Asus R9 290 GPU - My Results

Well just nabbed this today. Going to make this short and sweet because its late, but defiantly more results to follow.

So got the card, had issues with it booting on the PC. Eventually updated the bios and it worked like a charm. Did some resetting back up on the PC and all up and running with my new R9 290 card. I came from a 7950HD doing 1050/1350 roughly.

Figured I'd play around with OCing it right off the bat, so far so good much more tweaking to play with but right now hits around 71C under load on the GPU using default fan speed profile.

Running 1100Mhz/1375Mhz to try it out at first. Seemed to glitch at the tail end of a test so might of pushed the memory a little too much so backed it down to 1350Mhz for ram. GPU voltage I got at 1300mV and power target at 130% right now.

First test was 3DMark Firestrike on Extreme.
Scored nearly 5k. Coming from a 3-3.5k setup that is a nice improvement in benchmark.

Anyways time to hit the sack and look at this more later. One question I will have is on power. Some reason I can't find my 6-Pin connector from my PSU to GPU so right now I am just using a 4-Pin Molex connector to 6-Pin. Nothing else on that connection to the PSU but curious if its safe?

Nice,

First thing I would do is grab some high quality TIM and replace the factory goo, that may grab you a degree or 3

The Asus overclocking software is pretty nice, do you like it or are you using something else ?

Sounds like you could use a more aggressive fan profile ....

However just over a 50% increase in Fire Strike, not to shabby at all.

Did you check the ASIC's quality , hopefully it is a good one

Look forward to more results

Are you happy with the overall quality of the product ? I know I was very pleased with their GTX780 I recently bough for a client build. Really liked the Smart Doctor software as well. I could not believe how heavy it was ... just looks menacing .......

Nice! But 1.3v and 1100mhz? Seems brutally high...

EarthDog said:

Nice! But 1.3v and 1100mhz? Seems brutally high...

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I agree, that is why I am wondering how good of chip he got in the lottery.

The temps at the voltage are a tribute to the coolers efficiency and clean power delivery

That and its not a leaky chip. I would guess it is a higher ASIC because of that...(?)

We will have to see what Deathman finds out with further testing.

He may have not had a ton of time to really dial it in tight.

Hey guys. To answer a few questions you've brought up.

1.25V was stock. I bumped it 50mV to 1.3V. I just wanted to bump it to see what it really could do without worries. Just wanted to run it and was following a reviews setting at the time since it took me 3 hours to go WTF of why it wasn't booting. At first I thought it was my 4-Pin Molex to 6-Pin issue and that turned out to be just bios. So guess I was eager on playing with it. Even with just a 30% power increase, the review was using 50%.

I originally had the MSI Afterburner software onboard, after just dropping my card in (no need to re-install drivers thought that was cool) fired up and was recognized right away. Though after seeing Asus's I uninstalled MSI and went with the Asus software. TBD as I haven't had time to look to see if it has a G510 profile so show stats on the LCD on my keyboard. Temporarily its good for now.

I figured I'd replace TIM in due time. Since they have a warranty sticker on the heatsink over one screw, I totally kill warranty if I touch it :/ Sucks, guess that was nice about my Sapphire card I did have that it wasn't an issue. I'll look into that later. If it becomes more of a concern and want to improve temps I'll defiantly touch it.

As for the fan profile. Yeah it was 100% stock fan profile, as I get time I'll tweak it. Really I'm shocked how low it was. The VRM's where in the mid 60's. Really for how warm I've seen some of these just tapping into the 70's is doable for me. As well didn't have the side of my case on with a fan that blows on the card so it should drop once I get it dialed in more. Not worried about it that much right now. Just happy its running and getting a decent OC out of the gate even if it seems high.

Now with ASIC's quality. What the heck is this? I recently saw it and was scratching my head exactly what it means. My old card only had a 57.x% if not mistaken when I looked at the test the other day. Also if I open it up and run it, should I be doing it at stock settings or OCed settings? Does it even matter?

My only main concern right now is the 4-Pin to 6-Pin PCI-E connector. I might see if I can stop at a local store and get a Dual 4-Pin to 6-Pin PCI-E connector. Pissed that I think I gave away my 6-Pin to 6-Pin for my PSU somewhere down the line. Guess I'll just get a new PSU eventually here. Going on 7+ years if not mistaken with it so I think its due time to probably retire it before I get nervous about it.

Really I can't wait til tonight to test it more and be a little more detailed on it. Probably won't be til 9-10pm CST that I get a chance to look at it but it should be fun

I know my results from the Fire Strike was impressive I thought. I know my latest tests with my old card 7950 doing 1050/1350 was well slow only getting around 3.1k in Win8.1. Though I'm newly into a reload on the OS I forgot to really write down all my settings so I'm sure it could go higher if I had time to play with it and more back to my original settings. My Win7 setup I had before was getting higher but I haven't gotten the clocks I had in my sig for a while (1150/1500) with it. Had to back off the memory a little and the GPU a little to 1125/1450 if not mistaken. Few games where making it glitch. So wasn't sure if it was the drivers or the card causing the issue. Since I was nearly testing it originally in 1 demo since it seemed to be the most sensitive to core and memory clocks for some reason. Showed glitches well before any other tests I did. Eeeh anyways I'm just happy out of the box with just a quick clumsy OC I got a 61% increase in score. I'll have to see what it does on the few games that I remember what frame rates I did get on them.

To get the reading for ASIC's quality just right click the title bar of GPUZ

the drop down reads (Read ASIC's Quality)

That will give you the reading.

