333 DDR3 RAM, AMD FX-8120 8-core (3.1GHz) processor, AMD 970 MoBo, and 1TB SATA III 7200 RPM HD.
Since updating my graphics card when running a particularly graphics intensive game such as Witcher 2 or Shadow of Mordor I will occasionally get a complete system shut down. No blue screen, just black screen dead. I have to then flip the switch on the back of the tower off and on again to get the power to turn back on.
Research has indicated this problem can be a few things: insufficient/dying power supply, overheating of the graphics card, or a rarely read bad section of memory on the GPU. I have run tests using the BioShock Infinite UtraDX11_DDoF benchmark utility. I have increased my fans to 100% manually while the benchmark ran to increase the power draw and did not see a crash, so I don't think it's a power supply issue. I could audibly hear the fans working while they were at 100% so it doesn't sound like the GPU fans are faulty. While running the UltraDX11_DDoF benchmark under normal settings the GPU temperature never increased beyond 82C, and was usually well below that and the fan speed picked up to around 58%. The shutdowns occur at similar times in the games, the prison scene in Witcher 2 and the Ghul Brood Mother fight in Shadow of Mordor. I had three shutdowns during the prison scene and two during the ghul brood mother. By increasing the fans to 100% manually I was able to make it past the prison scene in Witcher 2, but stopped playing the game because I thought the problem was solved.
I am at a loss on where to go from here and I am hoping the good folks at Tom's Hardware can give me some advice on where to go from here. Thank you in advance. P.S. My card is not overclocked as far as I know and Graphics Overdrive in the Catalyst Control Center has been turned off.
Since updating my graphics card when running a particularly graphics intensive game such as Witcher 2 or Shadow of Mordor I will occasionally get a complete system shut down. No blue screen, just black screen dead. I have to then flip the switch on the back of the tower off and on again to get the power to turn back on.
Research has indicated this problem can be a few things: insufficient/dying power supply, overheating of the graphics card, or a rarely read bad section of memory on the GPU. I have run tests using the BioShock Infinite UtraDX11_DDoF benchmark utility. I have increased my fans to 100% manually while the benchmark ran to increase the power draw and did not see a crash, so I don't think it's a power supply issue. I could audibly hear the fans working while they were at 100% so it doesn't sound like the GPU fans are faulty. While running the UltraDX11_DDoF benchmark under normal settings the GPU temperature never increased beyond 82C, and was usually well below that and the fan speed picked up to around 58%. The shutdowns occur at similar times in the games, the prison scene in Witcher 2 and the Ghul Brood Mother fight in Shadow of Mordor. I had three shutdowns during the prison scene and two during the ghul brood mother. By increasing the fans to 100% manually I was able to make it past the prison scene in Witcher 2, but stopped playing the game because I thought the problem was solved.
I am at a loss on where to go from here and I am hoping the good folks at Tom's Hardware can give me some advice on where to go from here. Thank you in advance. P.S. My card is not overclocked as far as I know and Graphics Overdrive in the Catalyst Control Center has been turned off.
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