R9 290 Crossfire, initial thoughts, water cooling to follow

[Sandzsteedt]

Hello guys and gals!

 

So finally I have managed to get my hands on a pair of Asus reference R9 290's.

 

So initial thoughts:

Reasonably well built all around and seems good bang for the buck....

Until you place them in your rig and run a game on maxed out settings. Dat heat!

 

I have been running my CPU and GPU's water cooled for the last two years and I'm used to maxing out at 55C tops. So seeing the 290's trying to maintain 95C was a bit uncomfortable. Reason why I find excess temps uncomfortable is because I had one Nvidia card die from high temperature years ago. That card died a weird death where it would work perfectly when cold booted but after about two hours of usage it suddenly died. After it cooled for several hours it worked again for a couple hours. I figured the root cause was heat expansion and that some connection had failed and when heat expansion caused a slight fracture to a connection it died, but when it was cool and no heat expansion was happening it worked as normal. The card did get RMA'd but it left me looking for temps way less than 100C in the future. If I remember right the card was GeForce 7950 GX2 and the replacement was 8800GTS.

 

I did my preliminary OC testing with Unigine Valley benchmark and got 14% increase on the core over 947MHz stock. I didn't like the high temps and I set the temp target to 85C and allowed 100% fan speed if needed. Fan speed didn't go higher than 63%, but when you have two of them going at that high levels it makes for a pretty good hair dryer. Both in sound and heat so you could basically dry your hair with the exhaust air, lol :lol:. I even tried to help the cards out by maxing out 2x200mm intake fans + 2x120mm intake fans to the case. Ambient room temp was around 24C.

Didn't bother OC'ing the memory since I got slight artifacts at 3% memory OC even though the power target was upped to +25%.

The exhaust air was actually such a problem that when my rig sits roughly 15cm away from a wall, the wall got very warm to the touch. I rigged up two 120mm Noctuas ghetto style to circulate cool air behind my rig to dissipate the heat.

IR heat gun reports 55C temps at exhaust grill when the said fans are clearing air behind my rig.

 

Then I was off to some Battlefield 3 testing:

I managed 1080 MHz on the core, memory at stock, temp target 85C and fan was topping out around 65%.

Later I did a 3 hour BF3 stint and no issues with the cards. Smooth going at 2560x1440 with maxed out settings.

So the cards are fine and have passed the initial torture.

 

My ears are accustomed to full water cooling with all fans on low, so under 20db. Also all my pumps are suspended on a bed of old tubing to cut out all vibrations. I am using open Sennheiser HD800 headphones and I have never had complaints about noise from the rigs.... until now.

I had to swap out to closed headphones to cut out most of the 290's fan noise and then increase the volume to hide more of it. I still could hear an annoying hum from the background <_< .

 

 

The plan all along was to get blocks and backplates for the 290's, but I had to check if the cards were DOA before rushing ahead with water cooling.

Well the cards sure worked and were not DOA, but god damn I can't wait for EKWB to deliver me blocks and backplates to quiet those turbines down .

 

I'm hoping to get blocks in early January 2014 and then I'll do some more OC'ing and report back with my findings.

[Joshyy]

Fellow 290 owner here. Have you burnt your hand on the exhaust air yet? Done that twice. 

[zxcvbnmmssdh]

Have you tried an Nvidia optimized game like AC4 and how that is. I wonder how good they are at 1440p

[Sandzsteedt]

Fellow 290 owner here. Have you burnt your hand on the exhaust air yet? Done that twice. 

 

I haven't burned my hand, although I got close. Just had to poke around a little . That's when I realized the heat issue behind the rig and decided to rig some extra fans to clear out the hot air.

[Sandzsteedt]

Have you tried an Nvidia optimized game like AC4 and how that is. I wonder how good they are at 1440p

 

Haven't tried Nvidia optimized stuff yet. I probably won't get AC4 either because I've lost interest in the AC series. The games feel way too easy now. I have played all PC titles since original AC up till AC 3. I used to just run around in Brotherhood and slaughter hoards of guards just for the lols and now that there is bombs etc. it's just meh.

 

I'm probably getting bored over Christmas time while waiting for my blocks so I'll check through my game library and try out with AC3 or something else I have.

[Sandzsteedt]

Now I have tested an Nvidia title called Max Payne 3.

 

I tinkered with the graphics settings and I ran with 2560x1440 60hz with all settings Ultra, no Vsync, AA was dropped one notch below maximum to stay under 4gb Vram usage claimed by the game.

Since Max Payne 3 is Rockstar title it uses the same base as GTA IV and thus recognizes 8gb Vram from crossfire, but obviously you only can use 4gb max. Topping out all settings including AA, the maximum estimated Vram usage by Max Payne 3 was almost 6gb at 2560x1440.

 

The game ran super smooth. I didn't notice any issues with the crossfire. No stuttering what so ever. I have noticed stuttering occasionally with my older 7970's though, so AMD has definitely improved on the drivers for the new generations of GPU's. I'm still anxiously waiting for the new driver from AMD to improve frame time issues with 7000 series cards. I'm going to test it out as soon as the driver is released.

 

Some GPU data from my two hour Max Payne 3 run:

Temp target 85C, maintained nicely

Max fan speed was 69%, loud as hell. I had allowed the card to go 100% on the fan if the temps got nuts.

OpenHardwareMonitor showed 100% GPU core load on both cards in crossfire.

Both cards were run at stock speeds for GPU and memory.

IR heat gun read 63C temps at exhaust ports!

