AMD Radeon R9 295X2 Owners Thread

[Panos]

a) Stock fan push
b) Piranha (1) push
c) Piranha (2) Push-Pull

OK. Results.

Stock fan & 1 Piranha make no difference. The Piranha is more loud also.
Temps are more or less the same. (63C/58C max temp on Valley)

However. 2 Piranhas, in Push-Pull the temps are 5C LESS on both cores on full load. Resulting at 1018/1625 a difference of 20 points in Valley (5116 against 5136). (58C/53C max temp on Valley).
That is with 80% fan speed. (46db noise from whole system).

EDIT : Quick update. (put the CPU as before)

The Piranhas at 70% are very quiet. Whole system 37db. That is 10db less between 80% (100% also) fan speed and 70%. Weird....
Same settings as before. The card max temps on Valley were 61C/57C Valley score 5148.

To sum up : -75mV || 50% PL || 1018/1625

Stock fan/Piranha_(80% speed 44db) : Max temps on Valley 63/58 - 5116 - 122.3 fps
2 Piranhas_______(80% speed 46db) : Max temps on Valley 58/53 - 5136 - 122.6 fps (possibly something tried to run on the CPU)
2 Piranhas_______(70% speed 36db) : Max temps on Valley 61/57 - 5148 - 123 fps

Hope that helps.

 

[Panos]

Can i join the club

Spoiler

That looks ace.

How are the temps and overclock?

 

[Panos]

I have the MSI Gaming GD65 board and the bios software i find quite good for controlling the fans
if need be i could use the MSI command centre but I'm happy enough with the bios setting ATM

I have the GD45. The BIOS app is great indeed and no hassle (ok 1 reboot).

Command Centre, personally I do not like it, because it sits on the system memory trying to "control" the whole system. As idea is great. Shame the OC genie functionality is pretty poor if you want to fine tune the machine.


@toby3672

Toby, just overclock bit that 3770K and you will be fine
As for the rad, put is somewhere that is HIGHER than the graphic card and blowing cold air to the rad directly.

On the previous page you will see some of my findings with the rad using 1 and 2 fans.

To reduce heat you need to lower the mV. Use MSI AB, to be able to do so.

To be safe at stock speeds you will be looking for settings are -70mV 50% PL 1018 or 1030/1625.
(do not be afraid of the memory, crack it up to 1625).

 

[Panos]

That's one HUUUGE box it comes in, for a minute I thought ocuk had kindly sent me 2.

hahaha I know the feeling. When saw it also I was in a big of a major shock.


When received the items with the card, got the 2 obvious big boxes from the reception at work, with the OC UK tape all around.

Opened them, in one were the Piranhas plus few more bits, on the other (pretty big box) the SuperFlower 1000W and a lot of padding. Had a wtf moment of where the card is.

I go downstairs, asked the receptionist and replied "yeah this box is for you also". I was in a bit of a major shock and second wtf moment. I got it upstairs, and my colleagues asked "you bought a new computer?"

Try to explain to them now that this is a graphic card only

 

[Panos]

tripple cooler !!!!! about the same size as mine, no yours is bigger, the 7990 has a very low profile cooler.............hence it runs so bloody hot

mind you, i still prefer it to those new Nvidia cards

I will point you to something, that everyone brushed under the carpet.....

The "reputable" websites doing reviews are using the 13.12 AMD drivers to compare the 980 against the 290X. Others do not state what drivers they used for the AMD at all.
And they haven't stopped there. Even the drivers they use for the GTX780/780Ti are ancient ones from February. Whiile everyone knows that the April drivers, gave a flat 12% boost on the 780/780Ti. (look at the Nvidia discussion thread for posts of that period).

 

[Panos]

Just got my 295x2 working today...

18FPS is WatchDogs w/ FXAA,
22FPS in Assassin's Creed IV,
23FPS in Witcher 2,
54FPS in Risen 3.
55FPS Crysis 3.

A single GTX 780 ti was getting:

40FPS in WatchDogs (albeit a few drops when turning),
35FPS in Assassin's Creed IV,
25FPS in Witcher 2,
70FPS in Risen 3.
35FPS Crysis 3.

