First, a little background:
Prior to 2008 I was a firm believer in building my own PCs, component by component. I wasn't an overclocker, it was just that 9 times out of 10 it was easier to budget getting a new computer. (It wasn't necessarily less expensive, but you could buy the individual pieces over time, and it's easier to buy a $200 component off a single paycheck than a $1500 desktop, and you usually got better performance on the other end of it.)
Around 2006 I stopped doing this, because in 2004 or so I was diagnosed with Essential Tremor, which is a pretty common condition people get in their 50s and 60s where your hands shake quite a bit. (I got it in my 30s, so yay for overachieving). It became difficult to deal with tiny screws and wires and after spending a day and a half trying to screw a new motherboard to a chassis I decided I was never going to do that again. I went with laptops because it was more convenient for work at that time, anyway.
What this means is that all my knowledge about building my own PCs stopped around 2006, which was the last time I ever built one. Which leads directly to all the trouble I'm having now.
Now my problem:
Two weeks ago my primary computer (a rather heavy-duty ASUS laptop) died horribly and I needed to get a new computer before work started up again, post-haste. But it was Christmas, and I was cash-strapped, so I couldn't afford to go out and buy another high-end laptop. I could, however, afford to buy a bare-bones PC and beef it up with high-end parts, which is what I did. But I made the "mistake" of buying an AMD R9 290x video card without having any real context of what that means--Crossfire cards were just starting to come out in 2005-2006 and I wasn't really paying attention to them, and pretty much all of the laptops I used had NVIDIA cards in them.
This is supposed to be a dual-boot machine, with Windows on one drive and Linux on another. I installed Windows first, and immediately ran into random rebooting problems. I learned the hard way that it was a power supply issue (500w power supply actually exploded. It was exciting). I replaced the power supply twice (750w was, apparently insufficient--seriously what? My last desktop computer had a 250w power supply. BACK IN MY DAY 350w power supplies were considered excessive *shakes cane*). But there were still reboots.
I learned why in this thread:
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2010230/290x-black-screen-crash.html
First of all, thank you Tom's Hardware Community and specifically the people in that thread for helping me reclaim my sanity. The reboots were happening, in part, because my machine does not have a UEFI motherboard. And because I don't want to rip it out and try to replace it with my shaky, shaky hands, I was able to use ASUS GPU Tweak to boost the 2d GPU Clock and Memory Clock settings, and I haven't had a reboot since.
Well, on the Windows side. On my Linux partition I still get reboots, because on my Linux side I don't have ASUS GPU Tweak to solve my problem, because ASUS GPU Tweak is a windows program. So I was wondering if anyone here knew a way to replicate the fix I have in place Windows-side in a Linux environment? Essentially to overclock the 2d settings to push the GPU Clock up to 430 and the Memory Clock to 900. I'm currently running Kubuntu 14.10, which means that probably any Debian-based solution will work.
Also, this is the first time I've ever overclocked anything on any machine I've ever owned (there's that stench of ignorance again) so apologies in advance for not really knowing what I'm talking about.
Prior to 2008 I was a firm believer in building my own PCs, component by component. I wasn't an overclocker, it was just that 9 times out of 10 it was easier to budget getting a new computer. (It wasn't necessarily less expensive, but you could buy the individual pieces over time, and it's easier to buy a $200 component off a single paycheck than a $1500 desktop, and you usually got better performance on the other end of it.)
Around 2006 I stopped doing this, because in 2004 or so I was diagnosed with Essential Tremor, which is a pretty common condition people get in their 50s and 60s where your hands shake quite a bit. (I got it in my 30s, so yay for overachieving). It became difficult to deal with tiny screws and wires and after spending a day and a half trying to screw a new motherboard to a chassis I decided I was never going to do that again. I went with laptops because it was more convenient for work at that time, anyway.
What this means is that all my knowledge about building my own PCs stopped around 2006, which was the last time I ever built one. Which leads directly to all the trouble I'm having now.
Now my problem:
Two weeks ago my primary computer (a rather heavy-duty ASUS laptop) died horribly and I needed to get a new computer before work started up again, post-haste. But it was Christmas, and I was cash-strapped, so I couldn't afford to go out and buy another high-end laptop. I could, however, afford to buy a bare-bones PC and beef it up with high-end parts, which is what I did. But I made the "mistake" of buying an AMD R9 290x video card without having any real context of what that means--Crossfire cards were just starting to come out in 2005-2006 and I wasn't really paying attention to them, and pretty much all of the laptops I used had NVIDIA cards in them.
This is supposed to be a dual-boot machine, with Windows on one drive and Linux on another. I installed Windows first, and immediately ran into random rebooting problems. I learned the hard way that it was a power supply issue (500w power supply actually exploded. It was exciting). I replaced the power supply twice (750w was, apparently insufficient--seriously what? My last desktop computer had a 250w power supply. BACK IN MY DAY 350w power supplies were considered excessive *shakes cane*). But there were still reboots.
I learned why in this thread:
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2010230/290x-black-screen-crash.html
First of all, thank you Tom's Hardware Community and specifically the people in that thread for helping me reclaim my sanity. The reboots were happening, in part, because my machine does not have a UEFI motherboard. And because I don't want to rip it out and try to replace it with my shaky, shaky hands, I was able to use ASUS GPU Tweak to boost the 2d GPU Clock and Memory Clock settings, and I haven't had a reboot since.
Well, on the Windows side. On my Linux partition I still get reboots, because on my Linux side I don't have ASUS GPU Tweak to solve my problem, because ASUS GPU Tweak is a windows program. So I was wondering if anyone here knew a way to replicate the fix I have in place Windows-side in a Linux environment? Essentially to overclock the 2d settings to push the GPU Clock up to 430 and the Memory Clock to 900. I'm currently running Kubuntu 14.10, which means that probably any Debian-based solution will work.
Also, this is the first time I've ever overclocked anything on any machine I've ever owned (there's that stench of ignorance again) so apologies in advance for not really knowing what I'm talking about.
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