R9 290X Inconsistent Clocks?

Discussion in 'Videocards - AMD Radeon' started by Neo Cyrus, Jan 31, 2015.

  1. Neo Cyrus

    Neo Cyrus Ancient Guru

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    I got a 290X just tonight and the first thing I noticed is that the clocks are inconsistent by around 20-50MHz. There doesn't appear to be any heat issues as it maxes out at 80C and is usually lower. Its loud as hell giant heatsink makes sure of that. Yet the clock is completely unstable. At stock 1GHz it'll jump around between 950Mhz to 1GHz.

    For an OC I'm not sure what to do so I just maxed Afterburner to +100mV and +50% power limit and tried 1180MHz/1350MHz up from 1000/1250 and it seems fine, but just like stock it jumps around by 20-50MHz. It'll wobble around at 1130 to 1180.

    Is there some sort of setting causing this? It shouldn't be throttling due to heat.
     
  2. Neo Cyrus

    Neo Cyrus Ancient Guru

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    Well, using MSI Afterburner then selecting unofficial overclocking mode without PowerPlay support keeps the clocked locks but it still sometimes throttles all over the place now dropping by 200MHz.

    For the most part it seems alright and there are no frame drops... but Afterburner can't seem to detect GPU usage? It's all over the place at all times showing a constant up and down in the chart. I can't tell how much headroom it has for increasing settings.
     
  3. LtMatt81

    LtMatt81 Master Guru

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    Use these afterburner settings, unofficial overclocking should not be used.

    The clock dropping usually occurs if you vsync and or an fps cap and your gpu can produce the fps required easily without being at maximum speed. So powertune lowers the clock speed slightly.

    [​IMG]
     
  4. Turanis

    Turanis Guest

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    @Neo Cyrus: You forgot to say who manufacture that card: MSI,Gigabyte,Asus,Powercolor,Sapphire,etc.A card named 290X is extra vague.

    I guess you installed new Amd Omega drivers.
    After that try to find new bios from manufacturer. ;)
     
    Last edited: Jan 31, 2015

  5. anxious_f0x

    anxious_f0x Ancient Guru

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    What games does this happen in? Are you monitoring GPU load? If the game isn't heavy on the GPU and it can maintain a high frame rate without having the maximum core frequency then it will drop the clocks.
     
  6. PieEyedPiper

    PieEyedPiper Master Guru

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    Slapping the sliders to maximum voltage without any critical thought might not be the best way to approach this. I mean, sure, every sample is different but it's best practice to raise voltage in small increments while monitoring the results. You very well could be producing unnecessary heat - especially if you have the stock cooler.
     
    Last edited: Jan 31, 2015
  7. Neo Cyrus

    Neo Cyrus Ancient Guru

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    I'd like a way to completely disable this Powertune since it's super inaccurate. Sometimes it drops clocks during real-time cutscenes in Tomb Raider and drops the frames to 30. Or is that the same thing as the PowerPlay option in Afterburner?
    Yeah I have the new Omega drivers and this is the exact model I have - http://www.powercolor.com/us/products_features.asp?id=566
    It happens in every game and my biggest issue with all this is that Afterburner can't seem to read its GPU load at all. The GPU usage reading is all over the place and makes no sense, it can't be accurate, it'll jump from 100 to 0 to 100 to 10 to 20 to 80 to 0 to 10 while I'm facing a static scene and not moving.
    It probably is producing excess heat from the +50% power but I think the voltage is necessary because I tried 1.2GHz flat and I'm pretty sure I saw artifacting so I turned it down to 1175MHz. What's an average OC on these things?
     
  8. Noisiv

    Noisiv Ancient Guru

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    Tick "Enable unified GPU usage monitoring" as proposed by AMDMatt
     
  9. Neo Cyrus

    Neo Cyrus Ancient Guru

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    I didn't notice that, thanks guys. It appears to be working. So problem more or less solved I guess minus the dropping like 200MHz. I'll see if that still happens.
     
  10. Noisiv

    Noisiv Ancient Guru

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    I know you didn't. Relax, focus lol
     

  11. Neo Cyrus

    Neo Cyrus Ancient Guru

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    The dropping of 200MHz or so still happens whenever there is an in-game cutscene or multiple characters on the screen at a time (sometimes). Disabling TressFX prevents this and it stays locked at 1.17GHz. Maybe its hitting its power cap?

    What is auxiliary voltage for? That's one setting I haven't touched.

    Also do you guys think I should bother take the card apart to replace whatever it has with MX-4? Or is it like GeForce cards now and has a warranty seal somewhere in it?
     
    Last edited: Jan 31, 2015
  12. Noisiv

    Noisiv Ancient Guru

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    Ok how about this:

    Get to know your card. See how it works, learn its behavior/clocks/performance/GPU usage/temps per game title.
    Instead of doing the million things at once, like OC, overvolt, custom thermal paste etc, and then having to wonder WTH is happening.

