dave_beast said:

From AMD's Thracks

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There's a lot of doom and gloom around the 95C temperature, because people are used to a world where the product is designed to run as cold as possible... but that's not the world we're living in with these units. The doom and gloom is based on an old viewpoint.

95C is the optimal temperature that allows the board to convert its power consumption into meaningful performance for the user. Every single component on the board is designed to run at that temperature throughout the lifetime of the product.

If you throttle the temperature down below that threshold, then the board must in turn consume less power to respect the new temperature limit. Consuming less power means lowering vcore and engine clock, which means less performance.

You want to take full advantage of product TDP to maximize performance, and that is accomplished with a 95C ideal operating temperature for the 290 and 290X.

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Thracks, really?

The thing throttles at 95c~ you get the best performance by keeping it under that tempriture because it down clocks at anything over that.

If it runs at 900Mhz with temps of 95c then its not going to get to 1Ghz, put a better cooler on it and it will run 900Mhz at 80c, maybe 1100Mhz at 95c.

Look, its a great GPU, the green crowed said you couldn't do it, they said you couldn't make a GPU to match a Titan because it would be to big and to power hungry.
What you made was a Titan beating GPU thats actually smaller, no one saw that coming and its a big fat #### you to your critics.

But why, why oh why did you then not quite go far enough and give it the cooler it deserves and frankly needs? blower type coolers are not very efficient in cooling the actual chip, and the one you put on this is just a silly inadequate little block of aluminium, its the same thing as the ref- 7970.

Why did you not give it the 7990's cooler, it would have had a higher delta giving it more voltage and clocking room to reach 95c, end result: even higher performance.

Got my 290x yesterday and was not surprised to see it wasn't as hot or as loud as some claimed. I added it to my loop which has a 360mm rad and a 240mm rad and now it idles no more than 27 degrees and under load it never goes above 44 degrees (furmark).

This seems too cool for a 290x even at stock under water, think my temps could be wrong?

What temps are other people getting under water?

Avenged7Fold said:

Got my 290x yesterday and was not surprised to see it wasn't as hot or as loud as some claimed. I added it to my loop which has a 360mm rad and a 240mm rad and now it idles no more than 27 degrees and under load it never goes above 44 degrees (furmark).

This seems too cool for a 290x even at stock under water, think my temps could be wrong?

What temps are other people getting under water?

Click to expand...

I'm idling at 32, BF4 is around 53-54. Amibient is 23. Just a 360 so yours seems about right with a 240 in as well.

Avenged7Fold said:

Got my 290x yesterday and was not surprised to see it wasn't as hot or as loud as some claimed. I added it to my loop which has a 360mm rad and a 240mm rad and now it idles no more than 27 degrees and under load it never goes above 44 degrees (furmark).

This seems too cool for a 290x even at stock under water, think my temps could be wrong?

What temps are other people getting under water?

Click to expand...

Its because you have put adequate cooling on it!!!!!

Mine idles around 34c and loads at 45-50c

humbug said:

Its because you have put adequate cooling on it!!!!!

Click to expand...

I mean it seemed to work perfectly well without throttling before i put it under water.

dave_beast said:

From AMD's Thracks

Click to expand...

here's a lot of doom and gloom around the 95C temperature, because people are used to a world where the product is designed to run as cold as possible... but that's not the world we're living in with these units. The doom and gloom is based on an old viewpoint.

95C is the optimal temperature that allows the board to convert its power consumption into meaningful performance for the user. Every single component on the board is designed to run at that temperature throughout the lifetime of the product.

If you throttle the temperature down below that threshold, then the board must in turn consume less power to respect the new temperature limit. Consuming less power means lowering vcore and engine clock, which means less performance.

You want to take full advantage of product TDP to maximize performance, and that is accomplished with a 95C ideal operating temperature for the 290 and 290X.

Click to expand...

Umm, err that's just just nonsense. Oh and every 10C increase in temps reduces component life by 50%. (Ref: arrhenius equation)

Avenged7Fold said:

Got my 290x yesterday and was not surprised to see it wasn't as hot or as loud as some claimed. I added it to my loop which has a 360mm rad and a 240mm rad and now it idles no more than 27 degrees and under load it never goes above 44 degrees (furmark).

This seems too cool for a 290x even at stock under water, think my temps could be wrong?

What temps are other people getting under water?

Click to expand...

Avenged, i finally put my 290x under water and got these after 15 mins of heaven @ stock:

GPU: 41 degC
VRM1: 43degC
VRM2: 32degC

I'm using a 360mm and a 240mm rad with a 4770k in the loop too.

fornowagain said:

Umm, err that's just just nonsense. Oh and every 10C increase in temps reduces component life by 50%. (Ref: arrhenius equation)

Click to expand...

Not sure that's exactly evidence and im sure that equation doesn't apply at reasonable temperatures that are within spec (even it does 50% of a big number is still a big number and we do like buying new GPU's ), electronic components are design to operate within a temperature window, although 95 degrees is high and out of spec of usual electronics, only military grade components are spec'd at those temperatures.

