http://www.pcper.com/news/Graphics-Cards/custom-air-cooling-enough-R9-290X[H]ard|OCP has had a chance to take the time to really see how well the R9 290X can overclock, as frequencies get lower as heat increases a quick gaming session is not enough to truly represent the performance of this new GPU. The ASUS R9 290X DirectCU II OC offers a custom cooler which demonstrated the overclocking potential of this GPU on air cooling, or at least this specific GPU as we have seen solid evidence of performance variability with 28nm Hawaii GPUs. You should read the full review to truly understand what they saw when overclocking but the good news is that once they found a sweet spot for fan speed and voltage the GPU remained at the frequency they chose. Unfortunately at 1115MHz the overclock they managed was only 75MHz higher than the cards default speed and while that could beat a stock GTX 780 Ti, the NVIDIA product overclocked higher and proved the superior card.
"We will take the ASUS R9 290X DC2 OC custom AMD R9 290X based video card and for the first time see how well the 290X can overclock. We will also for the first time compare it to an overclocked GeForce GTX 780 Ti video card head-to-head and see who wins when overclocking is accounted for."
And the [H] article they are talking about:
Overclocking ASUS R9 290X DC2 OC
As we mentioned on the first page, we wanted to spend a lot of time overclocking and nailing down the best and most stable overclock we could get. We did this on both the ASUS R9 290X DirectCU II OC video card and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti video card.
Before we dive into overclocking there are some key goals we need to discuss in our attempt to overclock. We went into this overclocking exercise knowing that the AMD R9 290X GPU likes to run hot, it likes to draw a lot of power, and to keep it cool means the fans get noisy.
We know that noise is a big issue right now. The entire point of custom cooled video cards was to fix this problem. We do not want to re-introduce a noise issue by maximizing the fans to levels that a real person would truly not run their video card at 24/7. Turning the fans on the ASUS video card up to 100% are extremely loud in air noise, and most gamers or enthusiasts in the real-world would not game with his computer having the fans at this level. Therefore we took that into consideration while overclocking.
Next, we took temperature into consideration when overclocking. Sure, AMD states the GPUs can run safely at 95c. However, the whole point of having a custom cooled video card is to keep the GPU running cooler than the reference temperature.
We a have a few goals to achieve during our overclocking attempts. We want to keep the temperature cooler than the reference temperature. We want to achieve an overclock that doesn't require us to maximize the fans to an annoying level, such as 100%.
We want to balance the best overclock built for longevity while gaming, and longevity as a whole. The worst thing you want is to overclock your video card and shorten its lifespan to weeks or days. We need an overclock that a gamer or enthusiast can enable, and leave on for the life of the card without having to worry, or be annoyed.
We also want to test the video card at its absolute extreme limits, and so we have done that as well for you all. Granted, after we first found what was the stable overclock, in case we fried it during our extreme settings testing.
ASUS sent us over a brand new version of GPU Tweak for overclocking, this is version 2.5.1.1. It is important to note a couple of the settings in GPU Tweak because it changes things compared to AMD's Overdrive utility.
By default, AMD's Overdrive utility sets the fan speed not by a hard locked setting, but by a fan cap setting. What this means is that in Overdrive when you set the fan to "55%" this means the fan can rise up to 55%, but it will not always run at 55%. The fan still remains dynamic and is not hard locked at 55%. Well, GPU Tweak changes this.
Once you install GPU Tweak you can click the "Manual" button and set the fan speed to what percentage you want and it hard locks the fan speed. This means if you set 55% fan speed in GPU Tweak and hit apply the fan immediately runs at 55% and stays exactly at that percentage. This is how the fan use to be on the previous generation. GPU Tweak gives us back that functionality to control the fan precisely the way we want to. We know when we put it on 55% we are getting 55% at all times.
GPU Tweak also supports voltage overclocking on the ASUS R9 290X DirectCU II OC video card. The default voltage is 1.25v but it can go all the way up to 1.412v for extreme overclocking potential. We do not recommend that voltage on air, but we will explain more later. Finally, GPU Tweak also allows very high allowances in GPU clock and memory clock speed overclocking potential.
Finally, the Power Target option in GPU Tweak allows up to 150% increase. This will allow the R9 290X to achieve its maximum performance potential. Overall, GPU Tweak is so far the easiest, and best overclocking utility with the ASUS R9 290X DC2 OC.
Without changing voltage we managed to push the GPU up to 1080MHz. Compared to 1050MHz this is not a lot, only a 30MHz increase. However, compared to the reference clock speed of 1GHz this is an 80MHz increase, which is more respectable sans voltage increase.
For the fan speed we manually set the fan to a profile that would not be annoying, sound-wise. We found that at 60% the fans were noticeable, but not as loud as the reference cooler on the reference AMD R9 290X video card. At 60% fan speed the GPU peaked to 72c. This is over 20 degrees cooler than the reference video card.