    Warranty depends on manufacturer and their policy in Canada.
    NA should be OK with XFX
     
    Last edited: Jan 31, 2015
  13. Neo Cyrus

    Neo Cyrus Ancient Guru

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    It's pretty straight forward, it's throttling for some reason, OC/overvolt or not. It can't run Watch Dogs for **** and throttles down to 50-something frames even when the GPU usage is 60%. Then when I turn off vsync to see if that changes anything, nothing, it just drops the clocks until it still hits 50-something fps or less. Either it has an over-sensitive setting for the thermal limit or it's hitting its power limit.

    I've never had to deal with such nonsense with any card in the past.
     
  14. stevevnicks

    stevevnicks Guest

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    Don't need one
    as much as I don't want to advise you with this card I will at least tell you what I know about them from when I owned 2 of them.

    powercolor brand but these had default leafblower style cooler

    the main problem I found when overclocking was the fact I had 2 cards and as of such the heat issue would soon pop up and the thermal protection would cut in and limit the cards even more.
    I found at default these cards were beasts but made a lot of noise and heat about the fact.
    im not to sure if the 290x ever was much of an overclocker anyway due to how hot they can get even with out overclocking them.
    I never really had any bad issues with the drivers.
    cooling your whole pc or even whole room will help a little bit.
    not every game will use your gpu at 100% 100% of the time.
    the R9 290X is a good card if you are happy with its limits, mainly heat and noise were the main problems I came across when using the leafblower style cards, you may have a better time if its cooling is very very good.
     
  15. rflair

    rflair Don Coleus Staff Member

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    Is your card one that came with the switch for uber and quiet mode?
     

  16. Neo Cyrus

    Neo Cyrus Ancient Guru

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    Does it make a difference when I'm using custom fan settings in Afterburner anyway?

    It does have a switch but I can't see anything on it saying if it's a BIOS switch or Uber/Quiet switch. Its manual says nothing except how to insert a card into a PCIE slot (wtf?) and the website appears to say nothing. So I tried flipping the switch anyway, it seems to change nothing. It still throttles hardcore in Watch Dogs. It can pretty much never hit 100% GPU usage.
     
  17. cowie

    cowie Ancient Guru

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    ^ I looked and could not tell if it had a bios switch on it from the pictures on the net of the card
    *oh ok so

    Turn it off flip the switch re install drivers and try not to smash the card into bits :nerd:
    Try not to get to fancy with your setting in afterburner try auto fan
     
    Last edited: Jan 31, 2015
  18. The Postman

    The Postman Ancient Guru

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    Uber mode is to the side of your DVI connector.

    I use Sapphire Trixx for overclocking and AB for monitoring. My advice would be to leave it at stock first and see the behavior.

    Edit. For OC test I would try 1100mhz first with powertune +50 and dont touch core voltage yet. Core voltage alone can bring a lot of heat. Aux voltage helps with memory OC for me.
     
    Last edited: Jan 31, 2015
  19. stevevnicks

    stevevnicks Guest

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    my best advice would before up'n the voltage just start up'n it 5-10 MHz at a time until it becomes unstable, now the tricky part is not to add to much voltage as that will only help with heat and your card will perform worse than at stock.

    if it seems like it reaching its thermal limit so it is down clocking to combat the heat raise the voltage it will find it will do this quicker.

    play around with amd overdrive in the driver, put cards temp to max and work out from there what you need to alter then once you find that out fine tune with afterburner, as you will know ruffly the limits from messing around with amd over drive thingy in there drivers.. you will find in amd over drive if you sett fans to run 100% things will get better but ohh the noise ...

    edited just call me edit eddie
     
    Last edited: Jan 31, 2015
  20. Neo Cyrus

    Neo Cyrus Ancient Guru

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    Alright so I tried stock once again to see if it gets such throttling... in the scene of Tomb Raider I was testing there is no throttling which I could have sworn there was before. So after testing a bunch of settings I've found that it doesn't throttle if I don't touch the voltage. The odd part is that the voltage isn't really making a difference in heat. I'm not sure if Afterburner can't work properly with this stupid PowerColor card or if it's something else.

    For now the only way I can get it to use 100% of the card is to leave a low overclock because I can't touch the voltage. 1110 with no voltage increase is what I've tried so far.

    Oh and even with the voltage settings touched, it runs at 99% GPU usage at 1.17GHz in GPU-Z's stress test constantly until it maxes out at 80C. Yet in games it throttles even below 80C.

    I have no switch next to the DVI ports, just one on the board itself.

    Edit: It seems to run with no artifacts until 1130, 1120MHz works which is only 55MHz less than I was running it at before. I could just leave it at that and not touch voltage. But not knowing what's causing this issue is really annoying.
     
    Last edited: Jan 31, 2015

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