R9 290 Extremely bad Unigine Heaven 4 scores

smonneke · Jan 20, 2016

So i have been running a few Unigine Heaven benchmarks but my scores are extremely low and i don't really understand why.
I have looked around a bit and found that an R9 290 should score way more. Even with the core overclocked to 1100Mhz and memory overclocked at 1400Mhz, with core Voltage at +95, i'm not even reaching the normal scores.
Do i just have a bad card or anything?
Here are the links to the benchmark results i ran:
Stock speed and Extreme preset
Overclocked and Extreme preset

If you compare these to other peoples results i found here "http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-1897785/ungine-heaven-score-fps-low-290.html" and here "http://forums.eteknix.com/threads/unigine-heaven-4-0-benchmark-results-leader-board.9127/" , you can definitely see it isn't performing as it should.

When i look at HWinfo i don't see anything out of the ordinary and no high temperatures which could be causing thermal throttling or anything as you can see HERE.

All input on this issue would be appreciated! Thanks in advance

Also other specs of my computer:
Cpu: i7 875k @ 3.9Ghz
Mem: 8GB DDR3 Corsair Dominator 1333Mhz
MB: Asus Sabertooth 55i
psu: 850W Coolermaster silent pro

jimmysmitty · Jan 20, 2016

My only guess would be either drivers or your CPU is bottlenecking the GPU. While the first gen Intel Core i series were decent, Sandy Bridge (COre i 2000 series) made a pretty big performance jump in comparison and the one you are looking at does have a much newer CPU.

nitrium · Jan 20, 2016

Have GPU-Z running (with the sensors tab open) in the background while you do the benchmark and see if you're getting clock frequency drops during the run, or if your GPU is getting very hot etc. You might be having issues with AMDs PowerTune or your GPU is overheating and thus thermally throttling etc.

nitrium · Jan 20, 2016

jimmysmitty :

There is no way that CPU @3.9GHz is bottlenecking that GPU.

smonneke · Jan 20, 2016

jimmysmitty :

I don't really think my CPU would be the bottleneck, during the benchmark it never even reached 100% load. And next to that, with it being overclocked to nearly 3.9Ghz it can hold up alright with current generations. As can be seen in this cpu-z benchmark https://gyazo.com/aaf8415201ca024f3acd1c96d6bdec4f. It's not super close, but the difference doesn't seem big enough to be that much of a difference that it would bottleneck an R9 290.

nitrium :

I had HWinfo open while running, you can see max temperatures in the link i provided. Not a single max temp is too high so i doubt that would be the issue. Clocks also remained constant during the benchmark

nitrium · Jan 20, 2016

smonneke :

That is very mysterious. I just ran the test on my brand new R9 390 (upgraded form HD7950) on my trusty old i5 760 @3.4 GHz (further proof your CPU is NOT a bottleneck!) and got this. The very low min FPS spikes are due to me working while it was running.

Humour me and run GPU-Z in the background with sensors tab open. It gives a nice graphical representation of all the key GPU metrics in realtime.
Also I just noticed your CPU is 2.9 GHz, NOT 3.9 GHz in the Benchmark result. Is that right?

smonneke · Jan 20, 2016

The screenshots linked are also all done after i did a clean driver install. I used 2 GPU driver removal tools to make sure, then i installed the latest chipset driver, and only the graphics card driver from the AMD minimal driver package. So there could be nothing driver wise interfering with the clocks i set in MSI afterburner

smonneke · Jan 20, 2016

nitrium :

Alright i'm on it

smonneke · Jan 20, 2016

So i did a new benchmark with GPU-z running in the background.
The only times i noticed drops in core clock speed was during transitions of scenes.
Here is a screenshot of the end. https://gyazo.com/d201a9f60c258518e5b04b82acfd44e9
I have also uploaded the log of the sensors to here http://www42.zippyshare.com/v/Cf6OOhg3/file.html

jimmysmitty · Jan 20, 2016

Are you installing the latest Catalyst drivers or the latest Crimson drivers? Your driver version number in Unigine is lower than his.

