Hardware & Technical MSI RX Vega 64 Upgrade (Crashing constantly on Elite)

widderic · Jan 15, 2019

Ok I'm 2 weeks into this trouble shooting mess and I took upon myself to figure it out before whining and complaining on this sub reddit but I'm doing it now because I caught a thread about this only happening with Elite which is what I've been playing mostly. And want to continue to play very badly. Please help me.

First. My Specs...

- 850W Corsair Power Supply

- MSI RX Vega 64 (Previously a Sapphire Vapor-X Radeon R9 290 4GB GDDR5) (Ran fine in 1080p for Elite)

- Intel Core i7-4790K processor - Motherboard Asus Sabertooth Z97

- SSD Samsung 840 Pro

- Hard drive Seagate Barracuda 2TB - 8GB GSkill DDR4 RAM

- LG 1440p 1ms response FreeSync 32"

Went through all the trouble shooting I could think of, reinstalled drivers for Motherboard, deleted old GPU drivers, reinstalled new GPU drivers. Did some power cycles, reseated the card, tried both PCI-E slots. Nothing. Nil. Zilch.

Does Elite not like RX Vegas? Is there a hot fix? I'm dying here. I just got promoted and could finally afford to build a dope PC and I can't play my favorite game. Rocket league and all the other steam games work fine, although I did have one crash with "Tharsis" a low end low graphics dice rolling space game like Faster Than Light, and again with another Indy space game called "Deliver Us The Moon". Maybe this card doesn't like Space games.

Note: It aint the card, I took the card back and got another one and am getting the same problem. So it's either Elite or the MotherBoard. I'm losing my ! Love you guys.

Zieman · Jan 15, 2019

Do you have another PC (spare, friend, relative) where to plug in the GPU to see if it works there?
Same question for PSU, can you swap another one, or you could try different cables or same cables in different output sockets if the PSU is modular.

Then one thing, which apparently helped me when I upgraded from GTX780 to GTX 980ti and suffered from frequent CTDs & BSODs with E: D (Nvidia, but the main thing is a GPU upgrade on an older system, also Asus motherboard): BIOS update.
Disclaimer: Flashing BIOS can bork your system, but nowadays it is easy to do with USB stick & MoBo button - just follow the instructions on manufacturer site.

Robert Maynard · Jan 15, 2019

E: D works fine on my RX Vega (Sapphire reference edition).

You don't mention the type of crash - to desktop / blue-screen / hard-reset?

Are CPU and GPU running at stock clocks?

Shadowdancer · Jan 15, 2019

When and how does it crash?

Caramel Clown · Jan 15, 2019

What kind of crash? CTD, freeze, BSOD, etc?
Check your memory. Might also be problematic PSU.
And for the last...why people buy Vegas for gaming? Or for anything, really.

Shadowdancer · Jan 15, 2019

Caramel Clown said:
And for the last...why people buy Vegas for gaming? Or for anything, really.

I've heard surprisingly good things about them if you dabble in power management.

With the prices they're going for the question is valid though.

Caramel Clown · Jan 15, 2019

Shadowdancer said:
I've heard surprisingly good things about them if you dabble in power management.

With the prices they're going for the question is valid though.

Exactly my point. For that kind of money they just don't make much sense, in comparison.

Morbad · Jan 15, 2019

widderic said:
Went through all the trouble shooting I could think of, reinstalled drivers for Motherboard, deleted old GPU drivers, reinstalled new GPU drivers. Did some power cycles, reseated the card, tried both PCI-E slots. Nothing. Nil. Zilch.

Have you tried testing the card with other apps to see if the issue is isolated to ED?

Have you

Caramel Clown said:
And for the last...why people buy Vegas for gaming? Or for anything, really.

They've been on sale from time to time for competitive prices.

widderic · Jan 16, 2019

The crashes are hard and reboot the system.

I successfully flashed the mobo bios to the latest version. After the bios flash, I got maybe a few more seconds before the hard crash.

Tested Elite Dangerous on 1080p@60hz and 1080p@144hz (Ultra settings) and it works fine without crashing. When turning on 1440@144hz it crashes immediately.

I tried powering only the video card with a separate, 750W power supply, no dice. However, the power supply is older and I don't feel like it was a great test.

Subnautica runs fine at ~100FPS@1440

I'm still screwing around with in-game Framerate limit, refresh rate, vsync. Then also freesync.

Shadowdancer · Jan 16, 2019

widderic said:
The crashes are hard and reboot the system.

If that happens without a bluescreen event (get https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html to check if anything shows up), you're dealing with broken hardware, most likely a bad power supply or mainboard.

Zak Gordon · Jan 16, 2019

Check Temps too, across all your hardware (i use piriforms Speccy64 tool for a quick overview). But it does sound like something hardware (broken) related. If your temps are good (and all fans spin up ok), then your looking at replacing some of that new (still under RMA) hardware.

Shadowdancer · Jan 16, 2019

Come to think of it, please generate a dxdiag.txt and attach it, that carries information about the last couple system issues at the end.

Dooguk · Jan 16, 2019

Have you tried flipping the bios switch on the Vega 64?

Robert Maynard · Jan 16, 2019

Hard reset could be PSU related.

Dooguk · Jan 16, 2019

If it is only ED that causes the problem then may I suggest you look at that first. Are you running any 3rd party utilities? Dr Kali, EDFX etc. If so, try disabling or uninstalling them. What about things like Afterburner? Get rid. Last but not least, uninstall ED completely (after backing up your control config of course). Reinstall and try again.

-VR- Max Factor · Jan 17, 2019

Shadowdancer said:
If that happens without a bluescreen event (get https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html to check if anything shows up), you're dealing with broken hardware, most likely a bad power supply or mainboard.

I have been getting crashes to desktop. I put my ram in different slots and it seems to have fixed the issue.

Shadowdancer · Jan 17, 2019

Max Factor said:
I have been getting crashes to desktop. I put my ram in different slots and it seems to have fixed the issue.

OP is getting reboots which means either the system crashes with a bug check ("BSoD") it can't even display or a piece of hardware conks out.

That said, good job finding that issue, wobbly RAM is not something high on my checklist when things just CTD.

Dooguk · Jan 17, 2019

Max Factor said:
I have been getting crashes to desktop. I put my ram in different slots and it seems to have fixed the issue.

Don't know if this applies in your case, but it's always best to check the motherboard manual for the correct order that the ram slots are filled. It's not always as straight forward as you'd think.

Glad you fixed your problem.

-VR- Max Factor · Jan 21, 2019

Shadowdancer said:
OP is getting reboots which means either the system crashes with a bug check ("BSoD") it can't even display or a piece of hardware conks out.

That said, good job finding that issue, wobbly RAM is not something high on my checklist when things just CTD.

I was also getting hard crashes. Everything would freeze and there would be nasty sound coming out of the speakers and I had to do a manual restart. Plus I would get a BSOD on start up, then start up again and it would work. I would also get BSOD from just browsing the internet.

I can't edit my posts at the moment otherwise I would have edited my original post. For some reason that functionality has been taken away from me.

-VR- Max Factor · Jan 21, 2019

Dooguk said:
Don't know if this applies in your case, but it's always best to check the motherboard manual for the correct order that the ram slots are filled. It's not always as straight forward as you'd think.

Glad you fixed your problem.

Yeah I did. I am now using the other two instead and it works much better. Not use if it is an issue with the sockets, but it seems all good now.