Hi there
Today I binned 10 MSI 290X for 8 Pack, for some new PC's, the card we choose to use was MSI's latest 290X Gamer Edition as reports were sounding good plus I had a hunch they might use Hynix memory.
My hunch was correct, both the 290 and 290X are indeed at present using Hynix memory, though OcUK will not guarantee this as they could change at any time.
Anyway I flashed all 10 cards to the Asus BIOS, for more voltage to the core and I ran them with fan at 100% speed, now the impressive part is fan at 100% on this cooler is half the noise of the reference card at 75% fan speed and the cooler is simply far better. Onto results in short out of the 10 cards tested for benchmarking stability (Heaven, 3D Mark etc):-
Set with GPU Tweak, vcore @ 1.41v and one card struggled to exceed 77c even with below clock speeds, a very impressive cooler.
Worse core speed: 1215MHz
Best core speed: 1260MHz
Worse memory speed: 6600MHz
Best memory speed: 6900MHz
These results are nothing short of amazing, especially to have such good consistent results across the board.
So I thought I'd throw three of them in Crossfire, big cooling issues as the cards sit right next to each other blocking airflow, so the primary card hits 95c a lot and throttles even with my added cooling fans. Check the picture here:-
So the top card would throttle from time to time, in short two cards is the ideal gaming setup, three cards for benching and only for gaming if you can space them apart far enough to allow airflow, otherwise two is the best choice.
Some benchmarks:-
Unfortunately Asus GPU Tweak would not allow me to overclock three cards, for whatever reason it threw its toys out the pram and killed the performance, so I used MSI after burner and used the following speeds in crossfire:-
Core: 1210-1230MHz dependent on benchmark (ON THREE CARDS ALL HITTING 90c)
Memory: 6500MHz
(Maximum MSI Afterburner slider allows, these three cards can run at 6800MHz, tomorrow I shall get this sorted so 6800MHz is possible, well 8 Pack will as he has the version to allow this.
My CPU was a Haswell at 4.90GHz in the very well priced Gigabyte OC Force motherboard and just some 2400MHz RAM, nothing crazy here, so a lot more tuning here will see much higher physics score in 3D Mark series.
Anyway, in short check these results:-
I have no idea how these scores compare, but on initial impression they look pretty damn good, especially considering there is so much more to give, easy enough 10-20MHz left in the core and a good 300MHz left in the memory. Then get the memory upto 2900-3200MHz and physics score would be impacted very positively.
So tomorrow the real deal is putting these cards under LN2, yes 8 Pack is gonna thrash these cards within an inch of their life under some LN2 cooling and hopefully he shall claim a few more world records.
Good luck for tomorrow Ian.
P.S. Without a doubt MSI is definitely the TOP PLAYER and TOP CHOICE with their Gamer series of 290 cards.
Today I binned 10 MSI 290X for 8 Pack, for some new PC's, the card we choose to use was MSI's latest 290X Gamer Edition as reports were sounding good plus I had a hunch they might use Hynix memory.
My hunch was correct, both the 290 and 290X are indeed at present using Hynix memory, though OcUK will not guarantee this as they could change at any time.
Anyway I flashed all 10 cards to the Asus BIOS, for more voltage to the core and I ran them with fan at 100% speed, now the impressive part is fan at 100% on this cooler is half the noise of the reference card at 75% fan speed and the cooler is simply far better. Onto results in short out of the 10 cards tested for benchmarking stability (Heaven, 3D Mark etc):-
Set with GPU Tweak, vcore @ 1.41v and one card struggled to exceed 77c even with below clock speeds, a very impressive cooler.
Worse core speed: 1215MHz
Best core speed: 1260MHz
Worse memory speed: 6600MHz
Best memory speed: 6900MHz
These results are nothing short of amazing, especially to have such good consistent results across the board.
So I thought I'd throw three of them in Crossfire, big cooling issues as the cards sit right next to each other blocking airflow, so the primary card hits 95c a lot and throttles even with my added cooling fans. Check the picture here:-
So the top card would throttle from time to time, in short two cards is the ideal gaming setup, three cards for benching and only for gaming if you can space them apart far enough to allow airflow, otherwise two is the best choice.
Some benchmarks:-
Unfortunately Asus GPU Tweak would not allow me to overclock three cards, for whatever reason it threw its toys out the pram and killed the performance, so I used MSI after burner and used the following speeds in crossfire:-
Core: 1210-1230MHz dependent on benchmark (ON THREE CARDS ALL HITTING 90c)
Memory: 6500MHz
(Maximum MSI Afterburner slider allows, these three cards can run at 6800MHz, tomorrow I shall get this sorted so 6800MHz is possible, well 8 Pack will as he has the version to allow this.My CPU was a Haswell at 4.90GHz in the very well priced Gigabyte OC Force motherboard and just some 2400MHz RAM, nothing crazy here, so a lot more tuning here will see much higher physics score in 3D Mark series.
Anyway, in short check these results:-
I have no idea how these scores compare, but on initial impression they look pretty damn good, especially considering there is so much more to give, easy enough 10-20MHz left in the core and a good 300MHz left in the memory. Then get the memory upto 2900-3200MHz and physics score would be impacted very positively.
So tomorrow the real deal is putting these cards under LN2, yes 8 Pack is gonna thrash these cards within an inch of their life under some LN2 cooling and hopefully he shall claim a few more world records.
Good luck for tomorrow Ian.
P.S. Without a doubt MSI is definitely the TOP PLAYER and TOP CHOICE with their Gamer series of 290 cards.
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