I want to OC, but how much?

[JoePro87]

I just upgraded from the R9 270 to the R9 390. Anyone that saw the video about the 270 knows that when overclocking it, you can just crank all the sliders all the way up, and enjoy!  Which, by the way, I did, and it worked beautifully. Now, I'm not so sure what to do. I don't want to destroy my shiny new 390 by sliding everything up all the way, and end up with a big piece of toast with fans...but at the same time, those global overclock settings are calling my name, and I must heed their call!!! 

 

Any other 390 owners here that have overclocked their card? How far were you able to safely push it? Any advice will be welcome. (Aside from troll advice, obviously. >_> )

[Guest]

You just have to try out, every card overclock diffrent amounts, just bump it up a little, streestest and repeat till it gets unstable and then dial it back a little and do a longer stresstest to see if its 100% stable

[JoePro87]

Okay, can you recommend a good stress test? Preferably free, since I kinda spent all my money on the card itself.  Also, as far as stable....how do you know when a card has reached it's limit? Like...should I just push it until it crashes the computer, then kick it back a bit from there? Or...what? (Sorry, I'm still new to the whole overclocking thing)

[Citadelen]

I pushed my 290X to 1110MHz, with 1.68mv on the core, as long as the card. As long as temps don't exceed 94C you'll be fine, but you'll probably find that the GPU will start artifacting long before you can push that much voltage through it. When it starts to artifact downclock it by 50MHz and that's your stable overclcok.

[Guest]

You know the card has reached its limit when its starts to artifact, and i can recommend furmark (http://www.ozone3d.net/benchmarks/fur/) to stresstest it

[Citadelen]

2 minutes ago, JoePro87 said:

Okay, can you recommend a good stress test? Preferably free, since I kinda spent all my money on the card itself.  Also, as far as stable....how do you know when a card has reached it's limit? Like...should I just push it until it crashes the computer, then kick it back a bit from there? Or...what? (Sorry, I'm still new to the whole overclocking thing)

3DMark, Unigen Heaven/Valley, stuff like that.

[JoePro87]

Thank you both!

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, JoePro87 said:

Thank you both!

No problems, we are here to help with what we know

[Goat]

I don't have a 390 but I can give you some advice on overclocking. 

 

The first thing you want to do is to set a goal for the overclock you want to achieve. Make it something that you will be happy with, but also reasonable for the card you have ( e.g. if the card is not a good overclocker, don't set something that's too high. )

 

Once you have that goal, increase the clock speed in small increments, testing the card in a benchmark on every increment until you reach that goal. If the card fails ( driver crashing, artifacting etc. ) on any of the increments or on the goal that you have set, dial back the clock speed until the overclock is stable.

 

As for overclocking the memory, I tend to be a little conservative with it, as games like Witcher 3 can have texture glitches when you bump the memory clock too high. Do note that different games will handle overclocks differently. For example, Battlefield 3 will crash if you run it on an overclocked gpu, as it can't support overclocking well.

 

Good free stress tests are Unigene Heaven and Unigene Valley. You will know when the card has reached its limit when the graphics driver crashes or when there is artifacting.

 

Btw please quote the posts that you want to reply to.

[SpriteNo5]

You could get the fire strike demo from Steam, I use unigine Valley and Heaven to benchmark then leave them running to stress. After running one of those for a couple of hours I usually just play a demanding game for a couple of hours as this will give you a better idea of stability. ATM I'm using ROTTR at 1440 with max settings and AA turned down a bit (120hz) and this gives my GPU a nice work out. 

[xAcid9]

1 hour ago, JoePro87 said:

but at the same time, those global overclock settings are calling my name, and I must heed their call!!! 

 

Any other 390 owners here that have overclocked their card? How far were you able to safely push it? Any advice will be welcome. (Aside from troll advice, obviously. >_> )

Please don't use Crimson overdrive since it can be quite buggy. Install MSI Afterburner and start cranking up the Core clock.

[JoePro87]

17 minutes ago, xAcid9 said:

Please don't use Crimson overdrive since it can be quite buggy. Install MSI Afterburner and start cranking up the Core clock.

Although I know the GPU's are the same between 3rd party resellers, mine being a Sapphire card, will the software work the way it is intended? I've never used Afterburner.

[Coaxialgamer]

I have a 290x ( same chip),  and you have to be much more granular about it. 

Go +10 on the core until you aren't stable, and try 1600 on memory.  I personally got my 290x (once i changed the awgul thermal paste application)  to 1170mhz / 1500 mem with 1.25v. 

 

Went from 58fps in valley to 72.

[Humbug]

4 hours ago, JoePro87 said:

Although I know the GPU's are the same between 3rd party resellers, mine being a Sapphire card, will the software work the way it is intended? I've never used Afterburner.

yes it will work. The cards are electronically identical.

[JoePro87]

13 hours ago, Humbug said:

yes it will work. The cards are electronically identical.

Thank you