R9 290-290X owners thread

[Sasqui]

What kind of temperatures are you guys getting with your 290s and 290x. Im only reaching as high as 77ish.. while playing bf4, fan goes up to around 55% at that temperature as well on auto. Kinda loud but i can get use to it, and im guessing its no where near as loud as a reference 290 or 290x. I've got the gigabyte windforce r9 290

With the stock settings in Catalyst (temp set to 95 and fan at 40%), I was immediately hitting 95c in furmark, with throttling pushing the clocks as low as 770. Put the fan at 100% and max temp at 85c. Loud, but it kept the temps down to 85c with no throttling. Interestingly, the fan never got higher than 60%.

 

[R-T-B]

Interestingly, the fan never got higher than 60%.

Set it to 100% manually for a kick, it's a frickin jet engine! Almost a nod to litecoin miners from amd I think, there is no other justification for that kind of fan power under normal usage...

 

[Sasqui]

Set it to 100% manually for a kick, it's a frickin jet engine! Almost a nod to litecoin miners from amd I think, there is no other justification for that kind of fan power under normal usage...

I'll have to look deeper at the settings, must be one of the checkboxes to get the fan running at 100% manually? It's incredibly hot and annoyingly loud. I'm going to hunt further for aftermarket cooling. This weekend I plan on taking the HS off and replacing the TIM. I'll post results!

 

[R-T-B]

Yeah, 100% you would never want to run at longterm, AFAIK you have to use an overclocking tool to set the fans that high, I use MSI afterburner.

 

[Durvelle27]

I ran my reference fan at 65% and core temp is manageable 60-78°C depending on game.

 

[buildzoid]

I has a question for you fine folk,

My new rma msi 290 gaming card has a different bios as well a new style pcb.
This new card overclocks the memory like a SOB like 1600+ mhz...

I tried to flash the bios to the older but same card in a sense and no go it just hits the splash screen and sits there black.
So my question. I run crossfire, what slot would you guys place the awesome clocking card into?

top or bottom and I don't mind clocking both cards separately.

Whats going to give me the best bang for benches and such?

Put it up in the top that will make it the primary card so if CF is broken the better card will be the one running your game.

 

[fullinfusion]

Put it up in the top that will make it the primary card so if CF is broken the better card will be the one running your game.

Thanks but thats not what Im asking, I've never had crossfire break.

I want to know if the top card will give better everything or have it in the bottom slot to render better?

Or does it work this way?

 

[buildzoid]

Thanks but thats not what Im asking, I've never had crossfire break.
I want to know if the top card will give better everything or have it in the bottom slot to render better?
Or does it work this way?

The Top/Primary card always gets more usage running CF than the bottom card so you would want the top/primary card to be the faster one. By broken crossfire I didn't mean that the game won't run I meant that it just won't use the second card.

 

[newconroer]

Anyone found a way to force voltage without BIOS flash or running Afterburner at the Windows boot?



Wow, pulled down 3488 VRAM in BF4.

 

[buildzoid]

Anyone found a way to force voltage without BIOS flash or running Afterburner at the Windows boot?

Wow, pulled down 3488 VRAM in BF4.

Nope. You got to get a custom BIOS for that. Even all the force constant voltage options that overclocking software has is useless since it just forces a constant offset and as the GPU heats up voltage goes down 12mv every 5C above 60.

 

[yogurt_21]

Curious to see which position (quiet or uber) all you 290 (nonX) owners run. My card came in quiet mode and I was having a hell of a time getting it to actually perform better than my 480 sli. Flipping to uber = night and day. I find it odd as all the reviews for non x 290's show it shouldn't do much at all. After all at face value we're talking a 20MHZ bump. But I'm not sure what the switch does to power limit and I do know it bumps the base fan speed.

This is quiet stock 3dmark 11

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/8527074

This was uber stock 3dmark 11
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/8535778

btw no idea why the HIS is showing up as visiontek. Also turbo was on in both tests but it wasn't showing up in their system scan.

Is this kind of a jump normal between the two modes?

 

[newconroer]

Nope. You got to get a custom BIOS for that. Even all the force constant voltage options that overclocking software has is useless since it just forces a constant offset and as the GPU heats up voltage goes down 12mv every 5C.

Thought as much. I was hoping forcing constant voltage would ensure that my undervolt stayed, without straying much. So far the feature doesn't seem to have an adverse affect either way, but will keep an eye on it based on your numbers.

Curious to see which position (quiet or uber) all you 290 (nonX) owners run. My card came in quiet mode and I was having a hell of a time getting it to actually perform better than my 480 sli. Flipping to uber = night and day. I find it odd as all the reviews for non x 290's show it shouldn't do much at all. After all at face value we're talking a 20MHZ bump. But I'm not sure what the switch does to power limit and I do know it bumps the base fan speed.