Without some research we cant know what the components are spec'd at, not to mention it's only the core that is at that temperature, the heat wont be anywhere near that in surrounding components.

fornowagain said:

Umm, err that's just just nonsense. Oh and every 10C increase in temps reduces component life by 50%. (Ref: arrhenius equation)

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Because you know more than the creators of the gpu

egnshane said:

Not sure that's exactly evidence and im sure that equation doesn't apply at reasonable temperatures that are within spec (even it does 50% of a big number is still a big number and we do like buying new GPU's ), electronic components are design to operate within a temperature window, although 95 degrees is high and out of spec of usual electronics, only military grade components are spec'd at those temperatures.

Without some research we cant know what the components are spec'd at, not to mention it's only the core that is at that temperature, the heat wont be anywhere near that in surrounding components.

Click to expand...

Actually it does, there's about five equations as I remember, been awhile. But electronics 101, general rule of thumb a 10C drop in operating temps 'within' the designed thermal profile will double reliability. The factor for the manufacturer is the proportion of a components MTBF and the market they sell into. Higher temps = Lower life.

There's no new uber milspec chip here, redefining thermodynamics, just a regular old semi-conductor. Lower operating temps have to increase gate stability, simple as. Now if he's referring to a set point on a bios profile reducing TDP, fair enough but it's not the same thing. Once again, use the highest set point for the maximum thermal design point but actually run it as cool as possible will always increase switching stability. The idea it has to run at 95C to gain maximum performance is well....daft

dave_beast said:

Because you know more than the creators of the gpu

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No, but I have been involved with electrical design professionally for a very long time. Not to mention overclocked cpu/gpu's since it was first possible, so yeah I recognise BS when I see it. Surprised you can't.

fornowagain said:

Not to mention overclocked cpu/gpu's since it was first possible, so yeah I recognise BS when I see it. Surprised you can't.

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Likewise, but why would the manufacturers BS about their product? You do know a lot of PC component manufacturers use military grade circuitry?

dave_beast said:

Likewise, but why would the manufacturers BS about their product? You do know a lot of PC component manufacturers use military grade circuitry?

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Because that whole quote is so far off reality I can't believe that what he even meant by it. It has to be out of context or I dunno, it's just wrong. And yes of course, milspec regs on top end MB's etc. But not an entire graphics card, not at this price point, no.

And of course the silicon can operate at those temps. And will do so happily but with a shorter MTBF. It puts it a lot near the top of the failure curve for sure, but they obviously feel is within a reasonable time-frame.

It's just the whole '95C ideal temperature' to maximise performance. It's spin and not of the fan variety. If that's truly the case and it's correctly designed to be optimal at those temps. Then there must be headroom in the cooling solution, allowance for worst case scenarios, high ambient, poor airflow, crossfire installations, dust buildup. That therefore indicates a higher threshold for its maximum design envelope.

Is that the case here? How much can they run over 95C before they throttle back? Or does the core frequency drop when it actually reaches 95C? That not optimal, that operating at the edge of the envelope.

fornowagain said:

Because that whole quote is so far off reality I can't believe that what he even meant by it. It has to be out of context or I dunno, it's just wrong. And yes of course, milspec regs on top end MB's etc. But not an entire graphics card, not at this price point, no.

Click to expand...

Well it's only the GPU core that can operate at that temperature, not the whole card. Maybe take it up with AMD and put them straight?

It will be interesting to see what memory chips are on this 780ti that they can do 7GHz and 7.5 overclocked - and compare the types/models with the 290X we've seen. The 290X needs voltage control for its memory - I can do 6GHz but not much more.

Hey guys

I have tested 5 of my 6 (7th on the way) 290xs under water.

With the asus.rom bios maxed voltage (actuall voltage is <1.299v under load) i am seeing an average of 1230-1270 game stable clocks, with memory topping 1725 (6900 effective) but average landing @1600-1700.

Ill have a whole breakdown to come.

Using the pt3.rom bios, i tried feeding upwards of 1.42v (actual, setting is 1.375 or so) on these chips. On water, it depends on the chip whether it will take those volts or not. Most will take up to 1.375 (@40*c under load) before just crapping out (no matter the clocks, just fails). Iv had one lucky chip that would handle up and over 1.4v, this is also the highest asic i have (77.2%).

This lucky chip was able to go as high as 1340/1600 in valley, tuned a bit for a better score with 1320/1700 = 82.1 fps
edit: This is the right one



This chip was also good for 1315/1500 in fse, dont want to be sandbagging myself though . cpu is @ 4.7 here, so dont focus on the overall, 5.1 is being saved for later. GFX: 6600

http://www.3dmark.com/fs/1098036

Any news on when the Custom cooler 290x our out ?

That's a superb result! The R290X at 1300Mhz core is an absolute monster!

Gibbo said:

That's a superb result! The R290X at 1300Mhz core is an absolute monster!

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Who is this post aimed at?

LtMatt said:

Who is this post aimed at?

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Me i think, said a mod had to approve my post before it went up.