As you can see in the monitor our GPU Clock was a steady 1080MHz with no fluctuation. The voltage dynamically ran at 1.21v automatically at its highest, despite the voltage being set at 1.25v. This shows that PowerTune is doing its thing to manually provide just the right voltage needed to support the clock speed and power load.
The memory is already overclocked to 5.4GHz from the reference spec of 5GHz. We figured we could get it higher, but not much. We were right, we got it up to 5.67GHz, which doesn't sound like a lot, but compared to the reference 5GHz spec it is. Also, because we are on a 512-bit memory bus the steps up in bandwidth are greater with each MHz. At 5.67GHz the memory bandwidth is 362GB/sec versus 320GBsec with the reference R9 290X.
Remember we said the voltage can go up to 1.412v? Well, doing so is not necessarily a wise idea, even with the custom DirectCU II cooler on the ASUS 290X. We found that increasing the voltage drastically increases the power demand of the video card it was pulling from the wall. We also noticed that it got hot fast, super hot. Hot to the point that it would only take a ridiculously loud fan, even on the custom ASUS card to keep it cool enough.
We found that the best balance for performance, heat, and noise was an increase to 1.35v. Yes, it can go to 1.4v, but we'd recommend only doing that on water cooling, or a beefier heatsink and fan than even the DirectCU II on this video card. On the next page we are going to show what our maximum overclock was at 1.4v, and you will see that it wasn't necessary to go higher. Going higher only added more heat, and we had to set the fan at 100%, which was just super loud.
Therefore, the best balance was 1.35v. At 1.35v we managed to push the GPU up to 1115MHz. This is a measly 3% increase over 1080MHz without increasing voltage. However, compared to the reference spec of 1GHz this is a 12% increase in clock speed. Compared to the out-of-box frequency at 1050MHz this is a 6% increase. Any higher would show artifacts in Far Cry 3 and eventually lead to lock ups.
For the fan we had to increase the fan to 75% from 60% we had before the voltage increase. At 75% we are at or slightly over the fan noise presented by the reference R9 290X video card. However, this fan setting was needed because as you can see in the monitor screenshot our maximum temperature did reach 90c on the GPU even at 75%.
This is still 5 degrees cooler than the reference GPU, and 90c is where the Radeon HD 7970 use to sit, so we feel comfortable with that peak. Above all we wanted to avoid having to use 100% fan speed. Anything louder than 75% was extremely annoying.
You will notice in the monitor screenshot that the clock speed is completely stable at 1115MHz with absolutely no drops or throttling. The voltage hit a maximum of 1.32v, showing that PowerTune is still actively working. Even though the GPU voltage is set at 1.35v PowerTune still dynamically changes the voltage, and often times it is under the manual voltage setting.
1.11GHz may seem like a low number, especially compared to the past generation when we were hitting 1.2 and 1.3GHz on the best video cards. Remember, this is an entirely new GPU, and the reference card runs at 1GHz and often times under that, down to 800MHz or so. Compared to that, a consistent 1.11GHz clock speed is respectable. If you are curious, the ASIC score from GPUz on our ASUS R9 290X DirectCU II OC is 72.2%.
Final Overclock: 1115MHz/5.67GHz
We tried 1.412v and it was so disastrously locking up that we backed it down to an even 1.4v. At 1.4v the absolute maximum we could achieve is a 10MHz bump to 1125MHz from 1115MHz at 1.35v. Even at only a 10MHz increase with this higher voltage games were not completely stable. We experienced lockups about 30 minute in of gaming. Therefore, we would not call this a stable overclock, it is far from stable. The 10MHz increase made no impact on performance.
Even with the fan at 100%, yes 100% with this cooler the temperature still got up to 90c at this voltage! This just shows how voltage makes these GPUs extremely hot. This is why we do not recommend this voltage on air. If you want to run above 1.35v get water, plain and simple. Another option might be three slot beefy cooling solution, perhaps along the lines of ASUS's MATRIX lines. That's about the only thing on air that could possibly run 1.4v at a decent temperature and fan noise. But honestly, water, water is probably your best bet at these kind of settings. If that will yield you a higher clock speed, we don't know, but we seemed to be at the GPU limit on our video card.
The AMD R9 290X GPU is one GPU where you don't just want to set the maximum voltage and run with it, no, not at all. If you are on air, there are definitely limits to the voltage you should safely run depending on the cooler. ASUS' DirectCU II is one of the better ones, and even with that we'd definitely never run over 1.35v on this video card. That GPU is one hot tamale.
And they compared the 290X max overclock to the 780Ti max overclock.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti
The main competition for the ASUS R9 290X DirectCU II OC is the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti. We used a reference GeForce GTX 780 Ti in our initial evaluation in performance comparison. Now we are going to overclock that video card to see how it compares to the ASUS R9 290X DC2 OC when both are overclocked. We do have a retail GTX 780 Ti review published yet, but it is currently undergoing a full review. Therefore, we will overclock the reference GTX 780 Ti. Don't worry, the GTX 780 Ti reference card blows the overclocking out of the water, even though it's a reference design. The GTX 780 Ti is one overclocking beast, so much more headroom than we thought there would be.
