ASUS HD7790 causes freezes

[blup]

Blup, I'm better than DV. heh It's useless to me.

well, help then?

You can see the BSOD subforum here if you would like help with that so we can fix it all up for ya.

I'm good but I don't have psychic abilities. Where's your thread at?

Here:
http://www.eightforums.com/graphic-cards/41318-asus-7790-causing-freezes-too.html

 

[MasterChief]

http://www.eightforums.com/bsod-cra...e-screen-death-bsod-posting-instructions.html

 

[blup]

http://www.eightforums.com/bsod-cra...e-screen-death-bsod-posting-instructions.html

So.. Master of all Masters, is this problem insurmountable even for someone great as you?

 

[MasterChief]

http://www.eightforums.com/bsod-cra...e-screen-death-bsod-posting-instructions.html

So.. Master of all Masters, is this problem insurmountable even for someone great as you?

I'm checking now. - posted here.

 

[matija]

Sorry about necroing this thread, but it's the top hit on Google for "asus 7790 freeze".

Anyway - the card has serious issues with its RAM voltage and frequency control. I don't know if it has mismatched lookup tables or whatever, but for certain RAM frequencies, it supplies too low of a voltage, and then the OS freezes.

Since it's a custom card BIOS, nothing can be done about it in hardware.

But something can be done in software. Not all of it, mind you (custom BIOS... won't honor 2D/3D/idle settings), but the solution - if anyone is still having problems - is to pin the RAM frequency to maximum at all time, effectively disabling power saving for RAM. It's not going to amount to much energy lost, but it's going to fix the freezing. You can do that with various GPU utils, or even through XML editing for AMD driver profiles.

The GPU can happily scale voltage and frequency, so leave that alone. It's just the RAM that's causing issues.

 

[blup]

Sorry about necroing this thread, but it's the top hit on Google for "asus 7790 freeze".

Anyway - the card has serious issues with its RAM voltage and frequency control. I don't know if it has mismatched lookup tables or whatever, but for certain RAM frequencies, it supplies too low of a voltage, and then the OS freezes.

Since it's a custom card BIOS, nothing can be done about it in hardware.

But something can be done in software. Not all of it, mind you (custom BIOS... won't honor 2D/3D/idle settings), but the solution - if anyone is still having problems - is to pin the RAM frequency to maximum at all time, effectively disabling power saving for RAM. It's not going to amount to much energy lost, but it's going to fix the freezing. You can do that with various GPU utils, or even through XML editing for AMD driver profiles.

The GPU can happily scale voltage and frequency, so leave that alone. It's just the RAM that's causing issues.

Thats very interesting! I will try it(probably in a few weeks) and will report back.
Thanks.

 

[matija]

Eh, I just realized that fixing the memory clock at 1600 just won't work under Windows 8.1 for some reason. I upgraded from 8.0 to 8.1 today, and I got freezing.

Tried something called Bonaire Power Management Tweaker: ASUS R7 260X DC2-OC-2GD5 - Power Management Tweaker - Guru3D.com Forums

Maybe that will work. If it doesn't, I'm taking a hammer and smashing this stupid card to pieces. None of the BIOS editors won't even read its BIOS, so I can't even try that route.

 

[xDegree]

Hey Matija,

thanks for your reply anyways. Maybe it is of some help to those poor fellows suffering from the same issue.

For me, I must say, I was not able to solve the problem (on software site). So finally I RMAd the card and what I got back stopped the freezing - though the fan is much louder now. Unfortunately, I do not know what they did to get the card kind of "back to life" (except for somehow increasing the cooling power/maybe changing the fan?). And it still is a miracle to me, that the card ran fine using Win7 but stopped doing so under Win8.1 - and again, what those guys from the shop did (except for messing with the cards fan), that it does not cause freezes now?!

(Or maybe they did send me a different card and I just did not notice it, cause I expected it to be the same ;p)

 

[matija]

Check GPU/mem frequencies with GPU-Z or something similar. I've read somewhere that 260X cards (the rebranded 7790) mostly got new BIOS versions which disables a lot of power saving, and in some cases pins both the frequencies to max in 2D. If your fan sounds louder, maybe it's the same thing.

The main problem with these cards seems to be with Hynix RAM - all of it, or certain batches. GDDR5 is pushed to as low as 150 MHz, which it doesn't like, at least not with the voltages the card gives it. Different driver versions may have done different things to idle frequencies and low power states. Things differ even in the underlying OS - like I said, 8.0 let me pin 2D mem to 1600 MHz, 8.1 with the same drivers won't... "Want_0" in driver profile XML does absolutely nothing in 8.1.

Since running that tweaker I linked yesterday, and setting the minimum clock to 300 MHz through a checkbox, I haven't had any freezes. I can't say if the problem is fixed; last year I've had periods where everything was fine for over a week, and then the computer froze five times in a single day.

My last resort, if this won't help, is to use MSI Afterburner. It has an "unofficial" overclocking mode which bypasses the AMD drivers and actually lets you set MHz for 2D and 3D. No power saving and dynamic frequencies, but if it's a solution, it's not that bad.

I'll keep you posted!

In the meantime, if anyone is still on 7 or 8.0, XML editing should do the trick.

 

[blup]

So there is this huge thread Does anyone still get the AMD 7xxx bug where your monitor doesn't wake up from sleep? - Page 12 - AnandTech Forums with people having similar issues. The latest posts suggest that the latest "Omega drivers" fixed it.
The official release lists this issue as fixed. Worth trying I guess.



I RMAd twice btw, no luck.

 

[matija]

That's a different issue, and Omega doesn't fix our freezing problem.

No freezes on my PC since the tweaker. If nothing happens until 2015 , I'll proclaim it a fix.