Respectable 280X OC?`

C6ckneyGeezer

C6ckneyGeezer

C6ckneyGeezer

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I have bought myself a Sapphire Vapour X R9 280X OC with stock clocks of 1070 Core and 1550 Mem.

In CCC Overdrive I have manged to get to 1120 Core and 1600 Mem and as of yet no artifacts or crashing etc. I have set the power limit to 20% as this is what most reviews set it at, any benerfit in setting it higher?

I am testing with kombuster and any increase on the the core gets artifacts and any increase on the mem hold no performance gain so didn't see the need to push it anymore. And of course as im using CCC this is no volt increase at all.

The OC has gave me about an extra 5FPS in BF4. Any advice on this OC? Should I push for more or be happy? Also any info on the power limit setting? Seems to have no effect on performance, I only set it to 20% as thats what most reviews have it set at.

Any help appreciated!
 
First thing to do is remove kombuster from your system before you damage your card.

Then leave the power at +20 and go straight for 1650mem And 1200 core. Now try out some bf4 and if you get no crashes or artifacts (i usually get flashing textures in bf4 if i go to far) then leave it as is. If you get sny problems bring the core clock down 20mhz at a time until its stable.

Both my 7970's do 1200/1800 with voltage tweaks, one of them does 1320/1900 with 1.3v but mine are water cooled so i can be a little more brash with voltage :)

Forget synthetic benchmarks, many times ive got thru runs of haven and firestrike etc only to crash out after 5 mins of gaming. Benchmarks are left for score board bragging rights :)
 
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The fact that your 7970s do 1200 at stock voltage does not mean his 280x will do 1200 at all. I had a 7970 before my current 280x, neither of them did 1200mhz fully stable. At any voltage, at any temperature.
I completely aggree about the rest though. Use something like Valley or Heaven to test for quick stability and then confirm with games. Something like 1150-1200 mhz at 1.2 to 1.25v is realistic.
 
If you re read my post they do 1200 core with voltage tweaks, i only suggest starting from
This point as its quicker to start from the top and work down as pretty much all 7970s got
To 1100 without any voltage adjustment.

By using catalyst controll centre and adding + 20 it automatically adds voltage to
A certain point according to a set table within ccc itself so your not using 'stock' voltage as it were

Edit :-Text looks ok on phone, no idea why its split up when posted :s
 
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I also recommend not using CCC at all, afterburner and trixx are so much superior and I have read about lack of voltage control outside trixx for some of the newer Sapphire cards depending on the model number as usually there is more than one version of the same chip.
 
I've also got a 7970 (a Matrix Platinum) and run it at 1100mhz core and 1650mhz mem day to day (I think that's stock isn't it).
I have run my mem at 1750 without any problems, but the core seems to top out at 1120 and anything after that I get artifacts on the Tomb Raider Benchmark... To be perfectly honest there's loads of settings on it, most of which I don't know what they do so any advice would be great appreciated :D
 
Any reason to stop using Kombuster? Also any advantage of using more than 20% power limit?

Ive managed to get 1120 Core and 1620 Mem as of now. Anything more more and I get artifacts in games/benches. Which is nice, now I get around 80FPS in BF4 on Ultra but with AA off.

Edit: All replies much appreciated guys, thanks!

Edit2; Is 1.3V in Trixx safe to use aslong as temp is fine. Thats the max it allows in trixx.
 
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Kombustor/Furmark is a synthethic benchmark that puts unnaturally high stress on the gpu, a scenario it will never, ever be in. Pretty much nothing on the PCB is designed for that type of stress, even the core itself. It does not give you any real-world information about stability or temperatures and is just pointless.

About the 20% (or as it should be +20%), try without it and you will be amazed how much lower your results will be. :) Keep it at 20%, with any program you use, they all have that option.

Artefacts are usually "cured" with voltage, the cooler on your card is very capable so you should be able to squeeze whatever the core can do at pretty much any voltage up to say 1.3V.
P.S. Did you try afterburner/trixx as advised?
P.P.S. And do not jump straight to games as it will take you forever to pin point a sort-of -stable settings that you can then test with prolonged gaming sessions.
DJ_Bucho said:
I've also got a 7970 (a Matrix Platinum) and run it at 1100mhz core and 1650mhz mem day to day (I think that's stock isn't it).
I have run my mem at 1750 without any problems, but the core seems to top out at 1120 and anything after that I get artifacts on the Tomb Raider Benchmark... To be perfectly honest there's loads of settings on it, most of which I don't know what they do so any advice would be great appreciated :D
Click to expand...

I also had a 7970 Matrix Platinum, before it died, and it did 1160MHz stable with 1820MHz on the memory. I still consider this quite mediocre for that type of a card. I do know what all the setting mean and have used them all.
 
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Stuen4y said:
Kombustor/Furmark is a synthethic benchmark that puts unnaturally high stress on the gpu, a scenario it will never, ever be in. Pretty much nothing on the PCB is designed for that type of stress, even the core itself. It does not give you any real-world information about stability or temperatures and is just pointless.

About the 20% (or as it should be +20%), try without it and you will be amazed how much lower your results will be. :) Keep it at 20%, with any program you use, they all have that option.

Artefacts are usually "cured" with voltage, the cooler on your card is very capable so you should be able to squeeze whatever the core can do at pretty much any voltage up to say 1.3V.
P.S. Did you try afterburner/trixx as advised?
P.P.S. And do not jump straight to games as it will take you forever to pin point a sort-of -stable settings that you can then test with prolonged gaming sessions.


I also had a 7970 Matrix Platinum, before it died, and it did 1160MHz stable with 1820MHz on the memory. I still consider this quite mediocre for that type of a card. I do know what all the setting mean and have used them all.
Click to expand...

Ahh I see the logic behind it now. I am going to give Trixx a go tomorrow and see what my results are by increasing the voltage. I see Trixx has a VDDC setting which im guessing is Core voltage? So in therory my mem clock is at the max as VDDC does not control mem voltage?
 
VDDC is core voltage, if there is memory voltage control, there will be a slider that will say memory voltage, or something like that. Usually not all cards have memory voltage control, my VTX3D for example has some but the Samsung chips (surprisingly) are not that responsive to voltage increase and the gains are quite small. I would not bother. You could also see what your memory is with the latest version of GPU-Z. If it is Elpida, do not even bother trying to overclock it more, it won't. :) Hynix is better and usually Samsung overclock the best, but you would have been able to do at least 1700-1750MHz if they were Hynix/Samsung so I guess they will be Elpida.
 
Thanks for the help guys!

Using Trixx I am running at 50&+ power limit, 1.3V and have a Core clock of 1200 and a Mem clock of 1600. The core started to artifact at 1230 and the mem at 1640 so I backed off to those figures to give it a bit of headroom and be 100% stable.

Oh and the mem is Elpida so didn't bother trying to push more like you suggested and infact backed off to 1600 to make sure.

Also temps hit around 65* max while in BF4 and running a few loops of Heaven.
 
I think 1200 is pretty much the maximum you could realistically expect for 24/7 stable frequencies. Just have in mind that 1.3V is quite a lot of voltage but if you can cool it, it should be fine.
 
Cheers Stuen4y! Yeah temps are fine, glad I went for the vapour x version now! It seems also that alough I have selected a max 1.3v in Trixx, under full load GPUZ says the VDDC voltage is 1.256v, so not so high after all.
 
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