290x Stock Voltage

alpacino2368

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Jul 11, 2013
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Hi,

I am trying to find the stock 290x voltage for a reference pcb with no overclock. I cant seem to find this on the internet. Does anyone know what it is?

My 290x by Asus is a custom pcb with factory overclock and runs at 1.25v but I cannot confirm if this is more voltage than reference!

Thanks
 
Solution
AnandTech's Review of the Reference 290X puts the boost voltage at 1.18v. Be careful when raising the voltage; take it slow and increase in ~10mv increments past 1.3v with stress testing in between to ensure you don't suddenly find your system is unstable. Personally I wouldn't go past ~1.375v since even then you could potentially be reducing the GPU's life-span.

Chayan4400

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1.25v is fine. The generally accepted safe voltage for the 290X on air cooling is around 1.3v. If the factory overclock puts the voltage at 1.25v, let it be. It won't decrease the life-span of the card in any way.

EDIT: I saw your other thread. If you are looking to underclock your GPU, lower the Core clock and see if that helps. If you really need to undervolt, decrease in 10mv increments with stress testing in between till you experience system instability. Then set the voltage to the last known stable voltage.
 

alpacino2368

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Jul 11, 2013
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I totally get that. In fact I intend to crank the voltage right up. I am more so asking about the stock voltage as I am trying to gauge what type of overclock I can expect.

Alot of overclock results are posted with offset voltage readings (IE: +100 MV, as per afterburner default) but this doesn't mean anything if I don't know what the reference 290x stock voltage is.

See this forum for example of offset:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2417304

Once I get the kraken setup I should be able to raise the voltage to around 1.4v
 

Chayan4400

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AnandTech's Review of the Reference 290X puts the boost voltage at 1.18v. Be careful when raising the voltage; take it slow and increase in ~10mv increments past 1.3v with stress testing in between to ensure you don't suddenly find your system is unstable. Personally I wouldn't go past ~1.375v since even then you could potentially be reducing the GPU's life-span.
 
Solution

alpacino2368

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Jul 11, 2013
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Wow, my card already has quiet a voltage boost for the extra 50mhz it is clocked at. Thanks for finding that, I literally couldn't find it anywhere.

Ive done a decent amount of GPU overclocking before just never on a 290x. I will probably go less than 1.4v since overclocking doesn't scale linearly with an increase in voltage (diminishing marginally returns). None the less hopefully Ill be able to get it in the 1200 mhz range.

Do you have any recommendation for stress testing the GPU when overclocking, I used to run Furmark but it is excessive and have since switched to Heaven/Valley but never know how long to let it loop for.
 

Chayan4400

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Unigine Heaven / Valley, Furmark and 3DMark are all fine for GPU stress testing. Personally, my method is 10 minutes of stress testing between raising the Core clock / Voltage (In 10mv / 20 Hz increments). You can make the increments smaller once you reach the upper limit if you want to. Once you find the instability point, and can't overclock anymore, set it back to the last known stable point, and leave it to stress test for at least 5-6 hours (More is better here; the longer you go without artifacting or crashing / BSODing, the more stable your overclock is). Monitor the stress test every 15 minutes for the first hour or so, then leave it to run. If you see grapghical anomalies or the system crashes or BSODs, lower the overclock by a bit and re-test until you can run the stress test for a few hours without anything out of the ordinary happening.

Yes, it's time consuming and a bit tedious, but this way you can be absolutely sure that the overclock is stable and also squeeze as much performance from your GPU as possible.
 

alpacino2368

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Awesome, thanks for the input.

Last question promise,

Have you ever messed with the more advanced overclocking settings in Asus GPU tweak. I know what some do in theory but do not know what a safe range for them would be.

Some of these include:
VDDCI - no clue what this is outside the fact that it is not memory or gpu voltage but some other type of voltage
Memory Voltage - what would be the safe upper limit on this assuming temps are in check
VRM Clock - I know increasing this can give some improved stability but what is a safe amount
Load line - this is for Gpu droop I believe, can i just set it all the way to the right
0.95V and 1.8v - not sure what these are to be honest

I will probably not touch most of these (except loadline and mem voltage, but I would like to be more informed about my card capabilities)
 

Chayan4400

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I haven't really touched those unfortunately. Usually I'm fine with a substancial overclock; I don't want to really tweak everything to gain maybe an extra 2% performance bump. I did a bit of searching around and have absolutely no clue how those settings affect the PC's performance or what safe values are for them, though they make sense after reading the definitions. Best let someone else who knows about them answer your question :).
 

alpacino2368

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Jul 11, 2013
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I agree, I was just more so curious. I am surprised Asus doesn't have more details on this. Thanks again.