Overclocking
Overclocking results listed in this section are achieved using the default fan and voltage settings as defined in the VGA BIOS. We choose this approach as it's the most realistic scenario for the majority of users.
Every sample overclocks differently, which is why our results here can only serve as a guideline for what you can expect from your card.
On NVIDIA cards with Boost, the values discussed here are base clock. Boost will further increase clocks. On AMD boost is already factored into our resulting clocks due to the way their technology works.
Maximum overclock of our sample is 1120 MHz GPU base clock (10% overclock) and 1725 MHz memory (38% overclock).
Overclocking works well, and both GPU and memory clock reach about the same clocks as on single GPU R9 290X cards. The lower temperatures provided by the watercooling solution probably help with that. The Hynix memory chips ensure high memory overclocks, which many R9 290X cards using Elpida chips lack.
One relevant detail to overclockers is that AMD's current drivers won't allow you to monitor or adjust the fan speed of the card's built-in fan, or the radiator's fan, although both are temperature-controlled by the GPU, which should technically give you the ability to do so.
Maximum Overclock Comparison |
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| Max. GPU Clock | Max. Memory Clock |
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AMD R9 295X2 | 1120 MHz | 1725 MHz |
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Sapphire R9 290X Tri-X OC | 1135 MHz | 1555 MHz |
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PowerColor R9 290X PCS+ | 1180 MHz | 1645 MHz |
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ASUS R9 290X DC II | 1090 MHz | 1480 MHz |
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AMD R9 290X | 1125 MHz | 1575 MHz |
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Important: Each GPU (including each GPU of the same make and model) will overclock slightly
differently based on random production variances. This table just serves to provide a list of typical
overclocks for similar cards, determined during TPU review.
Using these clock frequencies, we ran a quick test of
Battlefield 3 to evaluate the gains from overclocking.
Actual 3D performance gained from overclocking is 12.5%.