smonneke · Jan 20, 2016

jimmysmitty :

I see indeed, weird tho as i just did a complete reinstall of the drivers a few hours ago. And i just picked them from the site, i'll try it again now.
But nonetheless, i've had the same issue before i totally reinstalled all my gpu drivers

NightAntilli · Jan 20, 2016

Everything seems normal, but as a side note, your +12v is a bit on the low side at 11.53v.

jimmysmitty · Jan 20, 2016

What are you using to clean the drivers up? DDU?

jimmysmitty · Jan 20, 2016

NightAntilli :

That is within spec and =/-5% though so it should be fine. Although I did suspect it could be his PSU (Coolermaster doesn't have the best quality) I would expect to see more throttling if the PSU was having issues running his setup.

smonneke · Jan 20, 2016

jimmysmitty :

So i downloaded the latest version of the drivers, again i didn't install crimson and other shit with it. Only the bare minimum graphics driver. But still, the same result https://gyazo.com/e36f94103744dd9347e7bd205e72979c

Yes i used DDU and Amdcleanuputility, and after that i used CCleaner to fix all issues in registry.

My psu is also about 5 years old tho, but i'd also think it would show more issues if the PSU would be the problem in this scenario

NightAntilli · Jan 20, 2016

Indeed... No throttling to be seen. It's likely not the reason. I can't think of anything right now, other than driver issues or a faulty GPU. Or maybe, the system memory if it is very old with very high timings, but that's a stretch too...

smonneke · Jan 20, 2016

Another issue i have tho, not sure if it could be related to the psu issue. But when i got my card overclocked at the speeds and core voltage given in the first post, sometimes it can run Heaven stress test for days, without any problem what so ever, but then when i'm doing a benchmark at even a lower resolution and not full screen it can crash my computer and give a black screen..

smonneke · Jan 20, 2016

NightAntilli :

System memory also about 5 years old, i did change the timings on them. But just to the tested Timings instead of the SPD values, so the same values in the tech specs over here http://www.corsair.com/en-us/cmd8gx3m4a1333c7

NightAntilli · Jan 20, 2016

Doesn't seem to be the issue either...

Let's go to simpler things... You said you only installed the minimal driver package. How much control do you have over certain settings? It could be as simple a thing as the basic package having SSAA turned on, and applying 8x MSAA on top of it, killing your performance, for example.

smonneke · Jan 20, 2016

NightAntilli :

I think i have basically zero control, only software i have running which influences the GPU is MSIAfterburner, since i didn't install AMD Settings or anything.
But with that same reason, wouldn't stuff like SSAA or MSAA or any other graphic option be avoided? If AMD Settings isn't installed, wouldn't everything just run at default specs (as in not turned on)? Or am i wrong in this, i really don't have a clue how their new drivers work since crimson came out

smonneke · Jan 20, 2016

for the sake of it i'll install crimson and see if it has any settings which could impact performance are turned on

NightAntilli · Jan 20, 2016

Well, as far as I can remember, the default settings after installing the catalyst driver has AA turned on, temporal AA turned on, AF turned on and so on. I have always have had to manually set 'use application settings' and so on. I do not know if it is the same with the Crimson driver.

smonneke · Jan 20, 2016

NightAntilli :

I just installed crimson and everything is set to 'use application settings' as wel as anti-aliasing mode, except for anti-aliasingmethod which is set at multisampling, but i can't set this to 'use application settings' only 'Adaptive multisampling' and 'Supersampling'. Next to that i also disabled shadercache, and something about optimizing surface.. I'll do a new bench, see if it has any impact

NightAntilli · Jan 20, 2016

Try to check everything, including tessellation settings etc.

smonneke · Jan 20, 2016

Without succes, still the same score

.
I'm really losing hope. Wouldn't there be more issues if the card was faulty tho? And is it possible that everything just works fine except for bad performance if it's a faulty card?

R9 290 Extremely bad Unigine Heaven 4 scores

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