The 290 can no longer be flashed

[ChrisxIxCross]

Looks like the fun of getting a r290 and flashing it in order to save yourself some money is soon to come to an end. Unfortunately the flash only works with specific batches of production from only two vendors XFX & TUL (vtx3d/powercolor)

Article: wccftech.com/unlocked-radeon-r9-290-graphic-cards-masses/

[Morpheus]

i don't understand how they could have let this happen in the first place..

[lhikary]

nah im pretty sure alot of ppl will find new ways

Pretty sure a fella on the forums flashed an Asus 290 to a 290x yesterday...

saw it
pretty amazing really

[ChrisxIxCross]

Pretty sure a fella on the forums flashed an Asus 290 to a 290x yesterday...

I guess he got lucky, point being is that its cards manufactured within a certain time period are unlockable and newly produced ones are not. Personally i dont even see the point of risking in breaking your card for miniscule bumps in performance that you will never notice while gaming.

[Cryptonite]

I guess he got lucky, point being is that its cards manufactured within a certain time period are unlockable and newly produced ones are not. Personally i dont even see the point of risking in breaking your card for miniscule bumps in performance that you will never notice while gaming.

sorta like the first batch of MSI's 660 TI's?

[ChrisxIxCross]

No offence, but I wouldn't give that article any credibility. Hassan Mujtaba posts articles on complete crap 99 percent of the time.

I wouldn't be surprised if AMD start lazering off cores on 290's so they can't be flashed, But I doubt they could have made that change so soon

Okay ill keep that in mind and link a more reputable source next time i find something. As for the core lasering most likely, i think AMD was in such a rush that they didnt have time for that and used the bios lock at last minute to get the cards out.

[KrazyKap]

breaking your card for miniscule bumps in performance that you will never notice while gaming.

 

The only reason the 290 is so close to 290X is because cooling limits them both so heavily. And I don't see how flashing the BIOS will break your card, especially when you have dual BIOS. Never done it though so w/e

[ChrisxIxCross]

The only reason the 290 is so close to 290X is because cooling limits them both so heavily. And I don't see how flashing the BIOS will break your card, especially when you have dual BIOS. Never done it though so w/e

I looked at benchmarks with a triple artic cooler and there was about 2-3 fps increase. The cooler is awful for noise/temps but its not like its holding back the cards as much as people think.

[KrazyKap]

I looked at benchmarks with a triple artic cooler and there was about 2-3 fps increase. The cooler is awful for noise/temps but its not like its holding back the cards as much as people think.

 

Hmm, I've seen that flashed 290s --> 290X will get 7% increase in performance... At 60FPS, 7% would be 4.2 FPS increase. But isn't that the same with 7950/7970..?

[Imaginaerum]

I looked at benchmarks with a triple artic cooler and there was about 2-3 fps increase. The cooler is awful for noise/temps but its not like its holding back the cards as much as people think.

I think it's more for overclocking is where the cooler becomes a problem. Just replacing the cooler won't do anything, but the stock one has very limited overclocking capability opposed to say water cooling.

[EChondo]

sorta like the first batch of MSI's 660 TI's?

Yes and no. That was MSI's decision at first, but once Nvidia found out what was happening they forced to cease that "feature".

 

Sad really, love AMD for allowing it!

[eshbop]

i don't understand how they could have let this happen in the first place..

Easier, quicker, cheaper. Use the lesser chips as the 290 and the better ones as the 290x each while only changing the firmware. They did the same with (at least some of) the 6950/6970. The 6950 I bought even had the 6970 firmware on the secondary BIOS. Just had to flip the switch to get 6970s number of shaders. Even so the extra performance I got was negligible and my GPU doesn't' overclock (+20Mhz and there's artifacts) and the voltage is locked, so I couldn't get 6970 clocks, it's probably a similar story with the 290/290x.

 

I think it's more for overclocking is where the cooler becomes a problem. Just replacing the cooler won't do anything, but the stock one has very limited overclocking capability opposed to say water cooling.

These cards essentially overclock and overvolt themselves but this is reliant on the set temp limit and fan speeds. The extent to which the GPU can ramp up clock speeds is directly related to GPU temps which is directly how well it can be cooled. Better cooling allows the GPU to remain at higher clocks as the GPU can dissipate the heat that's produced from the extra volts applied to the GPU to maintain these higher clocks. This is the exact reason why at stock the 290 and 290x perform on par, the fan on the 290 runs at 47% while it's 7% slower on the 290x so the 290s clocks speeds remain very close to their maximum while the 290x throttles down 10%-15%.

 

 

 

The point is a any form of better cooling is going to help these GPUs, aftermarket coolers (plus the better quality power delivery components) will remove these thermal restrictions and the GPUs will be able to run closer to their maximum clock speeds more often and actually respond to overclocking without any throttling. Water cooling just further removes any temperature restrictions but will really only be able to get the most out of a GPU if it actually that responds to overvolting instead of just hitting a frequency wall where adding volts doesn't aid stability. If you are willing to let the chips get a bit hot (no worries considering these GPUs/GPUs in generally run fine at 95C or even higher) you'll be able to OC them to their limit  and aftermarket coolers will mean you're hitting the chips frequency wall before any thermal limits result in it throttling.

