Personal R9 290 Review

[Kuzma]

So I've been running an R9 290 for just over a week now and I figured I'd do a personal review on it, I tried to be as honest as possible in it.

[needmorewood]

awesome review thanks man. may sell my unopened 280x for this (if it ever arrives)

[Vitalius]

I'll watch it when I get home.

If you are LTC mining (scrypt coins in general), I find these settings to be great for my 290X:

-g 1 -I 20 --thread-concurrency 30592 

I thought there would be a noticeable difference between the two (X vs non-X) in mining, but tbh, there's not. More shaders apparently doesn't matter. 

[Mooshi]

I'll watch it when I get home.

If you are LTC mining (scrypt coins in general), I find these settings to be great for my 290X:

-g 1 -I 20 --thread-concurrency 30592 

I thought there would be a noticeable difference between the two (X vs non-X) in mining, but tbh, there's not. More shaders apparently doesn't matter. 

 

-rubs hands together-

 

Good, good.

[TechFan@ic]

I'll watch it when I get home.

If you are LTC mining (scrypt coins in general), I find these settings to be great for my 290X:

-g 1 -I 20 --thread-concurrency 30592 

I thought there would be a noticeable difference between the two (X vs non-X) in mining, but tbh, there's not. More shaders apparently doesn't matter. 

Try these settings in bfgminer 3.6.0 : -I 20 -g 1 --thread-concurrency 32765 should get you well over 900 KHash/S

[Vitalius]

-rubs hands together-

 

Good, good.

Lol, yeah. Some 290's can get over 900KH/s. While I'm sitting here with my 290X and can only get 865KH/s. Dang you silicon lottery!

[Vitalius]

Try these settings in bfgminer 3.6.0 : -I 20 -g 1 --thread-concurrency 32765 should get you well over 900 KHash/S

Lol, yeah. Some 290's can get over 900KH/s. While I'm sitting here with my 290X and can only get 865KH/s. Dang you silicon lottery!

I'm using those settings. I don't know if 290's can handle that thread-concurrency. I get that hash rate^. Thanks for the suggestion though.

My core clock is 900 and my memory clock is 1500. Changing in either direction for either of them lowers my hash rate.

[Mooshi]

Lol, yeah. Some 290's can get over 900KH/s. While I'm sitting here with my 290X and can only get 865KH/s. Dang you silicon lottery!

 

I so want one after Asus releases one with their aftermarket cooler, should be amazing.

[Kuzma]

I'll watch it when I get home.

If you are LTC mining (scrypt coins in general), I find these settings to be great for my 290X:

-g 1 -I 20 --thread-concurrency 30592 

I thought there would be a noticeable difference between the two (X vs non-X) in mining, but tbh, there's not. More shaders apparently doesn't matter. 

that'ssimilar to what I use :3 I get between 820KHashes/s and 680 KHashes/s on intensity 14 but on intensity 20 I get a stable 820 KHashes/s

I use GUIminer since I wanted to get it set up quickly and couldn't be bothered to find CGminer and set it up myself but I use thread concurrency 32765 ; what hash rate do you get?

[Kuzma]

I'm using those settings. I don't know if 290's can handle that thread-concurrency. I get that hash rate^. Thanks for the suggestion though.

My core clock is 900 and my memory clock is 1500. Changing in either direction for either of them lowers my hash rate.

my core clock is 947 most of the time but it can handle 1Ghz and mem clock is 1250 increasing this by even 1Mhz causes instability so I leave it

[TechFan@ic]

that'ssimilar to what I use :3 I get between 820KHashes/s and 680 KHashes/s on intensity 14 but on intensity 20 I get a stable 820 KHashes/s

I use GUIminer since I wanted to get it set up quickly and couldn't be bothered to find CGminer and set it up myself but I use thread concurrency 32765 ; what hash rate do you get?

GUIminer is CGminer based.

[Kuzma]

GUIminer is CGminer based.

I know I have however heard it can lower KHashes/s so *shrug*

[TechFan@ic]

I know I have however heard it can lower KHashes/s so *shrug*

It really didn't according to my personal tests. It's much simpler to use than CGminer.

[Vitalius]

that'ssimilar to what I use :3 I get between 820KHashes/s and 680 KHashes/s on intensity 14 but on intensity 20 I get a stable 820 KHashes/s

I use GUIminer since I wanted to get it set up quickly and couldn't be bothered to find CGminer and set it up myself but I use thread concurrency 32765 ; what hash rate do you get?

my core clock is 947 most of the time but it can handle 1Ghz and mem clock is 1250 increasing this by even 1Mhz causes instability so I leave it

More core clock =/= Better hash rate. Lowering mine 50 MHz raises my hash rate from 770's to 860's. Huge difference.

Bad VRAM I guess. Know that feel. (Old 6870) Most 290's (both X and non-X) can handle 1500 MHz on RAM from what I've seen. I even tried bumping mine to 1600MHz, but it made my hash rate go down. 

I get 865KH/s on I 20. 

Also, auto-gpu fan is a bad thing. Causes the card to throttle more often than not. I got another 20-30KH/s by finding a fan speed and sticking with it (55%).

GUIminer is CGminer based.

Yes, but I find it terrible anyway. Like, really. I hate GUIminer. I'm a power user... so.. yeah.

[Kuzma]

More core clock =/= Better hash rate. Lowering mine 50 MHz raises my hash rate from 770's to 860's. Huge difference.

Bad VRAM I guess. Know that feel. (Old 6870) Most 290's (both X and non-X) can handle 1500 MHz on RAM from what I've seen. I even tried bumping mine to 1600MHz, but it made my hash rate go down. 

I get 865KH/s on I 20. 

Also, auto-gpu fan is a bad thing. Causes the card to throttle more often than not. I got another 20-30KH/s by finding a fan speed and sticking with it (55%).

Yes, but I find it terrible anyway. Like, really. I hate GUIminer. I'm a power user... so.. yeah.

getting 500Khashes on I 13 and I set the fan speed to 100% for the Lols............................................................

 

No comment is all I have to say

[Vitalius]

getting 500Khashes on I 13 and I set the fan speed to 100% for the Lols............................................................

 

No comment is all I have to say

lol, I get 600 or so on I 15. Which is a perfect balance between Hash Rate and movie watching for me. 

But yeah. I dove into BTC mining in College (last christmas) and started with BAMT (Big A Miner Thing) which is a special distro of Linux built purely for mining (cgminer is built-in). Linux + Cgminer = Command Prompt hell. 

So I prefer those things. I hear there's a specific version of BAMT for scrypt mining now. I'm just using Windows 8.1. Was too poor in college to afford Windows, and I hate the idea of a student license.

[RatedBlam]

7970 seem like a more viable option to me with something over 700 kilohashes with a low intensity so you can use the pc while it mines. But I've heard that 7970 are out of stock everywhere(probably because eol) 

And at least core to memory clock ratio is important, and also I've heard that cgminer is the best bet to go with

[Rekx]

Damm i love you're voice 

 

I totally going to buy a r9 290 though im waiting for the aftermarket coolers