AMD Radeon R9 M290X Overclock and Performance Increase

EDIT: These tests were done with the AMD Catalyst 14.4 Notebook Drivers and NOT the Dell drivers.

A few nights ago, I decided to experiment with over clocking my R9 M290X to see what kind of performance gains I would get (also, I don't like the fact that the card is IDENTICAL performance wise to the 8970M). I used Unigine Heaven for my benchmarking.

These are the settings I used:

Quality: Ultra
Tessellation: Extreme
8XAA
Resolution: 1920X1080

I first ran the benchmark at stock clock settings, which are 900 Mhz GPU and 1250 Mhz memory. Here is the result:



Now, keep in mind I've been out of the PC game scene for over a decade and I haven't researched other numbers from other GPU's, but I thought this was respectable. Almost 24 fps, hey that's cinema quality

After I ran the baseline bench, it was time for the fun to begin...I didn't realize chasing after numbers was so addictive. I used AMD's built in Overdrive tool to apply my overclocks. First, I started with the GPU clock and decided to go in 20 Mhz increments so I could test the stability more precisely. For some reason, my 920 Mhz bench save was the failboat, but here's my Bench from clocking to 940 Mhz:



Almost a full FPS improvement and pushed me over 600 on the benchmark scores. So far, my temps have held steady at around 70-75 degrees so no worries there. At the risk of TL;DR, I'm just going to post the pics of the next 3 benchmarks:

960 Mhz:


980 Mhz (Temp getting slightly hotter staying around 76):


1000 Mhz:


At 1000 Mhz, temperature was verging on the 78 degree mark so I decided that was good enough for now. So, this was a 100 Mhz higher than the stock GPU clock. So far, the 100 Mhz increase has given me an added 1.6 FPS, an almost 7% gain, as well as a 7% gain on my benchmark score.

Now it was the memory clocks turn. Since the memory clock is already fairly high on this GPU (1250 Mhz), I decided to be more conservative and go up in increments of 10 Mhz. After a solid few hours of benching, my temps started reaching 80 degrees and I ended up settling on my memory clock at 1300 Mhz and my GPU clock at 1000 Mhz:


So, with the memory overclocked just 50 Mhz and the GPU overclocked 100 Mhz, I was gaining 2.6 fps, which is an 11% increase. A 66 point increase on the bench marking score equals a 17% increase.

After confirming everything was stable and giving the beast a break, I fired up a few games and everything ran great! No crashes, no anomalies, and best of all no high temps. Throw that in with a slight FPS increase and I'd say not bad! I could've downloaded MSI's Afterburner tool and jacked with the voltages, but I don't think I want to do that just yet...performance so far has been fine for this GPU.

Also, just for "fun" I ran a few more Benchmarks with Heaven at different qualities. The same Ultra mode, but with only 4XAA gave me 35 FPS and a score of 882. High, with 4XAA gave me 39 FPS and a score of 982. Finally, medium quality, with 4XAA put me at 46.5 FPS and 1172. I must say, even at Medium quality, the Heaven benchmark looks gorgeous. Makes me proud to be back to the world of PC gaming!

Hopefully this will help someone out and I just want to show that even though AMD just re-branded the 8970M (and arguably the 7970M) that this card is no slouch and you can push it even further. Also, I must give kudos to Alienware's cooling system on the 17...it does the job and does it well. Happy gaming and safe modding everyone

EDIT:

Fire Strike Score Stock: 4729
Fire Strike Score OC: 4935

3DMark11 Score Stock: P6779
3DMark11 Score OC: P7059

 

There is a lot of variation in silicon quality but some samples are really nice.

 

You speaking of the R9 M290X? Here's hoping mine is on the nice end of the spectrum!

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Here's my ASIC quality:



EDIT: I'm not even sure how accurate these readings are...

 

Does not mean much, it's the clocks you reach which mean anything.

