R9 290 stuck at 300MHz when changing core clock

simonshandy.jungherz · Aug 22, 2017

I've been underclocking my graphics card (R9 290) from time to time for some months now, but a few days ago it started acting up; sometimes my computer would freeze, with the speakers buzzing until forcefully restarting the computer.

Additionally, MSI Afterburner (which I have been using to underclock my graphics card from ~1040MHz to 800MHz) shows '0' for Core/Memory clock when 'unofficial overclocking mode' is set to disabled (the default).
Changing this setting reenables the sliders for Core/Memory clock; however, changing the Core Clock in any way leads to the card constantly running at only the base 300MHz until rebooting.

Reinstalling the drivers / MSI Afterburner didn't solve anything.

Is this a common problem for an 'aging' (~2 years old) card, have I messed up some config setting or is my card just slowly dying?

Crossvxm · Aug 22, 2017

Why do you underclock your GPU???

simonshandy.jungherz · Aug 23, 2017

Crossvxm :

By underclocking my card it runs much more silent while still getting a pretty solid performance. Usually this is sufficient, but then again I might bump up the clock speed to the default 1040MHz and the same problem I described above occurs.

Crossvxm · Aug 23, 2017

simonshandy.jungherz :

Got it. To answer your question regarding an aging GPU, I really don't see how you can harm the GPU by underclocking it. On the contrary, it should prolong it as far as talk about degrading goes. Windows updates has made things crappy in the past few updates for me and my programs, so it is possible this is a cause. Another thing, if the card is causing the buzz and freeze as described (I believe I know the annoying sound you speak of), this indicates that something has crashed. Underclocks can be as unstable as overclocks, and since graphics driver updates change more than we know, it is possible that a newer driver could have changed something, unless of course, your drivers don't install automatically. Instead of underclocking, have you considered simply creating a better fan profile using Afterburner to suit your needs instead? For regular browsing and so on, most cards stick to very low clock speeds and don't get very warm, so it should be safe to drop the fan speeds to be at it's lowest speed when you are doing these things. Most current cards do not turn their fans on until they reach certain temps, usually 50C - 60C in which that is the moment in which the fans will spin up. If your card uses a blower style fan, then I know your pain in terms of the sounds these things output, and some of them don't do such a great job dissipating heat with air pushing at them.

Worth a try however, and saves you the work of underclocking manually each time once you understand how the temperatures do with whatever activities you throw at it when you need it to be quiet.

If not, then we will proceed with another solution.

simonshandy.jungherz · Aug 23, 2017

Crossvxm :

simonshandy.jungherz :

Got it. To answer your question regarding an aging GPU, I really don't see how you can harm the GPU by underclocking it. On the contrary, it should prolong it as far as talk about degrading goes. Windows updates has made things crappy in the past few updates for me and my programs, so it is possible this is a cause. Another thing, if the card is causing the buzz and freeze as described (I believe I know the annoying sound you speak of), this indicates that something has crashed. Underclocks can be as unstable as overclocks, and since graphics driver updates change more than we know, it is possible that a newer driver could have changed something, unless of course, your drivers don't install automatically. Instead of underclocking, have you considered simply creating a better fan profile using Afterburner to suit your needs instead? For regular browsing and so on, most cards stick to very low clock speeds and don't get very warm, so it should be safe to drop the fan speeds to be at it's lowest speed when you are doing these things. Most current cards do not turn their fans on until they reach certain temps, usually 50C - 60C in which that is the moment in which the fans will spin up. If your card uses a blower style fan, then I know your pain in terms of the sounds these things output, and some of them don't do such a great job dissipating heat with air pushing at them.

Worth a try however, and saves you the work of underclocking manually each time once you understand how the temperatures do with whatever activities you throw at it when you need it to be quiet.

If not, then we will proceed with another solution.

I already had a feeling that the problem would be caused by some driver issues, since those problems didn't come up until very recently. I have been tweaking the fan curves for a while now, but I guess I'll turn the fan speeds down even more; if the problems occur again, I think I'll reinstall windows as a last resort and just hope that everything works the way it's supposed to.
Thank you for your very extensive answer!

kenji.hagedorn · Sep 20, 2017

I've had the same issue with my R9 and RX cards being stuck at 300MHz. It has been solved by removing MSI afterburner and other tweaking tools (Gigabyte Aorus) completely, then reinstalling GPU drivers. The tweaking programs just don't mix with some of these cards. It's like they went into low use sleep mode then wouldn't wake up.

Search

R9 290 stuck at 300MHz when changing core clock

simonshandy.jungherz

Prominent

Crossvxm

Crossvxm

Commendable

simonshandy.jungherz

Prominent

Crossvxm

Commendable

simonshandy.jungherz

Prominent

kenji.hagedorn

Prominent

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page