AMD R9 285 issue

JLuchinski

Well-Known Member
I put a computer together recently and bought a used Radeon R9 285. It was working fine for the first few days but all of a sudden it stopped working. The PSU is brand new. It works if I uninstall the drivers but as soon as I do install the drivers I get a black screen right after post. Another weird thing that was happening was the CPU is an AMD A10 7800 APU, when I look at the device manager it says it's running off of the APU while to the GPU when it's clearly running off of the video card. Also when running in safe mode I was getting artifacts. Any ideas?
 

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
If you are getting artifacts then make sure sure card is fully seated. Go into the bios and verify tht pcie is set for video output not igfx. If I'm not mistaken device manager will show both display adapters since you can use hybrid video meaning both dedicated and igfx. Artifacts can sometimes be a driver issue or simply a faulty card.
 

JLuchinski

Well-Known Member
I got artifacts when I plugged it into my main system then the same start up black screen after installing the drivers. Would that indicate faulty GPU?
 

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
Pretty much. As long as you are installing latest drivers or even try an older set.
 

Darren

Moderator
Staff member
Yeah it's dead. If you can, try undervolting it and downclocking it. I got a bit more mileage out of my 7970 when it was doing that.
 

JLuchinski

Well-Known Member
I just plugged it again, it won't even give a signal at all now. It's dead for sure now. Are there other cards that work well with an A10 APU?
 

Darren

Moderator
Staff member
Are you trying to Crossfire it or something? Recall you could do asymmetric Crossfire with those APUs.

If not, just whatever you can find that isn't a bajillion dollars right now. An A10 will bottleneck anything recent though.
 

beers

Moderator
Staff member
You could try the bake method or something, otherwise I'd agree that it's pretty much dead.

Most cards would be an upgrade from the 7800 igpu. I wouldn't put too much into a card as opposed to upgrading the rest of the system though. What are your performance goals? That might help identify a somewhat less expensive second hand card than the current inflated market.

Recall you could do asymmetric Crossfire with those APUs.
I rolled xfire between the 6800K and a 7570 GDDR5 card for a bit in a HTPC, they were roughly comparable in performance and scaled to a reasonable degree.
 

JLuchinski

Well-Known Member
You could try the bake method or something, otherwise I'd agree that it's pretty much dead.

Most cards would be an upgrade from the 7800 igpu. I wouldn't put too much into a card as opposed to upgrading the rest of the system though. What are your performance goals? That might help identify a somewhat less expensive second hand card than the current inflated market.


I rolled xfire between the 6800K and a 7570 GDDR5 card for a bit in a HTPC, they were roughly comparable in performance and scaled to a reasonable degree.
I built the system for my son, he mostly plays roblox and racing games. At this point I think it's better to find like an older Nvidia card like a 560TI or something.
 

Darren

Moderator
Staff member
I'd go for something slightly newer than a 560 TI. Any still kicking have probably had many years of use by now. GT 1030 or something maybe if you can find one.
 

beers

Moderator
Staff member
and racing games
Which ones? Also you can play Roblox on a tablet these days so that could be about anything. I picked up a couple 5770 and 7750 for $1/ea locally, so there's plenty of opportunity for older cards like that.
 

JLuchinski

Well-Known Member
Which ones? Also you can play Roblox on a tablet these days so that could be about anything. I picked up a couple 5770 and 7750 for $1/ea locally, so there's plenty of opportunity for older cards like that.
Mostly NFS games. The R9 had trouble with NFS heat so I'm hoping to find something decent used for cheap which is still impossible.
 
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