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These are the default settings on the GeForce GTX 780 Ti. It is your stock GTX 780 Ti running at an 876MHz baseclock and a 928MHz boost clock. The memory runs at 7GHz. Since GPU Boost 2.0 clocks the clock speed upwards based on several factors we needed to first find out what the video card was actually running at in games. We found that the GeForce GTX 780 Ti would start off at 1006MHz then after about 10 minutes in would climb down to 941MHz at 1.05v. BTW this proves "warming up" is definitely needed on all video cards, benchmarks that last shorter than 10 minutes are misrepresenting performance. At 941MHz it is above the boost clock of 928MHz. This is our starting place for overclocking. We also noted the fan was running at 61% by default, to achieve this setting.
Highest Stable Overclock
We followed the same guidelines as laid out on the previous page in regards to our goals of overclocking. We did not want to have to ramp up the fan to a noise level that gamers in the real-world would not game at. Even with the excellent cooler on the reference GTX 780 Ti if you set a 100% fan speed you will be met with a loud and fast blowing heater on your desk. It is annoying, similar to the ASUS card, at 100%. We wanted to avoid that, yet still keep the GPU cool enough, and the voltage and clock speed up.
These are the settings we found playable. First, notice that we can increase the voltage to an allowable +75mV. Therefore, we used that. Above we noted the voltage was 1.05v by default, we noticed when we increased this the voltage went as high as 1.175v, but mostly stayed around 1.125v.
We took the power target up to 106% and found the best fan setting to be 80%. At 80% the fan was much louder than 60%, but it was nowhere near as loud as 100% and allowed us to achieve a +170MHz GPU clock offset. This resulted in an in-game frequency of 1163MHz after stabilizing. Raising the fan speed to 100% did not allow a higher clock. For the memory, we achieved +300 bringing the memory to 7.6GHz.
The peak temperature at these settings was 74c at 80% fan and the voltage stayed around 1.125v. Quite a difference from the 1.135v needed on the R9 290X just to reach 1115MHz. The GTX 780 Ti reaches above that at 1163MHz with a much lower voltage, and power demand. It also does it cooler at 73c. Now, we could have made the ASUS card's GPU even cooler by raising the fan past 75%, but the noise would only increase as well. At 90c the AMD R9 290X is just fine, so that's why we allowed that to go a bit higher, to regain some sanity in fan noise.
Final Overclock: 1163MHz/7.6GHz
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2014...ctcu_ii_oc_overclocking_review/7#.UuJ9pRBFAUEThe Bottom Line
The bottom line is this, on our first attempt at overclocking a custom AMD R9 290X based video card, we are left wanting. We get the impression that the AMD R9 290X GPU is just not good at being overclocked. We base this on the fact that it consumes an abhorrent amount of power as you increase voltage, which in the process creates a crap ton of heat that needs to be displaced. All of this has to be done just to achieve a decent overclock out of it.
The fact that the AMD R9 290X video card needed a custom card configuration and custom cooling solution just to run at its stock "up to" default 1GHz without throttling is not a good sign. That then limits the potential for overclocking the GPU since the custom card and cooler are already working overtime just to run the card at its normal clock speed.
It will take some massively grotesque custom cooling on air to get the most potential out of the GPU from overclocking and also not sounding like a jet taking off. There are many manufacturers who do partake in the ultimate enthusiast based graphics card, ASUS being one of these with its MATRIX line. We don't' know if that is planned, but it is going to take that level of video card and cooling to get the most out of the AMD R9 290X on air. What an absolute beast of a GPU, and we don't mean that in a good way.
None of this is ASUS' fault, ASUS has designed a stellar video card with the ASUS R9 290X DirectCU II OC. We love this video card from an engineering standpoint in every which way. We are literally drooling at the lip over the amount of design and high-end components that went into this video card to give the AMD R9 290X the best chance it can have in a two slot design.
The only issue with the ASUS R9 290X DC2 OC is the MSRP $569.99 price tag, and the unavailability of it still. (Editor’s Note: As we are going to publish, we have finally seen a price of $699 from Newegg.) It is due out this month, but currently prices are jacked up beyond reason due to high demand of R9 290/X for mining. Hopefully these prices will stabilize and fall back down to where they need to be, but in the mean time, it does mean a more expensive purchase than it was intended to be.
If pure performance is your thing, it looks like an overclocked GeForce GTX 780 Ti may be in your future, which is showing to sell for $719.99 with Free Prime Shipping. We have a retail card undergoing a full evaluation, and that should show us the potential of what a custom card can provide. If overclocking is not your thing, the ASUS R9 290X DirectCU II OC still competes quite well with the GTX 780 Ti, beating it most of the time. Just don't overclock the 780 Ti and embarrass the AMD R9 290X GPU, that way your R9 290X GPU will stay all warm and fuzzy inside.
Quite a long read but if you are in the market for a top end GPU, well woth a read
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