 

It's still up to the individual chip as to how well it overclockers regardless of whether it's air or water cooled, but the way these GPUs adjust their clock speeds means there is a point where they will run at their max clocks 100% of the time (the point when the cooler can keep the GPU at or below it's thermal limit while providing the volts needed to run at it's max clock speed) any additional cooling potential only allows for the additional volts needed for OCing. Stock coolers can't keep them below 95C at max clocks, more so doing it quietly, any cooler that keeps them below 95C will run these GPUs at their full potential and provide OCing headroom that won't result in throttling.

 

Benchmarks of aftermarket cards, especially with the 290x, are going to show ~10% increases in performance compared to these stock cards. Maybe more, you can already see these performance deltas from the same GPU when you comparing the results of a cold run (cold booting and immediatly running a benchmark) to that of one where the GPU is being stressed/loaded for 5 or so minutes (allowing the GPU to heat up before benchmarking it).

[totjup5]

They locked that down fast.

[Warcony]

If you can just flash a 290 and get the 290X performance than there is absolutely no point in the 290X existing.  It looks like AMD is having a GPU war with themselves.

[Imaginaerum]

These cards essentially overclock and overvolt themselves but this is reliant on the set temp limit and fan speeds. The extent to which the GPU can ramp up clock speeds is directly related to GPU temps which is directly how well it can be cooled. Better cooling allows the GPU to remain at higher clocks as the GPU can dissipate the heat that's produced from the extra volts applied to the GPU to maintain these higher clocks. This is the exact reason why at stock the 290 and 290x perform on par, the fan on the 290 runs at 47% while it's 7% slower on the 290x so the 290s clocks speeds remain very close to their maximum while the 290x throttles down 10%-15%.

 

 

 

The point is a any form of better cooling is going to help these GPUs, aftermarket coolers (plus the better quality power delivery components) will remove these thermal restrictions and the GPUs will be able to run closer to their maximum clock speeds more often and actually respond to overclocking without any throttling. Water cooling just further removes any temperature restrictions but will really only be able to get the most out of a GPU if it actually that responds to overvolting instead of just hitting a frequency wall where adding volts doesn't aid stability. If you are willing to let the chips get a bit hot (no worries considering these GPUs/GPUs in generally run fine at 95C or even higher) you'll be able to OC them to their limit  and aftermarket coolers will mean you're hitting the chips frequency wall before any thermal limits result in it throttling.

 

It's still up to the individual chip as to how well it overclockers regardless of whether it's air or water cooled, but the way these GPUs adjust their clock speeds means there is a point where they will run at their max clocks 100% of the time (the point when the cooler can keep the GPU at or below it's thermal limit while providing the volts needed to run at it's max clock speed) any additional cooling potential only allows for the additional volts needed for OCing. Stock coolers can't keep them below 95C at max clocks, more so doing it quietly, any cooler that keeps them below 95C will run these GPUs at their full potential and provide OCing headroom that won't result in throttling.

 

Benchmarks of aftermarket cards, especially with the 290x, are going to show ~10% increases in performance compared to these stock cards. Maybe more, you can already see these performance deltas from the same GPU when you comparing the results of a cold run (cold booting and immediatly running a benchmark) to that of one where the GPU is being stressed/loaded for 5 or so minutes (allowing the GPU to heat up before benchmarking it).

I thought that's what I said...

[eshbop]

I thought that's what I said...

Lol yeah. It seems coming home a tad drunk and checking this forum has lead to me having a bit of ramble..

[TechFan@ic]

This has nothing to do with Hassan Mujtaba, numerous other sources have reported on this.
The only reason why we currently have flashable 290s is because AMD simply had 290 shortages and so it simply shipped 290Xs branded as 290s and BIOS locked to 290s.
http://www.xbitlabs....90X_Report.html

 

A non-reference 290 will undoubtedly be much more overclockable than a reference 290 unlocked to a 290X and thus ultimately will run faster, so unlocking a reference 290 to a 290X does not interest me one bit, except if I was going to water-cool.

[Imaginaerum]

Lol yeah. It seems coming home a tad drunk and checking this forum has lead to me having a bit of ramble..

Well I said it in a way that assumed they knew what I was talking about, so there's that. oh well

[TheMissxu]

Sucks if they brick now

[ForsakenLive]

You are not making magic by flashing it, and AMD is not nerfing it so you can't have more FPS.

When GPU batches come out they are not perfect, sometimes you get better ones, sometimes you get lousy ones, pretty much what happens with the CPU silicon lottery.

AMD has just started to make this cards, and probably doesn't want the first ones to fail, so they are putting all into them, so with time they can perfect the procedure and save more silicon each time they  do them.

Which means that many GPU batches will probably feature fully developed cores, that are not supported by firmware, because they are not intended to be there. Just flashing it as a r9 290x enables all the cores.

now, if the card has not all it's cores working perfectly, maybe because it's a new different batch, you will end up with instability issues, but  hey you have a dual bios just for that

This is not the first time this happens, and after a while it will probably be impossible to do, unless your gpu has all the cores on it.