Hello all. I tried overclocking my Asus R9 280x (non-matrix) and wanted opinions on how well i did and what i could potentially do to increase it:
Heaven Benchmark: http://i.imgur.com/l9RNOI1.png
I got the GPU Clock up to 1180 (From 1070) and i got the memory clock up to 6500 (from 6400) after running the heaven benchmark with those settings my temps maxed out at about 72 C with the fan going up to about 41%
Well if i'm not misstaken R9 cards has somewhat of an automated overclocking system in AMD Overdrive that is temperature dependent where you can adjust fan speed and temperature limit as guidelines for the GPU, though it's a terribly boring way of overclocking :/ here's how it works though.
Let's say your current mhz is 1180 and the temperature is set to 72 C on your card in AMD Overdrive with current cooling solution. The card will draw AS MUCH juice as possible out of that GPU as long as the temperature doesn't exceed 72C in this case 1180mhz. Say you would increase the temperature limit to 80 C the card will now be driven towards 80 C and since it only gets 72C with 1180mhz it will up the voltages and increase mhz automatically to get to 80 C.
Now if you can cool your GPU additionally by increasing fan speeds it will allow for even better performance cause if the card gets cooler the GPU still wants to be at 80 and to get there it will further increase the mhz, you get the loop...
In theory it sounds pretty smart i heaven't read much about how good it is either, maybe you should try it out :)
I will have to look into it.
also how much is it really worth overclocking the memory clock in terms of gaming?
280x memory being as fast as it is already, it may give slight performance increases, i wouldn't bother too much with it. download fraps and run it with fps mode on, and benchmark a game or three. (note that overclocking memory speed don't help in all games). Then overclock the memory and see the difference, if there is any...
I would say that your 110 Mhz core increase and 100 mhz memory increase is a good overclock considering the already high frequencies. Could maybe go even higher on core clock but unless you really feel you need the extra few fps, i'd leave it alone :>
We'll I was aiming mainly at the core clock. Though I could only get the 1180 with 1.2v, going higher would cause green and black squares in the heaven benchmark. Even doing 1190 with 1230mv would cause the same thing (for some reason it wouldent let me go higher than 1232mv instead of 1.3v that I have seen others achieve to get above a 1200 core clock
Hmm maybe it's bios differences or just the software what software are you using for your overclocking? The asus GPU tweak seem to allow for up to 1.3V on a non matrix or lightning card
I'm using the ASUS GPU Tweak, I have downlooaded the latest version and have enabled the increased sliders. Still the voltage remained unchanged. Still though I would think 1210, 1220, or 1230mv would allow me to atleast bring the core clock up to 1190 or 1200 but nope. Still green and black squares on haven even with 1190 core clock with a 1230mv.
really I wmt to be able to get it up to that because pre-OC I could get a pretty constant 60 FPS on BF4 with ultra, 1080p, vsync but it would still drop down to around 55 round intense moments. Post-OC it will drop to 58-59 in those same intense moments. i just want to get that constant 60FPS on ultra and to not have those rare drops
I run BF4 on medium graphics settings, cause you can't see the enemies very well on ultra xD
Have you tried using nvidia inspector?
If I wasn't able to get a consistent 60 FPS I wouldent play on it, but recently converting from console I want to experience the top of the line graphics, even if that means doing a little worse in game.
no, whats that?
Ok this makes absolutly no sense.
I had someone suggest that i try using MSI afterburner to see if i could increase the voltage to 1.3 on it since i couldent on ASUS GPU Tweak. I also wanted to try MSI afterburner because for the life of me i could not get my fan profile to work on GPU Tweak (i had it set to start on 35% and boost up to 40% at 70 degrees (which is the max it hits during gaming. After doing the heaven benchmark and monitoring i noticed that my fan never changed.).
So i went on afterburner and alas i was able to increase the voltage up to 1.3. tried to do 1190 on 1.3V and green squares as before so at that point i gave up and went back to 1180 at 1.2V but now my benchmark results are janky. Before on heaven (running ultra quality, normal tessellation, 4x AA) i got a score of 1455, getting a min/avg/max fps of 24.6/57.8/111.7
now i did the benchmark again (because i was going to see if i could possibly undervolt a little bit while running on 1180), ran it at 1180 at 1.2V a few times and every time the results were basically the same. a score of 1209 with a min/avg/max of 22.1/48/90.1
Well i fixed a part of the issue was that i had forgot to OC my memory and i went slightly further this time. Still though my AVG fps only comes to the 52-53 range. Which is still slightly lower than the first time i ever benched heaven with stock settings.
I also figured out the fan profile. I just need to figure out this random performance decrease since it seems no matter what 1180 core clock is as high as its going to go.
If someone could guide me on what to do i would appriciate it.
Well now this is weird. I tried benching again and now instead of getting bad frames on the 1180/6500 heaven crashes and or freezes when i do it. The highest overclock i have been able to get that dosent crash heaven is 1120/6400 and i get around 54FPS
You're leaving out the temperatures, are they fine? Now when it comes to overclocking you're basically drawing lottery tickets. The manufacturers doesn't guarantee that the GPU or CPU is definitely overclockable, some processors will overclock very well, while another batch of the same processor won't overclock at all. Your GPU limit could be 1180. I'm not sure how the OC software works, if Tweaker interfere with Afterburner, maybe you should uninstall one of them. If you want further overclocking you might have to look for a different BIOS for your video card
Your going to kill it quickly. I just overclocked my MSI 7950 (also a tahiti). The core clock was presumably fine but as soon as I started playing with the memory the card lasted about a day. I strongly recommend not touching the memory especially voltage. Sometimes the heat-sink isn't even touching the memory (it was only covering half the module on the tf3)
Also in my experience and research, the AMD overclocking utility is bad news all around and you definitely should not run 2 together, just stick with afterburner and leave the memory alone, is the extra 1-3fps worth it? You might find a stable oc but every AMD gpu I have overclocked (never had a nvidia card) degrade immensely. Might last a few days or weeks run time but run the same benchmark in 2 weeks with the same oc and see what it says... Looks like you are already this first hand. I don't recommend overclocking AMD gpus unless you have them on a water-block the covers the vram. Same probably goes for nvidia but I just got my first nvidia card yet so I can't speak out of experience for em.
I know the feeling... It sucks. Buy a high end GPU thinking you're all good and get 30fps or even lower on the demanding games. Since your gpu is already showing signs of death I would keep going till you kill it and exchange it for a new one, assuming you got the warranty.
Very High Risk!!! I've been through 4 GPUs overclocking memory, ever so slightly. And only ever got 1 or 2 fps out of it. Thank god for warranty.
Sounds like you just dont have a good overclocking card if you are geting artifacting and lock ups STOP trying to overclock you are going to end up damageing it.
I have droped all overclocks for the time being but then after testing my temps and stuff with no overclock and different fan profiles i believe what was happening was the VRM temps were getting to high after long periods. Was a dumb mistake on my part because i was more concerned about building the fan profile around the main GPU temps.
My 7950 was doing great at 1200/1600, pushed for 1225/1650, worked a treat, tried 1225/1700, semi-screwed it, now the memory doesnt like anything over 1300 or it artifacts.
Semi-killed it,.. memory clocks don't give much of a jump so leave em be.
Clocks still go to 1175/1250 and I've kept it that way for the last 4 months.
Just be warned, Core clocking is gr8 fun, Mem clocking is like playing with Tits on a Bull...