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AMD solves R9 290 throttling problem with a new driver

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Yesterday, we detailed how troubles with AMD’s R9 290′s fan profile could lead the GPU to return slower-than-expected performance under load. This was a problem that reportedly struck both reviewers and certain retail cards and left multiple sites pulling their recommendations on the R9 290. According to AMD, the problem was caused by improper fan settings on retail cards and imprecise tuning that relied on power modulation (PWM) rather than a specified RPM speed. As a result, the company said, some retail cards that were supposed to be spinning at 47% were actually spinning as much as 350 RPM slower — thus causing the overheat issue. Last night the company pushed a new driver that would supposedly fix this by relying on RPM tuning to set fan speeds rather than PWM manipulation.

Justin Jaynes, an acquaintance of mine at Seeking Alpha, offered to contribute some results to our testing as well. He’d just ordered and received a Sapphire 100362SR. Armed with his retail card and the reference GPU AMD shipped us with a default driver, we set out to test the lay of the land. There’s good news, from multiple quarters — but first, our test results.
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http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/1...s-r9-290-throttling-problem-with-a-new-driver

 
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As a result, the company said, some retail cards that were supposed to be spinning at 47% were actually spinning as much as 350 RPM slower — thus causing the overheat issue.
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So there going be even louder then what they are now with an extra 350 RPM default fan speed......:eek:

AMD seems to be increasing the default fan speed with each new driver release :p
 
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chaparral said:
So there going be even louder then what they are now with an extra 350 RPM default fan speed......:eek:

AMD seems to be increasing the default fan speed with each new driver release :p
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Bit of a joke really.

Hate to think what it will be like next summer. These cards with reference coolers are going to be really struggling to hold the performance promised because of the throttling.

My 6870 has a reference cooler and during the summer it was running at least 10c higher then it is now.

No way would I be buying a 290/290x with reference cooler to go in my Lian Li matx case.
 
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I bet you could 'MASK' the throttling issue by having a fan profile at say 60%, but 'solve it' with a driver that increases the fan speed is a bit naff.


Next we will hear they solved the fan noise db issue by wrapping your case in cotton wool.
 
They may have fixed the extremely premature throttling which crippled performance but it doesn't change the fact that TomsHardware witnessed better performance on their review sample than the 2-3 retails samples they had, even with the 'fix' the retail cards operated 40-80mhz slower.

Plus the fun will probably start all over again come the summer.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-r9-290-driver-fix said:
Our Battlefield 4 benchmark illustrates this nicely. By default, 190 MHz separated the average core frequencies of our fastest and slowest samples. After AMD's newest driver build, that number shrinks to 81 MHz.
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Variance still exists it's just less obvious and we haven't seen any evidence yet that AMD don't 'cherry pick' review samples, certainly Toms review sample was a high quality card as it didn't seem to throttle at all.
 
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the new cards are a bit of a joke arent they, 7990 ftw lol, runs cooler, overclocks higher or around the same, and runs without throttling and is faster. amd are bloody stupid why couldnt they have released reference coolers like the one on the 7990 with there 290x cards, it would have solved all issues regarding heat with them, they must all think we are going to be running them in controlled ac lab environments lol
 
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ViRuS2k said:
the new cards are a bit of a joke arent they, 7990 ftw lol, runs cooler, overclocks higher or around the same, and runs without throttling and is faster. amd are bloody stupid why couldnt they have released reference coolers like the one on the 7990 with there 290x cards, it would have solved all issues regarding heat with them, they must all think we are going to be running them in controlled ac lab environments lol
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Because there idiots, they would have to be for them not to see all this coming....
 
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