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I recently acquired an MSI Radeon R9 280X video card that experiences visual glitches/flickering patches/artifacts in games and in 2D mode. Once I tried to open a video in fullscreen mode from Youtube and the screen just went entirely flickering black until I restarted.

I tried the common fixes of R9 280X/7970 artifacting - underclocking memory, undervolting the card, underclocking the core, increasing the voltage, updating the BIOS, increasing the idle clocks - nothing helped.

Basically the card is bad. Under the assumption that I cannot RMA the card, what are the possible uses of a video card that produces graphical artifacts? Can it be used for Bitcoin mining? OpenCL computations? Folding@home? Sold for scrap parts? Basically I need to salvage this card in any way possible.

I ran a GPU memory error checker (best answer from this question: How can I test my GPU memory/RAM?) and it reported no errors but I'm still wary.

I still haven't put the card in the oven or freezer.

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Sevag
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2 Answers2

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AMD uses ECC on newer cards and if any error occurs, it resends data or recomputes until it reaches target.

When there is so much instability, it stucks in an infinite re-send loop or bsods. So it is very hard to find a point which it is %0 error compute frequency. An error could be present even at 1 MHz(not even GHz) working frequencies because of quantum-mechanics' tunneling probability. Anything can happen in nano world at anytime.

Only you can know if error happens.

Lets say r9-280x starts artifacting %99.99 at 2GHz(before it explodes) .

@1.5 GHz, it is %90 per cycle (just trivial numbers to have an idea of tunneling)

@1.3 GHz, it is %10 per cycle (trivial again), ECC could stand for a second before getting in bsod or smt like that

@500 MHz, it is %0.01 per cycle but ECC takes care of it and performance impact is minimal.

@1 MHz, it is %0.000000000000001 but it is there and will not vanish. ECC makes it nearly impossible to lock your game/compute.

If gaming cards were %100 stable, there wouldnt be a need for server-grade components to run a web site 7/24.

You just need to watch out for decreased gaming/computing experience when crossing factory frequencies.

If it is stable for 24 hours, it may stay stable for another 24 hours(or not).

So, if it is not stable for 24 hours for any frequency range, then you should not use it for anything.

huseyin tugrul buyukisik
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Can it be used for Bitcoin mining? OpenCL computations? Folding@home?

Yes ^ it should be possible. BOINC as well. Only way to know for sure is to test it and see if the computes fail or not. With BOINC you would be able to assign all GPU workloads to the artifacting card and zero to your primary card.

Have you tried beta drivers? Have you monitored the temperature when in use?

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