R9 290X Owners Thread

Relentless81 · 6 Sep 2015 at 14:18

Hello,

I decided to OC my 290X as its been AIO cooled for a while, a standard run of heaven gave 59FPS, 1080P Ultra Settings and 4 x AA -

I only seem to be able to get 1100 on the GPU and 1300 on the RAM without Heaven crashing and this gives an increase of 5FPS to 64 as the result in Heaven

Is this a normal expected increase? I don't see any artifacting if I go higher and the temps stay under 70C it just crashes to desktop with Display Driver Stopped Responding

Its an XFX Reference card with a H55 cooler and Corsair HG10 Adaptor

Thanks

bloodkil · 6 Sep 2015 at 16:06

Relentless81 said:
Hello,

I decided to OC my 290X as its been AIO cooled for a while, a standard run of heaven gave 59FPS, 1080P Ultra Settings and 4 x AA -

I only seem to be able to get 1100 on the GPU and 1300 on the RAM without Heaven crashing and this gives an increase of 5FPS to 64 as the result in Heaven

Is this a normal expected increase? I don't see any artifacting if I go higher and the temps stay under 70C it just crashes to desktop with Display Driver Stopped Responding

Its an XFX Reference card with a H55 cooler and Corsair HG10 Adaptor

Thanks

What voltage and Power Limit are you giving it?

Relentless81 · 6 Sep 2015 at 16:52

I want to keep the voltage at standard settings for now, the power limit is set to max which only seems to allow +50%

bloodkil · 6 Sep 2015 at 19:11

Relentless81 said:
I want to keep the voltage at standard settings for now, the power limit is set to max which only seems to allow +50%

OK, that'll be why, that's about as high as these cards will do on stock, I wouldn't see the harm in even giving it like +50mV providing temps are ok and see what it'll do.

GoogalyMoogaly · 12 Sep 2015 at 12:15

Sorry if this has been mentioned (it's a long thread), but what size PSU do you need to run these in 2-way crossfire?

passey89 · 12 Sep 2015 at 13:13

Lustral said:
Got a colleague or a friend that has a half decent rig to test the Graphics Card on ? Only other option is to bite the bullet and get a decent PSU that is at least 750W , something like a Corsair RM750 and see how you get on.

GoogalyMoogaly said:
Sorry if this has been mentioned (it's a long thread), but what size PSU do you need to run these in 2-way crossfire?

850w minemum really

dfour · 12 Sep 2015 at 15:56

1k ideally IMHO.

Meladath · 12 Sep 2015 at 20:52

I run my 2 290's off a 850W fine and have had not a single problem. Look at the power consumption of a 295X2 in a review to see how much they use. 750W should be ok but might be a bit tight.

nails666 · 12 Sep 2015 at 21:08

GoogalyMoogaly said:
Sorry if this has been mentioned (it's a long thread), but what size PSU do you need to run these in 2-way crossfire?

Generally regarded that a good quality 850w (something like a superflower) is fine with spare capacity for overclocking.

BluD · 12 Sep 2015 at 21:38

Yeah im using a 850 evga g2 and running both cards at 1.4v and the cpu at 1.38 with no probs.

Relentless81 · 18 Sep 2015 at 07:04

I can only seem to get 1175 on the core with +63 MV in Afterburner

Is that voltage ok and how do I know what the actual voltage is, the VDDC in GPU-Z seems to stay low if its not under load so its difficult to get the get the actual figure and the way Afterburner shows is a bit daft

mururoa · 18 Sep 2015 at 08:14

Relentless81 said:
I can only seem to get 1175 on the core with +63 MV in Afterburner

Is that voltage ok and how do I know what the actual voltage is, the VDDC in GPU-Z seems to stay low if its not under load so its difficult to get the get the actual figure and the way Afterburner shows is a bit daft

1175 with only +63mV is not half bad, actually it's really good; now, the amount of voltage you should be giving it depends on the model of your card, as certain few have coolers capable of handling a lot more heat than the others. Sapphire's Vapor-X, for example, can happily take +150mV all day every day with the VRM temps never rising much above +70'C.

VDDC under load is what you should be monitoring, as the voltage fluctuates according to the load. GPU-Z is good for that.

Edit: Just noticed you are AIO-cooling your card; is there active cooling on the VRMs as well?

Relentless81 · 18 Sep 2015 at 08:31

Thanks for the reply, its a corsair hg10 aio adaptor so the original fan cools the vrms. One of then hits 84c in a full run of Heaven, core isn't a problem it stay under 60c

How much more head room do I have with that vrm temp do you think?

mururoa · 18 Sep 2015 at 09:23

Technically, the voltage regulators on these cards are specced to withstand something silly like 125'C constant - the same module is used on Fury X, for example, and it does get somewhat toasty at close to 100'C yet that's just ok.

I would aim at keeping it under 100; this is not based on anything other than personal feeling and preference. In my experience, the clocks don't scale all that well beyond +100mV anyway and since you are at a very respectable 1175 already with +63mV, it might well be that you reach the limits of the core without having to pump lots and lots of extra V into it.

Relentless81 · 18 Sep 2015 at 09:38

I thought 100c too.

I think you might be right, although I will try for 1200 tonight I got the impression that the core wont go over 1175 but I wanted to check how much more volts I can toy with so ill tray again later for 1200 and put a bit more volts through it than I tried last night

Rezident · 18 Sep 2015 at 11:41

I was going to get a Fury but now I’m half thinking of just getting another 290X instead. Some of the gains in games look amazing but one review was saying that there was no point in X-Fire 290X’s @ less than 2560 x 1440 as the scaling fell off below that. I’m happy at 1920 x 1200 but would still like more gpu headroom (for things like GTA V and then the new Deus Ex in February). It X-Fire really just for 2560 x 1440 res. and above?

Relentless81 · 18 Sep 2015 at 13:23

Nah, not sure why review would say that as xfire 290x I still limited by its 4gb ram in anything more than 1080p, I would have thought at 1080p the biggest benefit would be the grunt translating to higher fps

thebennyboy · 23 Sep 2015 at 13:41

Just ordered myself a 290X Lightning, due to arrive in the next couple of days. Excited is an understatement! A birthday gift for myself.

nails666 · 23 Sep 2015 at 14:43

Relentless81 said:
Nah, not sure why review would say that as xfire 290x I still limited by its 4gb ram in anything more than 1080p, I would have thought at 1080p the biggest benefit would be the grunt translating to higher fps

4GB may be a limit at 4k in some games but at anything less it won't be at all. Xfire 290x will be very good at 1440p

MrMarvelous · 23 Sep 2015 at 14:53

thebennyboy said:
Just ordered myself a 290X Lightning, due to arrive in the next couple of days. Excited is an understatement! A birthday gift for myself.

According to your sig you already have a 290 Tri-X, how come you've gone for a slightly faster 290?