This is quiet stock 3dmark 11

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/8527074

This was uber stock 3dmark 11
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/8535778

btw no idea why the HIS is showing up as visiontek. Also turbo was on in both tests but it wasn't showing up in their system scan.

Is this kind of a jump normal between the two modes?

Whatever else that is happening when you set UBER mode, could be observed in GPU-Z or Afterburner most likely, via changes to the Core Voltage, Power Limit, Clock frequencies and overclocking special modes (Afterburner>settings).


On my Gaming models, I use the 977/1250 clocks which I believe are classed as quiet? I also have them undervolted at -.086 (via lowering Core Voltage to -75, down from +13 which is stock).

Although not recorded anything for comparisons, I have watched benchmarks and observed the following.
At -75 undervolt, and without forcing the highest clocks full time throughout the test(i.e. 977/1250), the dynamic clocks and undervolt still produce the same performance as forced clocks and +13 core voltage.

 

[yogurt_21]

I'm referring to the actual switch on the card, set towards the monitor outputs = quiet, set towards the power connectors = uber. Though I'll take a look at what gpu-z shows between the two. It's odd we're talking a 15-20% performance boost for a 2% clock increase. The card must really throttle in quiet mode.

 

[newconroer]

Ah, I don't have one of those, however in the bundled software(that I did not install), I saw a screenshot of 'Quiet,' 'Uber' and 'Game.'
Maybe because yours is hardware switch based, it does do something more. Make sure to have the computer off when switching.

 

[Lopez0101]

I have an MSI R9 290 Gaming, all the switch on mine does is switch from a legacy vBIOS to a UEFI/Legacy vBIOS.

 

[newconroer]

I have an MSI R9 290 Gaming, all the switch on mine does is switch from a legacy vBIOS to a UEFI/Legacy vBIOS.

Correct I think I'm on UEFI, you noticed any differences?

 

[Lopez0101]

I run Win7, as far as I'm aware the UEFI vBIOS is only useful if you have Win8. I haven't tried switching between them, no. Also, I flashed the vBIOS in the first position, switching to the other would likely be a downgrade.

 

[ZentiX]

Never ever had a stock cooler on a GPU for more then 10min when I get a new card Stock cooler is noisy and bad.

Now I have 2 290X with EK blocks. Water vs air cooling is huge difference for those cards. Running them on 1150/1375 and cards are never over 65C

But I'm not happy with CFX, not at all. AMD CF/CFX vs nVidia SLi = SLi wins. nVidia is way ahead when it comes to the multi gpu technology.

 

[yogurt_21]

well Nvidia was able to purchase 3dfx's multi card developments netting them an additional 7 years R & D prior to ATI's launch of crossfire. There will always be a bit of residual from that. Right now the main difference I've experienced is micro stutter. Nvidia does seem to be better at masking it than AMD. (though both obviously have it)

 

[newconroer]

Frame pacing is a lot closer now between AMD and NVidia. And some programs/games you can alter it to different modes.


One thing I like about Nvidia, especially these days is the amount of clean and useful tools you can get. Between Afterburner and Inspector, I was set.
I loathe CCC and with Radeon I used to use ATI Tray Tools, but the lack of development now makes it difficult. Afterburner and Radeon Pro is ok, but Radeon Pro no longer seems to affect registry settings so when the program is not running, it's useless.
Additionally, the 'global' settings don't seem to stick, or are being over ridden by CCC maybe.

 

[ZentiX]

When it comes to GPU OC programs, I like to use MSI AB or Sapphire Trixx. For heavy OCing I like to use Trixx because of 200mV vs AB that only has 100mV, Preference cards from AMD is not good to OC because of useless mem that can't handle the pressure.

But you guys should be really careful when it comes to Furemark, this stress program could cook your card, just so you know. For stress testing use either Catzilla, 3D Mark og BF3 or 4. BF3 and 4 is also really good to check if you have stable 24/7 cpu OC, since BF3 and 4 is really CPU hungry game.

Messing around in the GPU bios could also be an great thing, if you get an stable OC mod your bios.

 

[Boneface]

Got some new things today!!!

 

[newconroer]

What Bios should we be using for the MSI gaming 290s?

 

[Lopez0101]

I used the one posted in the first post that's from MSI, with the boosted GPU clock.

 

[mastrdrver]

I just got a Tri-X OC 290x and I've noticed problems with waking the monitors from sleep with OverDrive enabled. It will usually blink the far right monitor a few times (the other two never come out of sleep) and then Windows will bsod. Using 14.4s fwiw. I also have Afterburner installed since I use it to record gameplay and I'm wondering if that might be causing a problem. I have not messed with any of the settings in Afterburner (for overclocking or even for the power limit setting.