AMD Radeon R9 295X2 Owners Thread

[Panos]

Hi guys.

Since AMD was kind enough to lower the price of the mighty 295X2, I believe quite a few of us managed to grab one, so I believe we deserve our own thread.

I know that there is this thread

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18595893

made back in April, however as you see, there are more Tumbleweed references, than actual posts about the 295X2 (actually none).

Of course if the forum moderators believe that the discussions should be merged, feel free to do so, and I apologise for opening a new discussion.



Personally I am waiting my 295X2 tomorrow, alongside two Piranha fans, which I believe going to be the best stepping stone before go full water sometime around Christmas as planned.

 

[Panos]

Got mine today. Sapphire r9 295x2. Installed and powered up, but just got a black screen, no bios or anything. I'm using a Corsair HX1000W with an Asus Maximus Ranger vii MB. The fan on the card and the radiator both spin, and the lights on the card come on, but there is no sign of a signal over the dvi port. I don't have a display port monitor to check the other connections. I've reseated the card in all of my pcie slots, tried using different pcie cables between the psu and the card, upgrading the bios, no luck. I replaced with my r9 290x (yes I know, I'm in the midst of a spendathon), and it works fine.

Can anyone suggest anything else I should check before I arrange for RMA?

Any help much appreciated.

Hi

If correct the HX1000W is dual rail PSU yes? Please make sure that each 8pin connector is coming from different rail, not the same. (wild guess on the last part)


Here is a discussion about HX1000W and 295X2 also.

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?p=26854851

 

[Panos]

Are the 295x2's EOL or do you expect to be getting more cards from the distributors?

The offer was for 100 units at that price.

And if I remember correctly AMD only produced 2500 of them, as limited edition card.

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This is the first time I follow the DPD delivery guy -_- He is only 100 metres away, but according to the delivery schedule, I have to wait another 5 hours

bou houuuuuuuuuuu

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[Panos]

It's really only 4GB unfortunately, as the 8GB is split.

There is always the solution of the heat gun, and replace the VRAM modules

 

[Panos]

Did you read the link I posted last night with someone else who had issues with HX1000W and 295X2?

I wouldn't be surprised if it is PSU issue and not graphic card.

 

[Panos]

Take out one of the 8 Pin connectors and use a different one.

The idea being; splinting the rails, if its a 1000 Watt PSU with 2 rails it will have something like 42 Amps on each rail, if you hock up the GPU to one Rail thats all you will get.

so try to find the other Rail to give it 2x 42 Amps instead of 1x.

This MIGHT work.

I have a Corsair 700W (6 years old as old as the HX1000W ) and one rail goes to the motherboard plus one power cable, the other rail supplies the rest of the cables according to the PSU information.

Hence is always tricky to find out which is what when I wanted to power the SLI 560s and the 7950s CF, making it a puzzle every time to sort out the power distribution.

I am not surprised if the Corsair 1000W has the same configuration.

Hence I bought a superflower along with the 295X2.

 

[Panos]

My PC decided that Christmas should come early this year, and put the lights up already........

Usually people ask "will this card going to fit into my case?". Pfff mere mortals

For me the question was "damn will his PSU will fit into my case?????"

 

[Panos]

You must be kidding me.

That is why the second GPU is so lazy?

I will check it when the download of the 14.4 finishes.

EDIT :

Only got the 1. Seems odd.

Also I've found that the card starts to drop frames big time when it heats up to about 68c in Unigine Valley. As in it goes from a happy 90 or so down to 30 - 40, stutters for a bit then goes back up. Anyone else experienced this? Happens in Battlefield 4 as well after the card has heated up.

There is also an empty 2 pin header behind the fan on the pcb, is this the same for everyone?

The GPU2 goes to sleep the moment it hits 68C throttling down to 600 mhz, while during valley even GPU1 never bothered to wake up and is working at 70-80% while at 70C-74C
(setup MSI AB Overlay)

 

[Panos]

My connector is on it seems. At least the one that shows under the red fan.

