Sapphire R9 290 tri-X OC guide

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Vizour

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Aug 4, 2013
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Hi guys,
some week ago I built a gaming PC with Sapphire R9 290 tri-X OC and AMD FX-8320 in it.
Today I tried to overclock my GPU using Sapphire Tri-XX tweak utility and FurMark. The stock core clock is 1000 MHz and I saw that one man pushed it to 1150 MHz without problems. So I started: 1100, 1130 Mhz and it was still good and I had no problems in FurMark. Then I set 1140 Mhz and black stripes started to appear, so I set it back to 1130 MHz. Then I pushed memory from 5200 Mhz to 5300 Mhz (I saw that even 6000 MHz is possible) and when I started FurMark, black spots and stripes appeared and than it crashed. Screen went black and it froze. So after a while I closed FurMark and returned memory clock to defalut and the problem repeated. So I went down with GPU clock and again the same problem. So I restored clocks to defalut, but FurMark was still crashing and computer was way slower than before. Even swiching computer off was slower then before.
The only values I edited was core clock, memory clock and consumption limit to +2%. Have I done anything wrong? Could it damage the card? Or which program should I use for overclocking?
Thanks for asnwers! :)
 
Solution
sincreator
Here is Anandtech's overclock settings for your card: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7601/sapphire-radeon-r9-290-review-our-first-custom-cooled-290/5

PS: Furmark is an unrealistic way of testing your video card. It will push it WAY harder than any game ever will. Constantly running furmark over and over can damage your card by itself. It's good for testing for your maximum temperature though, lol. I suspect that high temperature is coming into play, and possibly causing the artifacts you are experiancing. Try running the heaven bench or some of the more recent 3dmarks and see if it artifacts. If it does, then you are most likely OCing too high.
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uplink-svk

uplink-svk

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Mar 9, 2013
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Overclocking can damage the card, that's why not everyone overclocks their CPUs, GPUs, RAMs, SSDs, etc. And it's AMD. In my eyes, all AMD products are piece of unstable cr*p - which is once again proven by this thread. But I tolerate people who likes AMD. And I want AMD to live, so Intel and Nvidia won't have trouble with EC.

Anyway, what You have in front of Your eyes seems like the black stripes of death [that's my name :) it's not official - I've seen them a lot on dying graphics cards for past two decades] and or/artifacts, which are caused either by damaged GPU, or VRAMs/MOSFETs. I'd try to run the VGA on new system, or different PC. FurMark will tell You if it's good, or bad, just the way You tried. That's all. There might be some residual settings in Your current system, so it's not a good one to test stuff anymore. The VGA needs a "reset" of an environment, after unsuccessfull OC. Btw. when You run FurMark, run GPU Shark, so You can see the actual clocks, if they are stock, or OCed.
 
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sincreator

sincreator

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Here is Anandtech's overclock settings for your card: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7601/sapphire-radeon-r9-290-review-our-first-custom-cooled-290/5

PS: Furmark is an unrealistic way of testing your video card. It will push it WAY harder than any game ever will. Constantly running furmark over and over can damage your card by itself. It's good for testing for your maximum temperature though, lol. I suspect that high temperature is coming into play, and possibly causing the artifacts you are experiancing. Try running the heaven bench or some of the more recent 3dmarks and see if it artifacts. If it does, then you are most likely OCing too high.
 
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uplink-svk

uplink-svk

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Yeah, one more thing. You might have put the GPU into factory defaults, but please check the voltage too. These settings tend to stay stuck at OC settings, and clock tends to go back to normal. In general, voltage is crashing the system/component 99% of the time, not the "clock" itself.
 
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Vizour

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Aug 4, 2013
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Thanks for advice guys. I tried Heaven Benchmark and I pushed my card to 1085 MHz on core and to 6060 MHz on memory and everything seems to be stable. Temperatures are somewhere about 71°C. But when I push clock on core higher, black spots and stripes start to show. I have latest drivers from AMD (Catalyst 14.11.1 Beta), but how is it possible, that I can only increase it just a little? Some people are getting even 1150 MHz stable. Do I have to increase voltage as well? If yes, how much? I also read that it incseases automaticly. Can you help me?

 
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V

Vizour

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Aug 4, 2013
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Thanks for answer. Now everything is ok, I don't know why was the PC so slow.
Anyway, now I am using Heaven Benchmark and it is stable even at 1080 MHz on core and at 6000 MHz on memory. Should I change the voltage too for higher clocks? My card has good cooler I think. I heard that increasing voltage keeps card more stable at higher clocks.
And last question: I put there 1090 MHz on core and when I played Watch_Dogs, black a grey dost and squares appeared sometimes. Does this mean, that I have to reduce the clocks? Game didn't crash even during my 2,5 hour gaming.

 
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mumbes

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Please be aware of your VRM temps as they may very well exceed safe limits while your GPU still seems quite fine. I suggest gpu-z. VRM 1 is for the GPU and VRM 2 is for the memory. VRM's max temp is often 125 C.

 
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Vizour

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Thanks for advice! I will try it :)

 
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niftu_cal

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Aug 31, 2016
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I have a 290 for 2 and a half years now. OCed 1180/5600 ever since i've got it and still kicking ass just like the first day. I know right? Shocking because according to you, everything's a piece of cr*p, Not surprising since you're too much of a biased Nvidia groupie with 0 common sense. Nvidia gods forbive you if you ever try to be objective. But you can't.. It's against your fanboy beliefs. Hilarius. Even criticizing the 290 - 290x, which are some of the best GPUs price/performance wise of the last years. Specially the 290.
You can criticize a model (480 isn't as good as we expected them to be), a serie... But the entire brand with all its products?? Just because in your mind Nvidia cards have never caused issues, never been broken. Nvidia is perfect? Ridiculous. Good look with your bigotry.
 
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V

Vizour

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Aug 4, 2013
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Dear uplink-svk, in fact they aren't piece of crap and this my thread has proven nothing. Seems like it was just some kind of error from Furmark. Later on I learnt how to overclock with voltage tweak and everything was good. I squeezed amlost everything ou of that card and I enjoyed mabye hundrets of happy hours with this setup. Unfortunately, the cooler wasn't perfect and a little issue occured (but that wasn't caused by AMD!). So I got a refund and bought Sapphire R9 390 Tri-X Nitro. That was +- 7 months ago and everything seems good again. To sum up, R9 290(X) were great graphics cards with very good price to performance ratio, as niftu_cal has said. Have a nice day.

 
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