Purchase my son a 04G-P4-3778-KR for his computer. His AMD R9 would last about an hour and blue screen and then restart. Go for another hour or so and repeat. The card prior was a pair of 7870 in xfire. The 7870's ran just fine. I installed a crash reporting software which reported back the crash was video card related. So we uninstalled and sweep off the current R9 drivers. Installed the R9 stock drivers from the CD. Same problem. So we uninstalled and sweep off the current R9 drivers. We tried various other drivers with no luck. The problem kept coming back. After research, we decided it might be the power supply. So we installed a new PSU last week. The problem continued. Now we are thinking it's the R9. I've been wanting to come back to NVIDA (I did on my box, GTX 670). My son still held onto the raw power  of AMD. He was now as fed up as I. He agreed to the GTX 770. Just unboxed it an two hours ago. Boy we both where happy to see it! Nice job on the presentation. We both were a bit awe struck. Top shelf. After an hour or so same crash again... Now I am getting a bit unnerved. He found somewhere that the more modern video cards don't run on Sandy Bridge motherboards. Below are his specs:
 
i7 2600K
Sandy Bridge TDP: 95W
Socket 1155LGA
 
ASRock
Z68 Extreme7 Gen3 
Current BIOS
 
16GB 
CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB)
240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
Desktop Memory Model CMZ8GX3M2A1600C9
 
M12II-850 Bronze PSU
+12V 70A 840W
 
 
 

I forgot the OS is Windows 8.1 We use  GURU Driver Sweeper to clean up after using AMD's uninstaller. We also did complete, clean OS installs and added only a few games for testing. 
 
0xa0000001
VIDEO_MEMORY_MANAGEMENT_INTERNAL
 
I just witness a crash. His applications crash: spinning wheel (used to be clocking...lol) I can't access nothing. Screen goes blue and a error message appears for two seconds, way to fast to capture. Then the screen goes black with blinking cursor. Nothing else happens until he reboots. He is able to boot directly to Windows 8.1 without a hitch. Like it never happened. 
 
 

Wow that memory test will take a while. The first pass just completed with no errors. What would be the next test? Im going to run an Intel test on the SSD which the OS resides. 

Since we have the exact same CPU/Mobo (dif PSU and Mem) I was going to swap him my GTX 670 for his GTX 770 and see how the systems run. I do want to let the memory test to go, if for nothing else a piece of mind. 
 
I want to thank you for your VERY quick response and aid! 

I see you have "Current BIOS" listed in your system specs which would normally mean v2.3 listed in downloads, but there's newer Beta BIOS listed in the Beta Zone you should try if you haven't yet (don't know which one you really mean by "Current BIOS")..Make sure all the drivers are updated to the latest ones which are compatible/more compatible with Win8 ..Just a few thoughts. 

Just throwing this out there but is the cpu overclocked and if so is it a good stable o.c.? Had this problem with a friends pc and he said it was stable but crashed when gaming so put default values back in and no more crashes. How hot is your cpu and gpu getting when it crashes?

I will update this post on my activities to aid in tracking my progress. 
 
We don't overclock. All 100% stock/default settings. 
 
Windows 8.1
 
i7 2600K
Sandy Bridge 
Socket 1155 
 
ASRock
Z68 Extreme7 Gen3 
BIOS: L2.32
 
16GB 
CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) 
DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
Model # CMZ8GX3M2A1600C
 
Recap:

• No crashes
• Removed HD 7870 Xfire video cards to upgrade to a single GPU
• I uninstalled the graphic drivers via Display Driver Uninstaller.
• Installed R9 290 (Crashes started)
• Installed new PSU: M12II-850 Bronze PSU +12V 70A 840W
• Crash - Brief Blue Screen - Black Screen with blinking cursor
• I uninstalled the graphic drivers via Display Driver Uninstaller.
• Installed new GTX 770
• Crash - Brief Blue Screen - Black Screen with blinking cursor
• I tested the memory with MemTest86+ overnight with zero errors.
• I uninstalled the graphic drivers via Display Driver Uninstaller.
• Crashes  - Brief Blue Screen - Black Screen with blinking cursor - System was at idle
• I ran CrystalDiskInfo to check the SSD which the OS resides: Stated the SMART was Good
• Updated the BIOS with the beta version L2.32.
• Installed the Hardware Monitor Pro (Trial) and turned on it's logger during torture testing. 
• I am now running the prime95 torture test on the CPU.
• Crashed - Brief Blue Screen - Black Screen with blinking cursor
• System Uptime was 44 minutes before crash. CPU temp was 62 degrees C. 
• Updated the BIOS with beta version L2.33A
  • Notiable changes
    • BIOS Flash Screen is differant
    • Had to switch Boot device to "Windows" instead of the SDD. Weird. 
• Testing system at Idle for uptime: CPU temp: 36 degree C --- Uptime 61 minutes
• Crashed - Brief Blue Screen - Black Screen with blinking cursor 

Im heading out to get the most modern CPU/MOBO from Frys... If this does not fix it... im at a total loss...

The 670 died on me during the swapping. Don't know why. Did swap the RAM, no issues. Basically boiled down to only a few more hardware components. I moved the GTX 770 to my box, replacing the now bricked 670. Boy I really like the 770! My son demanded it back... 
 
The wife was being very nice this morning and allowed us to purchase a new X97 CPU/Mobo.  So, my budget was limited...  
We ended up with: 
i7-4790K LGA1150 4GHz Processor
ASUS Sabertooth Mark 2 Intel Z97 Motherboard
 
My son now had a choice (parameters made by dad)...
Get the new Z97 box with the AMD R9 290
or 
Get my old box with the GTX 770
 
He selected the first... thank goodness.. We both love EVGA cards and he wants one still. He just loved the unboxing. First time he ever said that a product felt "top shelf" Great job EVGA!
 
Now his box sits as such:
 
Windows 8.1
i7-4790K LGA1150 4GHz Processor
ASUS Sabertooth Mark 2 Intel Z97 Motherboard
16GB CORSAIR Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Model # CMZ8GX3M2A1600C
M12II-850 Bronze PSU +12V 70A 840W
 
Happy to report... after more than three (3) hours no crashes. 
 
 

"Screen goes blue and a error message appears for two seconds, way to fast to capture"
 
Windows writes a file in \Windows\Minidump, with the BSOD contents. Have a look to the files that this directory should contain. To disable auto reboot on BSOD, just edit this registry key :
 
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\CrashControl\AutoReboot
 
set the value at 0 (hex or decimal, it does'nt matter), and the BSOD will stay until you decide to reboot. See here : http://technet.microsoft..../library/cc976049.aspx
 
It is a good idea to set this value as soon as Windows is installed ; it's a pita 1 is the default value.
 
The crash dump file is set by another key. See here : http://technet.microsoft..../library/cc976050.aspx

Good to hear you got it working and asus939 that is crazy they destroyed your motherboard

That Elpida destroy me enjoying in GTX780 Classified, but no matter Elpida, Samsung or Hynix I would change on GTX780Ti no matter on anything.
Simply full unlocked card is for me everything. I can forget and less video memory than NVIDIA should offer but GPU performance and premium single chip was always my target and I feel best with them. 
But what I hear is that Elpida OC good on Radeon cards, 200-300MHz.
CPU can't be problem 100% maybe is that motherboard problematic. 
But when something happen and no pictures people usually think on graphic card first.