I replaced the rad fan with 2 Piranhas that are working at 100% speed atm. (they are tad loud).

used the CCC overdrive, overclocked the graphic card to just 1110/1625.

Going to give it another run on Valley.....

EDIT

OK.

Card seems right at first glance. The overclock didn't throttle down, temps hold at 70C & 64C respectively with the two Piranhas and had no throttling.

See if all OK tomorrow and going to raise the CPU back to 5Ghz (lowered it just in case), and see how far I can push it before I got under "proper" water.

However I am sure there is something wrong with the pump. Where can we find out if the pump is working at 100% or is throttling depending the heat? (also where do we set the fan speed for the red fan it working at 22%)

The card on Valley doing 4470 at extreme 1110/1625! That is less than some 7970s, and some of the time the card was working at 80-85% only, for whole frame test. (no speed throttling and temps bellow 70C and 64C) Darket with similar overclock has 500 points more.

(Kaapstad or LtMatt around, might provide some help?)

EDIT 2. Did another run with 1130/1625 and had the GPUZ open. hmm 146C???????

 

[Panos]

Whatever I do, I can't get Heaven 4.0 to go past 2400 score.

I uninstalled/re-installed the Catalyst drivers this morning, but had the same thing.

If I run the benchmark twice in a row, the second score is always around 150 less than the first time as well.

Any ideas? I've checked GPU-Z and the card isn't throttling due to temperature, but there's one or two (literally split second) blips in the log where the core clock drops from 1018 to below 1000.

Put MSI AB, set up the overlay and observe how it performs on core speed, load, temps each GPU.

Also make sure you have everything set on default at CCC.

I will try heaven tonight.

However much admit, at 1135/1625 (4820K @4824), is still getting trashed by 500 points on Valley by two aircooled 290X @ 1100/1325 (3770 @3500).
I doubt is CPU throttling, since is runs pretty cool at 50C on heavy load, nor GPU throttling since the temps do not go up and the cores stay at 1135 during the duration of the benchmark. And is tad weird not throttling on 3770@3500 while throttling on 4820@4824.

I will use the 14.4 catalysts tonight and see if they perform better than the 14.7 RC3.

 

[Panos]

Guys

I've said this before, the 295 X2 do not respond well to overclocking the core, infact pushing the core past 1030MHz can causes big drop off's in performance and general strange running, due to power issues as the boards power design cannot supply enough continuous current for such overclocks unless modified.

In our testing we found the cards performed best, especially in games leaving core at stock and just overclocking the RAM.

Thanks Matt, I will give it a try tonight.

Btw, any thought why the idle temps are the same between the stock fan and 2 Piranhas at 100% speed? Does the pump throttles based on heat?

 

[Panos]

I can only get around a max of 1150/1690 max memory from my R9295x2 with full waterblock.

Its perfect for me and jumps performance up quite a bit.

But like 8Pack said i could get 1200 with perfect temps but the board power causes issues... if only i could get more than 50% power target lol
going to get a 290x around christmas time and run them all @1150/1690

The MSI AB has unlocked for me the mV bar to add more power. However I do not know how far I can push it for maximum safe to be honest along with the +50% more power. :/


@Blitzkrieg

Yeah indeed. I put bit TW Rome 2 last night and was mind blowing. TESO on the other hand was bit weird last night.

Not that faster than with the single 780. Has no profile, while tried default, FARP and 1x1 in vain. Like everyone else suggested... :/

But I will find solution to the problem..... Going to install tonight Tomb Raider though

 

[Panos]

Where do you find all these Crossfire profiles? Can't see them in CCC for instance.

To see them on 14.7 RC3 you need to make a custom profile for the application, and is at the bottom of the settings....

