MSI R9 390X Overclocking Question: Using MSI Afterburner

[PsylentFox]

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:

 

Stock Profile: Daily Driving

Core Voltage (mV): +0

Power Limit (%): +0

CPU Clock: 1080 Mhz

Memory Clock: 1500 Mhz

 

Profile 1: League of Legends

Core Voltage (mV): +0

Power Limit (%): +20

CPU Clock: 1100 Mhz          (+20Mhz over stock)

Memory Clock: 1550 Mhz   (+50Mhz over stock)

 

Profile 2: Heros of the Storm and DotA 2

Core Voltage (mV): +25

Power Limit (%): +50

CPU Clock: 1130 Mhz          (+50Mhz over stock)

Memory Clock: 1585 Mhz   (+85Mhz over stock)

 

Profile 3: Metro 2033 and Metro 2033: Last Light

Core Voltage (mV): +56

Power Limit (%): +50

CPU Clock: 1150 Mhz          (+70Mhz over stock)

Memory Clock: 1600 Mhz   (+100Mhz over stock)

 

Profile 4: Future AAA Games

Core Voltage (mV): +100

Power Limit (%): +50

CPU Clock: 1580 Mhz          (+100Mhz over stock)

Memory Clock: 1650 Mhz   (+150Mhz over stock)

 

Attached are the photos of everything. Even through I have the profiles here in text, a picture is worth a thousand words, yes? Anyways, I've heard that once you reach the threshold of performance and efficiency it gets harder to achieve higher clocks and requires more voltage. However, I didn't believe that I would have to increase the voltage by 100 mV and increase my power by 50% in order to get a stable improvement of 100Mhz GPU and 150Mhz Memory clock. However, with the benchmark crashing after it loads and begins, I have to believe that my clocks are *not* stable and they need tweaking. Or there might be an issue with my CPU overclock, which I achieved using the antiquated MSI OC Genie II. I understand that the MSI R9 390X is already factory overclocked, and I read that it's overclocking is fairly limited due to the Grenada XT architecture. I knew that going into it, but after reading a bunch of overclocking guides for this card all of them achieved a very similar (stable) overclock actually using *less* power.

 

To reiterate I bumped up core voltage and power limit/back off clocks to eliminate artifacting and tested them in Kombuster for 20 minutes. So, thoughts? By the way, I hope this was easy to read, I spent half an hour working on this post: no one wants to read a sloppy post! :lol:

 

Thumbnails are as follows: Profiles 1, 2, 3, and 4.

 

[FilipSebik]

This is very nice but on LoL stock clocks are enough

[PsylentFox]

This is very nice but on LoL stock clocks are enough

Well i'm trying to learn about overclocking, I know that only 3 or 4 fps can be gained through mild overclocking like this, but that can be a 10% improvement when gaming at 1440p. So i'm trying to figure out why my particular clock speeds are causing crashes. I can play Heros of the Storm and League with my #2 profile, but anything above that crashes.

[SaltSlasher]

Thanks for the info, no one anywhere on my searches had any info for setting my marks. So I did your settings and tested using MSI Afterburner:
 

XFX 390x using Batman Origin's Benchmark

(User fan dots at 40% at 30, 70% at 50, 90% and 60 and 100% at 70 C) - CM 690 2 Advanced Case (fan in gpu bracket like 65mm, and two fans on side panel 140mm and 90mm (exterior cause won't fit inside))

 

MSAA x2, No V-Sync, Max Settings:

Profile 0: (Stock)
122 average at 64 C

 

Profile 1:
123 average at 65 C

Profile 2:

128 average at 67 C

Profile 3:
130 average at 71 C

 

^-Based off what I have seen, I DON'T see any performance unless you increase Core Voltage. Cause I did 3-4 tests, doing each profile in a row, and 0 and 1, both saw 122 and 123 frames per second. I found Profile 2 to be best overall, little heat increase for large FPS increase. 

 

I plan to find the best fan layout before I do Profile 4. I wanted to test to make sure each one was stable before moving on.