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R9 290X and 290 Owners Club

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xsuperbgx said:
In the documentation there was some description about some cards that were given priority in the current beta and some that were not yet optimized by AMD for mantle. That may explain the different experiences.
Click to expand...
That doesn't make sense though... in that a Giga gets improvements while an ASUS goes the complete opposite way. They are the same card (just different clocks) doing the same exact thing via the drivers.

BugFreak said:
The crazy part is the differences with the same cards. It makes sense they would target specific cards, newer ones for example. I wonder if it has something to do with chipset and/or cpu type as well.
Click to expand...
Exactly... the same cards are all over the map which is quite unusual. Perhaps it is a chipset difference because a lot of the load is taken off the CPU as I understand things...
 
I ordered a Sapphire r9 290 Tri-X and canceled an order on the asus r9 290 DC2. Hopefully the card gets here soon. :(

I placed an order on 2 r9 280x's over 2 months ago on shopblt and they still havent shipped.
 
Shopblt, while not a scam, has some less than great business practices. I ordered a 290 from them on January 5th, their site listed expected orders on the 10th,11th,19th, and 20th. I was in line for one of the cards on the 10th. By the 12th it was pushed back to the 20th, and by the 20th it was pushed back to February 14th. Towards the end of the month the "expected shipment size" went from 140 cards to 10 cards. So I canceled my order, and a few days later the sku was no longer valid on their site. I have no idea if they even kept the 10 orders, because the item got pulled.
 
Hi there,

i just flashed the new Stilt-Bios.
Running on 1052 Khash/sec now. Wonderful.

Sapphire 290x Watercooled. Will now flash my 2. 290x

Have a nice one.
 
Is normal to run 290x with Afterburner and not have to add any voltage to run 1100/1400? I see with GPUZ that varies.
 
Working on my 2. 290x.

Heres the pic. Its stable.

[/IMG]

And a second pic with 2 290x. Sorry but i am a bit busy.



Wotan
 
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ordered last 2 waterblocks for my 290s yesterday from hellfirepcs. Gonna switch them out to my home gaming/mining PC after i get it, as well as some slick red tubing :)
 
Janus67 said:
Nice! Trying tonight!
Click to expand...

Update:

Couldn't get over the 1MH mark.

On a side note the BIOS presumably killed one of my 290X cards that had been working just fine until that point. Heard a pop, smelled a bad smell, now the system won't recognize it (tried two different slots).

Sigh.

Hope Sapphire will RMA it.
 
WotanWipeout said:
Hi there,

i just flashed the new Stilt-Bios.
Running on 1052 Khash/sec now. Wonderful.

Sapphire 290x Watercooled. Will now flash my 2. 290x

Have a nice one.
Click to expand...

Thanks for posting that there is not only a modded bios but the author points out that the original bios has bad timings set for the memory and that they were actually fixable. By Stilt himself, what needed fixing,


- Elpida B-die performance issue fixed by rewriting the timings and the MC straps correctly.
- Hynix Gemma-die performance improved by rewriting the timings and the MC straps correctly.
- GPU EVV VDDC dependency removed, changed to static voltage levels (VID based)
- Advanced Fan Control (Fuzzy Logic) disabled, changed to look-up table (PWM 20% <50°C / 65% <75°C / 80% <85°C)
- Enhanced the VRM configuration, yielding >5% improvement in VRM efficiency on the medium leaking test samples.
Click to expand...
I figured this was the case all along. Fixable yet AMD has done nothing, no new bios, no statement that they are working on the obvious problems, nada. He also goes on to say,
Also please do note that Elpida card owners are likely to see higher temperatures and power consumption with the fixed bios, despite everything that has been done to reduce the power & thermal. This is because previously the GPU has been held back by the memory latency. Now that the GPU is working at full speed the power consumption and the temperatures will be higher. Watch your GPU and VRM temperatures!
Click to expand...
Well now that's good news for anyone that has the Elpida memory. And one more note that the 290's that unlock with a 290x bios flash might just be the unluckiest of all,

The full production scale for 290 (ASIC 215-0852020): 1.28125V - 1.10625V (DPM7 - 947MHz).
1.28125V being for the lowest leaking (Iddq = 19A) parts, 1.10625V (Iddq = 36A) for the highest leaking parts.


Higher LeakageID (ASIC "Quality" in GPU-Z) means higher leakage.
Less leakage the more desireable it is.