Surprisingly the AMD Evolve client doesn't display the settings you force from the CCC on that area even if yuo make custom CCC settings for a program.
And I bet that the bad performance on TESO happens because Evolve applies it's settings, and since it cannot find a AMD profile for TESO does nothing, instead of applying the custom setting from CCC where I tried Default/Farp/1x1.

I will confirm if that is the case tonight, because I had Evolve off this morning when logged in TESO to get the hirelings and the fps were sky high. But didn't moved a lot around since I was going to work.

 

[Panos]

Would the CPU have an effect? the 8350 v 5930k isn't really a contest.

My thoughts exactly.

The 285 run on a 5930K @ 4250 with 32GB RAM
The 290 run on a 8350 @ 4515 with 8GB RAM

Could be down to CPU also

 

[Panos]

Jesus Christ.....

My 290 @ 1100/1406 = 19672
Gibbo's 285 = 32912 (+65%)

Your 285 just destroyed my 290

Heaven scores on my 290 are much higher though, i'm not sure its tessellation that gives Nvidia the advantage in it.

Yeah :/
My 295X2 @ 1030/1625 got 20298!!!!!!!!!!!! Explain that -_-

Spoiler

@Gibbo, you were right...... 1030 the card performs great.

 

[Panos]

yes 14.7rc3 caused me a 1 second blackscreen every 20 minutes or so. I went for the 14.8whql release from guru3d and I've not had one blackout in 2 hours of Tomb Raider

Also Tomb raider at 4k can cause throttling. I've solved this even with an overclock to 1080mhz core by simply adding a sharkoon silent eagle to the other side of the radiator so it goes:

outside case < silent eagle <radiator <amd stock fan

This means I don't ever get to 74 degrees anymore when under 100% load for hours so no throttling of clock speeds down to 860mhz which was happening at stock.

I recommend reducing core voltage by 25mv in afterburner 4.0.0 too as this knocks an extra couple degrees off and my card is still stable at 1080mhz core. Stopping the trottling has improved my framerate at 4k maxed out with FXAA from 48fps to 55fps on average in the same area following 10 minutes of heavy load. The 25mv was essential to stop throttling even at stock with the extra fan.

I didn't have long screws to add another fan so I took the screws out of the amd fan and put them through the case into the sharkoon and radiator. Then used sellotape brand sticky fixers to stick the amd fan back on the other side. Works a treat

With a better fan than the sharkoon silent eagle like a 2000rpm I think temps could be even kept under 70 permanently. Considering 290x cards don't throttle until 95c this is fantastic!

The 14.4 drivers basically are like a blackscreen fest for 4k and the 14.7rc caused less but still some blackouts.

I followed your advice. This is the first card ever that I reduced power while overclock more and was faster !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In the mean time left only one Piranha on the radiator, working at 80% and the system is pretty quiet also!!!!!! The 780 was screaming when it was running valley!!!!!

Thank you (we need to put your statue on a plinth also)
Over weekend going to explore more this beautiful and unknown beast.

 

[Panos]

You have 0 Power limit, set it to 20% in MSI AB and CCC as i explained in the Valley thread.

Less chance of throttling like that, it might help.

Thank you.

But I had 50% power limit on the previous tests I run!!! and they were worst than the last one with 0% power limit and -25mV

That is why I am shocked........

Seems I need to forget the Nvidia methodology of Overclocking. More Power = more performance

 

[Panos]

What is everyones idle temp?

With 1 Piranha @ 80%, 32 and 30 respectively.

 

[Panos]

I am idling at 50c, is it possible to adjust the fan speed of the one connected to the GPU?

No. That one is throttled based on the temp of the coolant it seems.
Only if you plug it directly on power you will force it to run at 100%.

 

[Panos]

32 and 30 degrees at 80% load? How good is that bloody Piranha fan!

The question was Idle temps. So my idle tems are 32 & 32 @ 80% fan speed.

Full load is 72C & 67C while running Valley atm. (80% fan speed the Piranha still)