From my experience mid 60's to mid 70's in normal

Higher is typically better for ambient cooling and lower is typically better for sub ambient cooling

Looking forward to your results, beastly card

Witchdoctor said:

To get the reading for ASIC's quality just right click the title bar of GPUZ

the drop down reads (Read ASIC's Quality)

That will give you the reading.

From my experience mid 60's to mid 70's in normal

Higher is typically better for ambient cooling and lower is typically better for sub ambient cooling

Looking forward to your results, beastly card

Click to expand...

Hmmm cool. Good to know. So does it matter if its OC'ed or does it need to be stock?

the ASIC value does not change if its stock or overclocked.

I posted this in my own thread not too long ago about the Powercolor r9 290 pcs+ overclocking capability.

Out of the box voltage I got 1150mhz core and 1600mhz memory. Ran heaven benchmark with 0 issues.

Odd. Why is this Asus card struggling to reach 1375mhz memory stable?

Hynix vs Elpida will do that. My hynix card can go several hundred mhz beyond my elpida card. Not that it really matters much at all for games. Even at stock these cards have tons of bandwidth.

Supertrucker said:

Hynix vs Elpida will do that. My hynix card can go several hundred mhz beyond my elpida card. Not that it really matters much at all for games. Even at stock these cards have tons of bandwidth.

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Wow the difference is that big? The amazing bandwidth of the 290, elpida memory really limits a card. Always thought it was maybe a 50mhz difference. If not less.

I don't know much about mining performance, but in gaming performance it doesn't really limit the cards at all. I don't even bother overclocking the memory on mine beyond the 1300 the bios I run sets it at, because it offers no real benefit. I think the last time I ran tests, tomb raider saw something like .5% from going up a couple hundred mhz in memory speed.

Yea unless the card is using like a 128 bit interface or similar, I can't see ocing memory on a 512 bit interface doing anything really

EarthDog said:

the ASIC value does not change if its stock or overclocked.

Click to expand...

Well you two I got a 83.6% on my ASIC Quality Test

Looks like I might have a clocker!

Video Card Memory is Elpdia as well, so should be able to hit 6Ghz so will have to test that again as well. Might of been a glitch the other day. Me monkeying around with cables and such. Who knows might of bumped the computer just enough. Either way GPU memory like Ram on the PC is moderate performance increase. Really if the core clocks thats where it will be at, ram is just an added bonus IMO.

Anyways further testing coming

Result 1)
Again this was using 50mV added to GPU / 25%+ to power limit. 1100/1325Mhz. Memory is definatly limited. Going higher seems to have an issue at 1350Mhz. Oh well. Right now onward to testing the core further. Did a Heaven benchmark on extreme settings, window mode I guess haha.


Highest temp was 78C on the GPU, VRM's got into the 75C/68C. This was case closed up and proper running conditions. Semi special fan setting basically it was 1% per percentage. Might have to modify that a wee bit.


So went a little higher 1125/1325Mhz. Running fine, til I noticed that I forgot to run the bench haha. Anyways ran good and temps leveled out. Though started to notice blue patches at the very end, but was moving the screen around so I could get a better screen shot. Might of affected it. You can see my temps to the right on this one.



Note hopefully tomorrow going to run to the store and get proper 6-Pin connector just to feel safter to make sure im not straining this power on it with just a single molex connector.

With that update, might have to cut it for tonight. More to come tomorrow and better tests. Card seems capable, just might not have room on the ram side and til I figure out what settings I should really be using. So I'll dig deeper into the power settings.

deathman20 said:

Well you two I got a 83.6% on my ASIC Quality Test

Looks like I might have a clocker!

Video Card Memory is Elpdia as well, so should be able to hit 6Ghz so will have to test that again as well. Might of been a glitch the other day. Me monkeying around with cables and such. Who knows might of bumped the computer just enough. Either way GPU memory like Ram on the PC is moderate performance increase. Really if the core clocks thats where it will be at, ram is just an added bonus IMO.

Anyways further testing coming

Result 1)
Again this was using 50mV added to GPU / 25%+ to power limit. 1100/1325Mhz. Memory is definatly limited. Going higher seems to have an issue at 1350Mhz. Oh well. Right now onward to testing the core further. Did a Heaven benchmark on extreme settings, window mode I guess haha.
View attachment 147886

Highest temp was 78C on the GPU, VRM's got into the 75C/68C. This was case closed up and proper running conditions. Semi special fan setting basically it was 1% per percentage. Might have to modify that a wee bit.


So went a little higher 1125/1325Mhz. Running fine, til I noticed that I forgot to run the bench haha. Anyways ran good and temps leveled out. Though started to notice blue patches at the very end, but was moving the screen around so I could get a better screen shot. Might of affected it. You can see my temps to the right on this one.
View attachment 147887


Note hopefully tomorrow going to run to the store and get proper 6-Pin connector just to feel safter to make sure im not straining this power on it with just a single molex connector.

Click to expand...

Looking good. Vrm1 temps on my cards are exactly the same. Gets warm regardless of cooler. Why 1600x900 though?

Infinite66 said:

Looking good. Vrm1 temps on my cards are exactly the same. Gets warm regardless of cooler. Why 1600x900 though?

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Just used the preset in the program. Wanted to monitor the VRMs to see if the really got that hot. Guess not as much as I expected. Also wanted to show temps overall.

I'll do big res again tomorrow.

Ahh.. we use the one from Hwbot... that has presets for basic and extreme.