 

 

I'm curious to see how my water cooling setup changes the temps I get with the 290's and also how much I can push for OC with overvolting.

To be honest; there's really no point in OC'ing the reference 290's with stock coolers because the temps are just nuts.

If you allowed the cards to run at 95C temp target you will be looking at exhaust air temps of above 70C.

 

The 290's default config has the fan speed max set at 40% and temp target at 95C.

With 40% fan speed max I'm guessing that the cards would start down clocking pretty fast after the temp target is met.

[Gunjob]

I've thought about getting another 290x but I'm struggling to find the need, this thing is blazingly quick and I'm only pushing 2560x1080 and its yet to miss a beat. Although mine does have the AC XtremeIII on it which on stock brought the max load temps to 55C and its much quieter.

[GamerDude]

I'm running a pair of Sapphire R9 290X in CF config and they cut thru games at max setting @ 1200P with ease. Ran thru the Metro 2033 and LL benchmarks, min framerate is now in the 20's, much better than previously where it'd hit single digit, frame pacing is working. The benchmakrs ran smooth with no judder or stuttering at all. Though I've never watercooled my GPU's before, I may do it for the 290X......for that added performance.

[Jokrik]

I'm running a pair of Sapphire R9 290X in CF config and they cut thru games at max setting @ 1200P with ease. Ran thru the Metro 2033 and LL benchmarks, min framerate is now in the 20's, much better than previously where it'd hit single digit, frame pacing is working. The benchmakrs ran smooth with no judder or stuttering at all. Though I've never watercooled my GPU's before, I may do it for the 290X......for that added performance.

 

Time to put more attention to your rig than your boards

 

Anyway, I'm also running 2 x 290's 

and I have Aquacomputer blocks on the way with the active cooling backplates

currently still running on air and I found even my old 560ti run cooler than the 290, and its noisy

on idle it's still frying

 

EK made good blocks, but I've passed the EK days and now going only for Aquacomputer or Heatkiller for better quality

[Sandzsteedt]

Quick update to the crossfire 290's. The EK blocks have arrived and are fitted. 10% core clock OC is getting GPU temps of max 45C, hovering around 42-38C while playing BF3 at 1440p.

 

Tomorrow I will do some more overclocking and pushing the CPU and GPUs and then a good round of stress testing to see how the final temps are.

 

I will update this thread with my findings during the weekend at the latest.

[lachyman]

Damn, those cards are hot, what is my core temp is your exhaust air temp

[Sandzsteedt]

Ok, the results are in.

 

Watercooling on the 290's gave maximum VRM temps of 47C under benchmarking and the GPU core temp topped out at 45C.

Typical temps that I saw during different testing was 43C on VRM and 42C on GPU core.

 

Overclocking headroom or rather the lack of it:

Like I mentioned in the original post I managed 14% GPU OC with the air cooler while suffering from the ear bleeding noise. Unfortunately watercooling did not unlock any more headroom for the reference 290. Even after upping the power target to +50% did not help stabilize the OC enough to be deemed usable. Unigine kept on crashing at anything above 14% GPU OC. +50% power target did roughly +2-3C to the temps and registered as a gain of roughly 30W at the wall plug where I have a electricity meter hooked up. The +30W gain was during Unigine Valley, so no high CPU power draw.

 

Asus reference 290's under water are sitting steady at 14% OC, 1080MHz core clock, temps at 40C +/-3C while ambients are at 25C.

Power target +30% just to make sure it has enough power. Heat is not an issue with watercooling.

 

Even with the lack of more OC headroom the difference to the reference air cooler is massive.

The stock air cooler tries to maintain 95C temps at less than 45% fan speed which means that it will start downclocking the GPU to draw less power during extended usage, especially if your ambient temps are higher than 25C.

And yes, the stock fan speed max is set so low that it will throttle the GPU rather than making more noise with fan speed. I had Unigine Valley runs at bone stock air cooled where it started creeping down from the stock GPU clock of 947MHz.

 

Max power draw with Phenom II 1100T running 4GHz and crossfire 290's at 1080MHz registered at 709W at the wall.

 

Unigine Valley at 2560x1440 with maxed out settings clocked VRAM usage of roughly 3,6Gb according to GPU-Z.

 

 

I highly recommend getting 290 or X variants with better than stock cooling. The stock cooler is just ridiculously bad unless you live somewhere where the ambient room temperature is 15C or less or you are nearly deaf.

Also the quality of thermal pads and grease used with the stock cooler was a bit questionable. The stock TIM had dried up almost completely and the thermal pads on the VRM were also very brittle and dry. Memory thermal pads were ok.

As a comparison I had over one year of usage with Arctic MX4 before I took the cooler off my CPU and the TIM looked like it just came from the tube.

I'm guessing that swapping the stock thermal pads and TIM might benefit temperatures a little with the stock cooler, but yeah, the cooler is still way too loud for my taste.

 

That concludes the 290 watercooling adventure. The thermals improved greatly and EKWB full cover block and backplate made the cards sexier.

[thelude]

Can we some pics of the sexy 290's? Thanks

[Sandzsteedt]

I didn't take pictures while the cards were out of the rig, but here is the same thing from EK's website for the backplate:

http://www.ekwb.com/shop/blocks/vga-blocks/fc-backplates/amd-radeon-series/ek-fc-r9-290x-backplate-black.html

 

And for the block:

http://www.ekwb.com/shop/blocks/vga-blocks/ati-radeon-full-cover-blocks/radeon-rx-200-series/ek-fc-r9-290x-acetal.html

 

The block is the same that Powercolour is putting on their 290X LCS model.