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MSI R9 390X Overclocking Question: Using MSI Afterburner

Hello everyone, recently posted my first time in the LTT forums in GD, and now that the pleasantries are done, its now time to get down to business. :angry:

 

I recently became interested in overclocking, and with my aging CPU, GPU, and PSU finally starting to give out after years of hard work I finally decided to upgrade and start overclocking as a hobby. I have watched and read a lot of overclocking guides, including everything OC related in the LTT channel on Youtube. Since this is the Graphics Card section I will be directing my related questions here. But first lets get my rig out of the way so you know what you're dealing with:

 

CPU: AMD FX-8370 Vishera 8-core 4.0 Ghz (4.3 Turbo)

Graphics Card: MSI AMD R9 390X

RAM: 16GB (4 x 4GB Sticks) Team Vulcan 1600 DDR3

MoBo: MSI 990FXA-GD65V2

Storage: Seagate 500GB 7200 rpm Hard Drive (Yeah I know, i have an SSD on the way for my boot drive and games.  :lol:)

PSU: EVGA 750W Gold Fully Modular

CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Evo-212

 

Now that is done, lets get down to the brass tacks: I'm trying to use MSI Afterburner 4.1.1 (the most recent update) to over clock my R9 390X and set up profiles on it so I can squeeze more performance out of my gaming experience, and it seems I'm running into some troubles.

 

I have 4 profiles set up, and after reading a number of overclocking guides on this particular card I felt confident that I could get similar performance out of my card. I used the Afterburner to set up aggressive fan profiles to keep my card from throttling and used the 4 profiles to make small, incremental improvements to the clock speeds of both the GPU and the Memory. After that I used the Kombuster for an average of 20 minutes per profile to check for fragmenting and other graphical errors while monitoring the temps to keep them below 75 c to mitigate thermal throttling. If I encountered graphical problems or temps exceeding my standards I either backed off the clocks or adjusted power and voltage until there were no problems that I could see and temps were under control. It took me hours (from 0100 to 0400) to get four profiles that met my various expectations for gaming, from a profile (near stock) for League of Legends, to a higher clocked profile for Heros of the Storm's more graphically and physics intensive gameplay, a profile for Metro 2033 Redux and Metro 2033: Last Light Redux's challenging requirements, and a 'Max Clock' profile for future gaming endeavors. However, this is where I've run into a snag.

 

All of the profiles I have posted below have been tested with Kombuster (the Fur Mark profile) for 20 minutes and all of them have kept their temperatures below 75 C. With that in mind, every time I load of 3D Mark 11 to test how the overclock improves my performance, it crashes and freezes my whole computer. I have to do a hard restart, and I've tried adjusting settings, but any time I use anything except the stock settings the card crashes. So take a look at these profiles and tell me what you think. I think I might know what is potentially causing it, my CPU overclock, but I cannot test it until I get back. But for now take a look at these profiles and tell me what you think:

 

For reference the stock profile:

 

 

Profile 1: 

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Keep in mind the 390x is basically a 290x but more aggressively overclocked out of the box and with better binned chips.

Dont expect too much from overclocking on a 390x xD

Stock is probably what the max your card can handle without significant voltage increase (even then it doesnt guarantee a better OC)

I personally am able to OC my 290x to 1090/1380 without voltage increase (fully stable) or 1155/1580 with +100mV so you could take that into account

(Take note i got a pretty meh OCing 290x)

The BBQ: i7-4770 / 212x / Tri-X R9 290x 1075/1400 / MSI H87-G43 GAMING / EVGA G2 850W / Corsair Spec 03 / Samsung 840 EVO 250gb SSD / Toshiba 2TB HDD / 8gb Kingston DDR3 1600mhz

Peripherals: G710+ / G502 / Bose Companion 2 Series III / Audio Technica ATH-M40x / Sound Magic E50

Monitors: Dell U2414H 

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