Overclocking
When it came time to overclock the R9 270X DirectCU II Top over and above its “Top” overclock from the factory I went about it the same way I do with every card. I break my testing down between GPU, Memory, and then both together. This way I can get the highest possible clocks on each and then see how they work out together. To confirm my overclocks I run through a 3DMark 11 test to push the card and heat things up. Starting with the GPU clock speed, I jumped up to 1200MHz right from the start without any trouble. My next attempt was at 130MHz and this resulted in what I call a soft crash, meaning windows didn’t crash, only the driver. I turned things down to 1275MHz with good results so I attempted to bump it up from there (suspecting I could get close to my 1300MHz because I only had a soft crash before). Sadly my small bump resulted in a hard crash meaning the highest I could reach was 1275MHz using standard methods. This is spot on in line with my previous best on another 270X.
Memory testing was very uneventful, I was able to quickly bump things up to the maximum setting that AMD allows in their software without any issues, just like I have done on all of the other R9 270X’s tested. I know there is more room to be found here when you go around the software overclocking, but for our testing this should do. Next I combined both of my max overclocks and ran through everything again to see if it passed, and it did. In the end I went from an FPS in the 41’s to a high 46FPS with the overclock, showing there is still room above what Asus provided, although your results will very.
GPU Clock Speed Overclocking |
|||
GPU Clock Speed |
Pass/Fail |
FPS Result |
Notes |
1200MHz |
Pass |
43.79 |
|
1300MHz |
Fail |
N/A |
Driver Crash |
1275MHz |
Pass |
46.14 |
|
1285MHz |
Fail |
N/A |
Blue Screen |
Memory Clock Offset Overclocking |
|||
Memory Clock Speed |
Pass/Fail |
FPS Result |
Notes |
1500MHz |
Pass |
41.93 |
|
1600MHz |
Pass |
41.88 |
|
1625MHz |
Pass |
41.96 |
|
Combined GPU and Memory overclocks together |
|||
GPU Clock Speed |
Memory Clock Speed |
FPS Result |
Notes |
1275MHz |
1625MHz |
46.81 |