R9 290 Overclocking

[JeffBurnsRed]

Hey everyone, 

I am looking to upgrade to a R9 290 card (most likely Sapphire) such as the Vapor-X or Tri-X variations. I have heard several times that the 290x series cards are essentially factory overclocked 290's. Does anyone have any personal experience with successfully overclocking their 290 to achieve similar (if not better) results than a 290x? 

 

I found some results indicating some good clock speeds on 290's here: http://www.overclock.net/t/1447763/amd-r9-290-290x-overclockers-club

 

I was hoping to find someone here that would have some insight on this.

 

Thanks,

Jeff

[Shd0w2]

They are more than factory over clocked 290s, they have more cores and such. You can over clock it to receive similar results as a stock 290. Or hack your 290 into a 290x using the bios hacks and stuff

[Glenwing]

Hey everyone, 

I am looking to upgrade to a R9 290 card (most likely Sapphire) such as the Vapor-X or Tri-X variations. I have heard several times that the 290x series cards are essentially factory overclocked 290's. Does anyone have any personal experience with successfully overclocking their 290 to achieve similar (if not better) results than a 290x? 

 

I found some results indicating some good clock speeds on 290's here: http://www.overclock.net/t/1447763/amd-r9-290-290x-overclockers-club

 

I was hoping to find someone here that would have some insight on this.

 

Thanks,

Jeff

 

The 290X has 2816 cores vs 2560 on a 290, but yes the performance is pretty close.  Some batches of 290s had cores simply disabled in the card's BIOS but those cards are few and far inbetween.

[Face2Face]

Here, see for yourself - http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1068?vs=1056

Even with less cores and with a core clock speed deficit, the R9 290 is the barely slower than it's bigger brother.

[Ardacer]

On battlefield 4 all setings max using mantle and amd octacore it scores over 90 fps, and with i7 on tomb raider with antiailasing cranked all the way up with ultimate settings it gets around 50 fps (tri-x version)

 

That's on stock.

 

So honestly I wouldn't recommend overclocks until you need them, so unless you have 1440p monitor, for now I see no reason to do so.

 

edit: bf4 - my friend tried it, i don't have 8350 so can't say, but i trust him

[JeffBurnsRed]

Here, see for yourself - http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1068?vs=1056

Even with less cores and with a core clock speed deficit, the R9 290 is the barely slower than it's bigger brother.

That's insane! I had not encountered a comparison that close so far. I was honestly considering getting a 290x but after seeing results like this, it is hard to justify the price/performance difference. Especially since I am only gaming/editing at 1080p

[CreamyPotatoBruh]

I'm running an OC'ed Gigabyte Windforce R9 290. I hit 1100mhz on the core and 1475mhz on the memory at +100v but the VRMs can't handle anymore than +100 on my card. They run too hot past that. I've heard that the Tri-X was the best one to get and has very good cooling on it so you might be able to push it farther with Trixx. If I wasn't planning on selling mine to get a 780Ti to use with my 3d vision kit then i'd get a waterblock for it as that's the only way to push it to it's limits with how much power these things use and how much heat is outputted. at 50% power limit, I've had the card push upwards to 375 watts. At that point the VRMs were done with my shit and just shut down the computer. I keep it on 15% now as that's the highest they can go to keep under 100c

[JeffBurnsRed]

Awesome. Thanks for the info and examples guys.