Overclocking a RX480

[Thanatos246]

So I attempted to OC my Powercolor RX480 8gb gpu by about 5% and ended up with almost instant artifacts and shortly after a solid grey screen.
Any tips on OC'ing further? or should I first swap out the stock cooler for either a waterblock which I can add to my current loop or a different air cooler?

[Enderman]

AMD cards have never been great at overclocking.

Other than increasing core voltage there isn't much you can do.

[racer243l]

Seems normal for the RX480... Seems like 1330-1340Mhz is what you could get, but not more.

[Mr.Humble]

I have the NITRO+ card, and it sits on the max boost clock of 1342MHz when gaming, not a Hz more.

 

I heard that you basically allow the card to boost higher when you increase the power limit, although I wouldn't recommend that on the reference card because of the PCIe power draw issue.

12 minutes ago, Enderman said:

AMD cards have never been great at overclocking.

My old R9 280 would disagree

[Thanatos246]

Just now, vojta.pokorny said:

I have the NITRO+ card, and it sits on the max boost clock of 1342MHz when gaming, not a Hz more.

 

I heard that you basically allow the card to boost higher when you increase the power limit, although I wouldn't recommend that on the reference card because of the PCIe power draw issue.

My old R9 280 would disagree

 

I agree. My old HD 4850, 6850, and 7850's all loved to be OC'd. I actually had my 6850 running stable at a 25% OC using the stock cooler. Granted it was the asus version which had a much better cooler.
I did however see that the RX480's are not performing that well when it comes to being OC'd. This is not all bad however as I can still get a 2nd gpu and run it in xfire and still be cheaper than a GTX 1080 with roughly the same level of performance.

[Enderman]

8 minutes ago, vojta.pokorny said:

My old R9 280 would disagree

In general AMD cards can't get more than a 100-200MHz overclock. You're lucky if you got more than that.

[TheRandomness]

22 minutes ago, Enderman said:

AMD cards have never been great at overclocking.

Other than increasing core voltage there isn't much you can do.

Just to prove this, my 290 needed 1.46V and +250~% power limit to have an increase of 243MHz (947 to 1190)

 

Whoops just disagreed with the post you just made. 

[Mr.Humble]

I heard and read a lot of reviews where they complained about even aftermarket cards not holding the boost clock stable, but I haven't had this issue. My NITRO+ card is factory OC'd though, at 1342MHz boost, and even increasing the power limit all the way to +50% didn't yield any improvement, but rather made the system unstable (could be that i didn't do a clean install of the drivers for the new card at the time though)

 

5 minutes ago, Thanatos246 said:

I can still get a 2nd gpu and run it in xfire and still be cheaper than a GTX 1080 with roughly the same level of performance.

Exacltly my thoughts, plus the fact that my new 34" curved ultrawide monitor I spent a lot more money on than I ever spent on a single graphics card (and probably more than I ever will spend on a graphics card) is Freesync enabled, so nothing else would make sense for me*.

 

*Well I found a new Sapphire NITRO+ R9 Fury for ~370€, but the bloody thing is too long for my f/*-ing case

[Thanatos246]

1 minute ago, vojta.pokorny said:

I heard and read a lot of reviews where they complained about even aftermarket cards not holding the boost clock stable, but I haven't had this issue. My NITRO+ card is factory OC'd though, at 1342MHz boost, and even increasing the power limit all the way to +50% didn't yield any improvement, but rather made the system unstable (could be that i didn't do a clean install of the drivers for the new card at the time though)

 

Exacltly my thoughts, plus the fact that my new 34" curved ultrawide monitor I spent a lot more money on than I ever spent on a single graphics card (and probably more than I ever will spend on a graphics card) is Freesync enabled, so nothing else would make sense for me*.

 

*Well I found a new Sapphire NITRO+ R9 Fury for ~370€, but the bloody thing is too long for my f/*-ing case

 

Luckily I can fit just about any length gpu into my case as I have no drive cages or the like in it. I am using the cm master case 5 now, no longer the HAF 932, but even with that case I had ample space inside for long gpu's.

[Mr.Humble]

2 minutes ago, Thanatos246 said:

Luckily I can fit just about any length gpu into my case as I have no drive cages or the like in it. I am using the cm master case 5 now, no longer the HAF 932, but even with that case I had ample space inside for long gpu's.

Well at the time of getting it ~2 years back I haven't seen myself putting a graphics card longer than 290mm inside my system.

 

10 minutes ago, Enderman said:

In general AMD cards can't get more than a 100-200MHz overclock. You're lucky if you got more than that.

Wasn't aiming for more than that with the R9 280, the cooler I have on it sucks.

[Gravemind]

480's aren't great overclockers. They'll take a tiny OC but not much. Even if you cooled it with liquid nitrogen, I doubt it'd get much further.

[Thanatos246]

2 hours ago, Gravemind said:

480's aren't great overclockers. They'll take a tiny OC but not much. Even if you cooled it with liquid nitrogen, I doubt it'd get much further.

 

I figured as much. I'm not generally one to settle for 'well enough', but, in this case, it will have to do.

[Mr.Humble]

24 minutes ago, Thanatos246 said:

I figured as much. I'm not generally one to settle for 'well enough', but, in this case, it will have to do.

Maybe there's more to it, though, for example a driver / firmware thing that prevents the card to boost higher even under acceptable conditions. I'll try to investigate it later today with the new drivers installed properly.