I need some help in OC'ing my R9 290X

[Blacksun]

Having just recently bought Amd's flagship GPU, I wanted to squeeze some more power out of that Hawaii core.
I would rather not mess with voltage, as i am looking for a mild overclock that i can keep on at all times.
Things I have:
1. MSi afterburner
2 sapphire's ocing utility software.
3 msi's Kombustion
4 Ungine's valley
5 GPU'Z

How do I proceed?

 

[Janus67]

Add a little mhz at a time (10-20) to either core or memory and run uni gene heaven or 3dmark until it crashes is there is artifacting. Back down 5mhz from there and try again and see if it is stable.

Once stable number is found make note of it and put it back to stock values.

Switch to the other factor (core or memory) and repeat the process.

Once that is complete put the two together and see if it is stable.

 

[ninjacore]

To continue, if it's not stable when you combine the core and mem overclocks, lower the memory speed first as it will contribute less to overall performance.

Which 290x do you have?

 

[Blacksun]

Sapphire's Vapor X R9 290x (8GB)

 

[ninjacore]

You can probably start trying to find the core max around 1080-1100. Anything 1150+ would be considered "good". I would expect to land somewhere in the range of 1125-1150.

On the memory, you can start at 1450-1500 to, likewise, save some time.

I've overclocked a few 290s and 290Xs over the last year or so. I haven't found bumping the voltage up to max help all that much except in the case of the Lightning. I would see what your maxes are at stock volts, then increase them and see if the difference justifies it.

 

[Blacksun]

firestrike score with this oc setting.
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/5715805

temps peaked at 71° celsius.
No artifacting noticed during the test.
should i push further?

 

[ninjacore]

9745 and 10633 were my recent Firestrike scores w/ a 290X Lightning at stock and overclocked to 1225-ish, respectively.

Your score does seem low, but I think CPU plays into Firestrike a bit. I had a 4690K at stock in those.

I think your card can go higher. 1150+ if you're fortunate 71c is more than safe. I would keep going until the fans get too loud for your liking (or it becomes unstable, of course ). Keep an eye on VRM temps as well in GPU-z and make sure you aren't getting a lot of GPU load spikes (throttling) while gaming (afterburner has a graph).

 

[Blacksun]

1130-1140 on the core clock causes artifacting. on stock voltage.

 

[ninjacore]

If you feel that little bit extra could benefit you in-games, don't be afraid of adding voltage (increase power limit to 110% first, if you do, the +10-20mv offset at a time - watch temps more closely).

 

[Blacksun]

even 1125 on the core clock is not 100% stable....
Guess my max is 1120....
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/5716366
Plus the mhz were all over the place during the combined test.
Sigh.

 

[ninjacore]

Don't feel bad about it. If you're at 1440p or lower, you probably don't even need it and there's really no diff between 1100 and 1150. Maybe a couple fps? Try upping the voltage and see what that buys you

 

[Blacksun]

New score

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/5778455


I really think my 8350 is bottlenecking my Pc..

 

[ninjacore]

It's definitely playing a role in lowering your score as that is about 1500 less than it should be with that overclock on the GPU. However, unless you're really benchmarking competitively, I wouldn't worry about it. Name of the game (I'm assuming) is in-game performance, and I don't think moving to a different CPU and motherboard would give you enough of an FPS boost to justify the expense. Just keep it in mind next time you build

 

[Blacksun]

Yup. going intel next bulid.

 

[ninjacore]

The disparity between them is a shame. My last AMD CPU was a socket 939 x2. It's better for consumers when they're actually competing.

 

[Blacksun]

I got suckered in on the "More cores More power thing"
I dont't why amd made such bad CPUs this gen....

 

[ninjacore]

I think they've all been the same socket for 5+ years now, they just gradually increase the frequency.

They're not necessarily bad. Just no reason to purchase them over Intel's offerings. Again, it's not going to heavily impact your gaming performance, so you're okay.

 

[Johan45]

Yes and firestrike is actually not a good bench for a piledriver. The physics will be low yes but also it's penalized on the combined score as only half the threads are used so 4 instead of 8. If you're testing GFX only try Unigine heaven it'll give you a better representation of your GFX peformance.

 

[Blacksun]

Heaven 4.0 score


Looking at other benchmarks this is not too shabby!

 

[t1nm4n]

I have non-reference Asus DirectCUII 290x in crossfire, but I only see your default clock listed under your results. Just for ****s and giggles here's a comparison between yours and mine.

Edit: even with my OC cpu I'm 70% lower on the physics score, but my GPUs keep me close your combined score, I know 3DMark is not a good rw comparison or bench for graphics, but its a start.