Anyone know what's up? All games maxed in 1400x3440. I didn't change any settings from switching these graphics cards. Went from 14.4 to 14.7 drivers, same thing. Superflower 1200w Platinum PSU. Thanks.

Few basic steps and thoughts.

a) your CPU is an i7 920 @ 2.7Ghz :/ Overclock it as much as you can. It will always bottleneck your GPU unfortunately.

b) Use the MSI Overlay to display gpu usage per core, temperature and speed, when you play games. Keep an eye on them for throttling (it will lower your GPU speed).

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Since you are there, make it to show your CPU load and temps also.

c) I would advice to tone down power to cut some heat, and overclock the VRAM. Try to get to this setting. Some are on -100mV also.

d) Use the 14.8 WHQL drivers (not the beta) from here
http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/amd-catalyst-14-8-whql-(14-201-1008-august-12)-download.html

e) Before you install the drivers use DDU to clean up the system from any Nvidia drivers (and since you will be there the AMD ones also before you put 14.8).

After all the above. Let us know your findings.
We are here to help.

 

[Panos]

I'll give that a try, pretty impressed with it so far though

Welcome

Yeah. Who could guess that some of us, will have that monster card, and our systems will be so quiet even after 5 hours gaming at 100% load.
No more hair dryers

If you read higher up on this discussion page, you will see what I proposed to SquirrelMadness to raise the power limit to 50% and lower the mV as much as it can go.
Most of us are on -60mV to -70mV, to reduce heat and power consumption, while the card isn't affected at all.
Some even managed to make the card run at -100mV

 

[Panos]

Watch Dogs is an absolute mess, Ubi should be ashamed.

AC3 is terrible for me too. I get 20 percent GPU usage while its dipping to 15fps.

Yeah. TESO is like that.
TESO some areas it drops to 30fps, the card snores at 20% and the CPU just wants to run IBT because it has nothing to do. Rome 2 when starts snowing gets to 35fps, while CPU & GPU have nothing to do looking each other where the data are to process. (not in memory though because is empty also).

(FYI with a single GTX780 was like that also both games).

Is down to bad programming

If someone tries Tomb Raider, Crysis 3, BF4, then going to see what this card can do. (SC Arena Commander also runs really really nice on it).

I bought Crysis 3 last night, for the sake of it since I have this card, and I am all the time "ooh aah!".
Must tone down the difficulty because I find myself dead, while looking the environment.

 

[Panos]

@Drojman yeah. GTX780 was the same on TESO and Rome 2. However on Rome 2 big battles, it was a slideshow. Not with the 295X2

In addition it was the hair dryer fan on most games that used the 780, that got me most annoyed.


Btw if someone who experience issues has dust filter on the rad intake, try to see how it is without it

 

[Panos]

Spoiler

1200/1690 max clocks. 56c core1 61c core2

Does Precision allows you to get to 1690? Or you use modified BIOS?

Impressive results tbh, good one Post it on the heaven leaderboard

 

[Panos]

Hmmmm got a hard choice here. I bought an Asus Rog Swift, unfortunately there's more issues with the compatibility between this monitor and the card. Unfortunately at 100/122hz it will occationally go blank for a second or so and come back, it happens here and there. Which can be annoying if i'm dogfighting in a game. However if I put it to a 144hz it flickers like mad making it 100% unusable at that setting.
So i'm stuck with do I wait for a billion years for AMD to fix this or do I return the card and unfortunately defect to grab some 980's .

Maybe return the card and get 2 Nvidias. You will benefit more from the GSync module.

My 120hz monitor doesn't have such issues on Crysis 3 that hits 120fps on some scenes.

 

[Panos]

hehe will post it there once i figure out if i can go higher im just testing at the mo

1220core seems stable aswell lol

as for the memory yeah i am using official sapphire oc bios 1030/1300 defaults but allows a little extra oc on the memory

Link to find it please?

That is with the EK block? Need more info

 

[Panos]

1 Cards 1 block / single slot /

--
EKWB Nickle

also EK waterblock on my cpu delid @4.8ghz with 4.8ghz uncore
--

1 360 rad front
1 360 rad top
1 420 rad external.......