These are just the highest and lowest values, 98% of the GPUs are something between them.
In total there are 30 different possiblities for the default voltage.

There are 290 cards with two "different ASICs": 215-0852020 & 215-0852000.
215-0852020 is the one originally intended for 290 card. These have up to four defective CUs, however all four have been disabled.
These are not unlockable, however they MIGHT be the lowest leaking ASICs in 290 cards. Naturally the variance of the leakage is just high as on any other card.

The 215-0852000 ASIC is the one originally intended for a 290X card.
While these ASICs have no defective CUs, they failed the 290X bin likely because of the too high leakage levels to make the 290X grade (up to 26A Iddq allowed). While the 215-0852000 ASICs are always unlockable and fully functional, they are likely to run much hotter and consume more power than "genuine" 290X cards or non-unlockable 290 cards, even when they are not unlocked.
Click to expand...
I honestly believe that a modded bios could fix all the issues that I have been having, the crashes, BSOD's and the poor hash rate in mining. I actually posted there asking if he might write a bios for gaming that does not disable the ROP's if the funds could be raised with mining coins for the work. Maybe ATI should hire this guy to fix their mistakes as they are obviously not capable of doing it themselves.:facepalm:
 
@shadowdr

Like i told, i am very busy these days, Just wanted to inform about the new Bios.
When i readed correct, there is only 1 Bios for 290 / 290x.
He posted 6 for each 290 / 290x, but the difference is only in the GPU Voltage.

Sorry to hear about your dead 290x.


God bless Stilt. AMD should send him some money.


Wotan
 
So is the stilt bios only good for mining, or does it work we'll with gaming as we'll? I love the mining increase but don't want to hurt my gaming.
 
If I need to make my own thread, I will, but I figured this was pertinant to this thread.

Are people still buying 290's and unlocking them to 290x's? Is there any reason why I shouldn't get a VisionTek or Sapphire reference 290x? Would I be better off getting say the Gigabyte 290x w/ their aftermarket cooler?

This card will replace my 7970's in my main gaming rig, and it will be mining when I'm not gaming.
 
BugFreak said:
So is the stilt bios only good for mining, or does it work we'll with gaming as we'll? I love the mining increase but don't want to hurt my gaming.
Click to expand...

Mining only, it disables half of the ROP's. Gaming would be poor at best, funny though that he figured out how to fix the memory issues while AMD has no clue. It would be nice if he would make a bios without disabling the ROP's.
 
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Yea, I hope he does. I couldn't install it because I couldn't get the older catalyst driver to install right since day one. Good thing anyways since it would of hurt my gaming.
 
I had ordered a Gelid cooler to replace the reference and received it yesterday. It took some doing getting it installed, had to mod the VRM heatsinks as they were actually not for this cooler. Had to grind down the long VRM heatsink as it didn't make contact at all the way it was and redrill the holes that didn't align using pushpins instead of the screws. After using the sticky tape, I left it upside down while I had dinner and found only three sinks had fallen off. Used super glue to stick them on and pluged the fan directly into the card.

Big difference in the fan noise, barely audible over the case fans while the idle temps are just a few degrees lower the GPU at full load is only in the mid fifties but VRM2 still hits 73c while VRM1 mimics the GPU temps. The sink may have come off on the VRM2 but haven't had time to check this morning yet. Playing BF4 is a pleasure as the fan at 100% on the reference fan was unbearable, I had to turn the volume down to play with this cooler on. The VRM temp only hit 73 during Heavens bench and goes no higher than 56 in BF4. Overall a great improvement and well worth the cost to have a quiet computer again, AMD could have done much better than they did with the reference design.
 
iLoki said:
The crashing when enabling Mantle (its not just BF4, any other application that supports Mantle i.e. the Star Swarm benchmark will crash as well) is because of the Intel iGPU. You need to disable the intel iGPU in device manager to get it working.
Click to expand...

Yea i figured out the intel igpu thing but thanks anyways we should put this info in the op.
 
User id: Ontheair
GPU type: 290x
Brand and model: Asus R9 290x Dc2Oc
Cooling: (for now) = Corsair H100i
GPU-Z validation: ------
sorry now i just have firestrike screenshot
47507555670472547459.jpg
, i will fill the form :D

the memory is very bad elpida (def voltage = 1.38 :| )
 
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