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R290X What Software?

Fire_fly

Fire_fly

Fire_fly

Soldato
Joined
18 Jan 2012
Posts
3,916
Location
Derbyshire
I bought of those cheap 290Xs from yesterdays Today Only offer and now have the card sitting next to me.

I have no idea of what software to use to with the card as I am out of the loop AMD wise. The last non Nvidia card I had was back in 2008 (I have been using GeForce Experience for the last year of so and rather like it).

Is there a similar software package from AMD that will keep everything up to date? Or I I have to go back to using individual apps (Radeon Pro, CCC, etc)? If so What are the best ones to use?
 
Fire_fly said:
I bought of those cheap 290Xs from yesterdays Today Only offer and now have the card sitting next to me.

I have no idea of what software to use to with the card as I am out of the loop AMD wise. The last non Nvidia card I had was back in 2008 (I have been using GeForce Experience for the last year of so and rather like it).

Is there a similar software package from AMD that will keep everything up to date? Or I I have to go back to using individual apps (Radeon Pro, CCC, etc)? If so What are the best ones to use?
Click to expand...

All you need is CCC and away you go. However you can use MSI Afterburner for more advanced overclocking, voltage control, custom fan profiles and setting up an on screen display etc. RadeonPro has more advanced tweaks but it is not essential to use at all. AMD have also the Gaming Evolved APP, which is their version of Geforce experience, though its slightly different. You can optimize game settings, get driver update notifications, live stream your gameplay to twitch, earn points to win free games and hardware, get money off games/hardware etc. It will get installed when you install 14.4 drivers. You may need to create a Rapt account to use it though. Just follow the on screen prompts when you install the driver.
 
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I'm not too bothered with over clocking at the moment, my 680 has always been running stock clocks.

I might give that gaming evolved app a go.

Do I just install CCC or do I need to get the drivers as well?
 
Search for the latest AMD drivers on the AMD website, download and install - does everything for you! I needed to fiddle in catalyst control centre to make my monitor overscan to fill the screen - not sure why, but it works perfectly well!
 
Fire_fly said:
I'm not too bothered with over clocking at the moment, my 680 has always been running stock clocks.

I might give that gaming evolved app a go.

Do I just install CCC or do I need to get the drivers as well?
Click to expand...

Drivers+CCC One Package
http://www2.ati.com/drivers/amd-catalyst-14.4-rc-v1.0-windows-apr17.exe

MSI Afterburner Beta 19
http://www.guru3d.com/files_get/msi_afterburner_beta_download,21.html

I'd recommend using afterburner just to set a custom fan profile. Its not essential though and you can use CCC's powertune to set a Temp and Fan speed target. If you use powertune this is how it works...

sQ7dF5F.jpg


Tick enable overdrive. You have a Temp Target and a Fan speed target. The stock temp target is 95C. Powertune will manage your fan speed to try and keep the temp locked at 94C, 1c below your temp target using a maximum of the fan speed you have set. You can bring the temp down, but to do that you'll need to up the fan speed. If you want to use this id recommend trying 55% fan speed and a target temp of 90C. Experiment and see what works for you.

Or you can take my approach and use a custom fan profile with MSI Afterburner. This is my profile and it works wonderfully with reference cards. Not too loud and keeps temps lower than powertune.

QBTkWiH.jpg



Both methods work well, but personally i prefer using my own profile.
 
Cheers for the fan profiles I will give them a ago. Although coming from a Windforce card I think the increase in noise levels will be noticeable.

I'm just about to install the card now.

Will DDU remove all of my old Nivida stuff or should I manually uninstall first?
 
Fire_fly said:
Cheers for the fan profiles I will give them a ago. Although coming from a Windforce card I think the increase in noise levels will be noticeable.

I'm just about to install the card now.

Will DDU remove all of my old Nivida stuff or should I manually uninstall first?
Click to expand...

Its a reference cooler so it will definitely be louder than the Windforce cooler. ;)

DDU will remove the old drivers just fine. :)
 
Well I have the card installed and am now DLing CCC. Was a bit of PITA as I had to flash the Bios, I will need to redo all my OCs again :(

Will CCC give me mantle drivers for BF4?
 
I just get a page saying "download not complete"

So I went to to the downloads page and got catalyst from there. No idea if it is running Mantle, but according to CCC it is running "Driver package 13.251-131206a-166389C-ATI" with catalyst version 13.12.
 
Ummmm before I get to sorted that I just did a quick Valley bench mark and the screen just went black about halfway trough...

I will try a bit of BF4 but I may have problems.
 
Yeah I did promise my self that if I had a single Black screen that the card was going to go straight back. I personally can't be ***** to deal with the hassle.

A couple of things before you start, has your Box been opened? On my outer box there are marks left by adhesive stickers that are not there now. Also the anti static bag may have been opened on mine the tape seem to have been removed / replaced, there are adhesive marks that don't match.

Also check with GPU-Z what RAM your card is running, mine has Elpida not Hynix. I know Gibbo didn't promise anything but I am a little disappointed.

Finally I hope you have better luck than I am having.
 
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Fire_fly said:
Yeah I did promise my self that if I had a single Black screen that the card was going to go straight back. I personally can't be ***** to deal with the hassle.

A couple of things before you start, has your Box been opened? On my outer box there are marks left by adhesive stickers that are not there now. Also the anti static bag may have been opened on mine the tape seem to have been removed / replaced, there are adhesive marks that don't match.

Also check with GPU-Z what RAM your card is running, mine has Elpida not Hynix. I know Gibbo didn't promise anything but I am a little disappointed.

Finally I hope you have better luck than I am having.
Click to expand...

My box had the plastic cellophane cover so definitely hasn't been opened. If yours didn't have that then I would suspect it has been previously opened. Not good.

If it is elpida then I'm very tempted to just send it back, I did have a gigabyte r9 290 windforce which also had elpida and caused me no end of problems.

Will check after lunch, hope things improve for you though.
 
Oh mine had no cellophane wrapper.

and It just Blackscreened again in Valley. It took 4 reboots before it got a display back. I think this card is going back on Monday.
 
Sounds like a similar problem I had with 290's and a Gigabyte mobo (Z77X-UP4). Switched to an asus board and they're all cool.

Not saying this IS the issue with yours, but it seems to be a slightly recurring thing here for a few people and I haven't bothered to research it any further.
I believe jh30uk has an opinion this IIRC.
 
Yh I would definitely send it back and have a word with someone to see if something can be sorted.

Would not be very happy in your position, feel for you mate.
 
I have just tried to have several games on BF4 and the longest it has last was about 5 mins before black screening.

Performance wise I am quite happy, it is averaging at around 100 FPS with stock CPU in DX11. So a decent jump over the 680 it replaces.

I will try the mantle drivers, a) to hope that some form of mirical happens b) to see the extra performance gains.

Edit: it just Black screened with 14.4 drivers.
 
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Just finished installing and run gpuz. This particular gpu has hynix memory, thankfully. Will run a few benchmarks and, fingers crossed, run into no issues.

Will be interesting to see the performance difference between this and the r290 windforce I had previously before that started giving me problems.

Fire Fly, I would just return it, you shouldn't have received an open boxed item tbh.
 
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