Yeah my fault. The EK block I wanted to ask
Cheers make.

 

[Panos]

100% failed for me when I ran my system at 4k running my 4770k at 4.4 Any other resolution it managed fine with no cpu over clocking. I bought the evga 1300 supernova. All works a charm now. Any recommendation for another 290 to run tri fire with ??

The most quiet one you can find. I doubt I will ever consider using aircooled card EVER after this one

 

[Panos]

Yeah watercooling is good.
But to be fair the AIO watercooler like the 295x2 have aren't THAT bad. Although really the main benefit with them is the space they take up rather than the cooling ability.

I was referring to the the AIO Watercooler
I haven't gone fully under water yet.

 

[Panos]

My rig pic. Good enough for the club?

Spoiler

welcome. One note though.
The radiator pipes should go to the bottom not the top.

Hi guys, i have the new sapphire radeon 295x2 but when im playing games it makes my monitors seem like the go into sleep mode. I know my games still running cause i my friends on ts tell me but i hav to retatr my pc every time.Iv tried the old drivers, current drivers and beta drivers but no joy. Pc settings are the exact same as before, i even bought a new corsair i860 psu to see if that was the problem, but no joy again. The game im playing is WoW. Anyone got any ideas????

First a pun...... The card will go to sleep if you play WoW

Second. I assume you used DDU to clean up the previous drivers.
Also I assume you are using the DP connector to the monitor correct?

Regardless, look at the power options not to turn off the monitor after x minutes.

 

[Panos]

According to the A5 warning leaflet (open the box)

The rad has to be higher than the card, and with the pipes down.

When I had it on same level or below the card, or when pipes were on the top or side the rad couldn't be touched (very hot) and the temps were 70C with the start of any 100% GPU usage.

When I put it on the correct positon, albeit on top of the case (left sided case ), the temps drop significantly and the rad never was hot on touch. (only the top of it after 2 hours on Crysis 3, but the rest of the rad was cool and max temps well bellow 70C).

Has to be overclocked heavily adding a lot of power to hit the throttling temperatures with the AIO cooling.

Also an advice, if you put a dust filter make sure is a very good one and doesn't affect airflow. The Akasa one I bought added 5C on the card temps :/

So I put it with 1cm gap to the fan, and works ok now, until I go fully under water.

 

[Panos]

Mines not overheated as such.. there was one time where i hit the 75'c limit and it throttled in a indie steam game..

i've loaded up the pc and gone straight into BF4 where it felt like it was running on one GPU when i had the Xfire enabled sign in the top right.. a reboot and it ran smoother..

also had BF4 lock up and half the screen go blue.. this time when i rebooted i only got half the screen working, other half was black.

Use MSI overlay to check your temps. Maybe undervolt your card and make sure the radiator is correctly placed as per instructions.

(Higher level than the card and the pipes at the bottom).

What are your idle temps?

If all fail and you use the Catalyst 14.8, then possibly you might need to RMA the card
Also do you use AMD Evolve having set it to optimise the games?
Do use the DP or DVI connection? Do you use adapter? have you tried without the adapter?

 

[Panos]

Anyone have a weird issue where the cores drop for like 3-4 seconds to 300mhz? Happened in both L4D and Tomb Raider for me.

I'm using Trifire and also playing at 4K, so I'm wondering if it's just a raw tech issue. It's not that big of a deal.

Depends.

If you have enabled ULPS possibly that is right. If not, and you run on reduce power, raise the power. Else, are you sure the game you play supports CF?

 

[Panos]

74C from what I've seen, though some say it is 75C. Thereabouts anyway.

To hit 75C with the stock fan, properly set and with cold air blowing at it, you need to overclock the card at 1100/1625 at least.

You will hit power limit faster than temperature limit though.
But all is theoretical.

There are modded BIOS that allows more overclocks. But I would advice not to use then but only with full blown watercooling solution.

Someone here was at 1200/1650 on full watercool and believes could push it more. Not bad for a single card tbh.