Overclocking

When it came time to do the overclock testing on the XFX R9 290 DD Edition I had no intention on going through the guessing game that is overclocking with the AMD software. I did that with the Sapphire card even though they provide their own software. Sadly XFX doesn’t provide similar software, but this time I went ahead and used software from another manufacture that was available to everyone. This software allowed me to set clock speeds directly and to be able to set the fan speed to a specific percentage where the AMD software only lets you set a temperature limit. With everything ready to go, I started with GPU clock speed overclocking. The XFX R9 290 DD Edition is pre overclocked, but I bumped things up to 1000MHz to get things started. With good luck at 1000MHz and 1100MHz I continued to 1200MHz but reached my limit. From there I slowly brought things back until I I could get through our benchmark without a crash. The end result was 1110MHz, just slightly less than what I saw with the Sapphire card.

When it came to memory overclocking I went through the same process starting at 5300MHz. The XFX R9 290 DD Edition memory overclocking continued with good results all the way up to 6400MHz before issues. The highest successful overclock was 6300MHz. At 6400MHz I ran into the same issue that I had with the Sapphire card, the card completely shut down. There is obviously something right at 6400MHz/ 30% in the AMD software that causes this issue. Frankly though, I wouldn’t push the card that far day to day anyhow on the memory side, memory overclocks don’t give very much performance as the numbers below will show.

GPU Clock Speed Overclocking

GPU Clock Speed

Pass/Fail

FPS Result

Notes

1000MHz

Pass

70.93

 

1100MHz

Pass

77.38

 

1200MHz

Fail

N/A

Driver Crash

1150MHz

Fail

N/A

Driver Crash

1125MHz

Fail

N/A

 

1115MHz

Fail

N/A

 

1110MHz

Pass

77.40

 

Memory Clock Offset Overclocking

Memory Clock Speed

Pass/Fail

FPS Result

Notes

5300MHz

Pass

69.94

 

5500MHz

Pass

70.21

 

5700MHz

Pass

70.21

 

5800MHz

Pass

70.31

 

5900MHz

Pass

70.41

 

6000MHz

Pass

70.55

 

6100MHz

Pass

70.28

 

6200MHz

Pass

70.31

 

6300MHz

Pass

70.47

 

6400MHz

Fail

N/A

 

 

 

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garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #33974 07 Feb 2014 16:23
I hope everyone is ready for the weekend because it is nearly here. Today I take a look at the R9 290 from XFX. We know that the 290's can perform, but how will the XFX compare to the competition.
Wooderson's Avatar
Wooderson replied the topic: #33987 08 Feb 2014 00:06
That is a super clean looking card, but boy it runs hot.

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