 

That's pretty good for a slight overclock. At least you're seeing steady improvements and continued stability. It's good that you didn't jump the gun and went from +20Mhz to like +200Mhz. I know some people who do that, and they brick their machines. If you want to push it some more, you should consider a re-paste using IC Diamond, which should give you another 5C-7C to work with. Or just re-paste and enjoy cooler temperatures at that overclock.

Great results. I'm glad you're enjoying that M290x. :thumbsup:

 

Thanks J! I was pretty surprised and very happy with the results. And yeah, there's no way that I'm not going to be safe when modding things like this...it's the easy road to brick city like you said!

I'll check out IC Diamond and thanks for the suggestion! Hopefully the mod bug won't bite me again for a while but I'm sure you know how that goes...

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That is a lot better overclock than most 7970M owners have been able to achieve. Good job on the benchmarks, and congrats on getting an R9 M290X that overclocks to a respectable degree. I would be interested in seeing what your 3DMark11 and Fire Strike numbers look like at the 1000/1300 clock speeds.

I actually hope that all of them do as well, because NVIDIA not having fierce competition and AMD owners having to settle for less for the past few years has been a bad deal for everyone.

As Meaker said, don't worry much about the ASIC quality score. It means very little in the grand scheme of things. In fact, I'm not even sure what my 780M ASIC scores are, and don't care enough to look.

 

You should buy Watch Dogs. I'd be interested in seeing how that performs.

 

I probably will when I can get it for $25. It's about $35 to $40 more than what I am willing to pay for games.

If what thegh0sts is describing in the gaming videos thread is typical, it's probably a good idea to wait a while... it sounds pretty bad.

Would be interesting to see if it's good or equally poor with the R2 M290X.

 

Thanks Mr. Fox. I really hope my card isn't the exception to the rule, however, it is still early and anything could still happen. When I get a moment, I'll see about grabbing 3DMark11 and Fire Strike so I can see what my numbers are with them.

And Watch Dogs intrigues me so I may pick it up at some point.

 

AMD Catalyst 14.6 drivers will be released tomorrow. Guess they skipped over 14.5? I posted a thread about over on the gaming section, but it's supposed to enable mantle for notebooks, some Eyefinity enhancements and boosts to a few games, including Watch Dogs:

VIA

Interesting times indeed if these turn out to be facts.

 

Very nice!! Thanks for all the info, can't wait to get my A17..

 

I have a question about Fire Strike. Is it normal for my GPU to not be at full load during the test? I would think since it is the most graphic intensive of the tests it would max out the load, but it mostly hovers around the 63%-64% area...

Here's my Fire strike and 3DMark11 scores with stock clock frequencies:

Fire strike:


3DMark11:


And here's after to OC has been applied:

Fire strike:

(Better than 57% of all results)

3DMark11:


Fire Strike saw a 4.35% increase and 3DMark11 saw a 4.13% increase. I will update the OP with these numbers as well.

 

I've just downloaded the 14.6 drivers and will get those installed when I can, but now I must do some work before the day flies by

 

Looks like AMD may have finally perfected the 7970M. :thumbsup:

No hard feelings at you, Lucas. That's just the reality of this card & AMD. But hey, it's cost-effective for gamers.

 

The 7970M was clockable to the same clocks for 3dmark11 and firestrike about 1 year ago. I apx doubled those scores but only for benchmarking. Using 330W single and crossfire its about as high as it goes.
And for normal steady use my PSU goes hot and doesnt want to "play along" over time so needing to use stock clocks.

 

No hard feelings taken on my end. The reason I went with AMD was because, in my case, it was much more cost effective and will suit my needs just fine. The fact I can push it, even if it only brings me on par, or almost par, with Nvidia makes me happy!

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I may pick it up in a steam sale or the like but yeah not with the current issues.

 

Got a little bump with the new 14.6 drivers:

Firestrike:

Almost 2%

3DMark11:

4.7% here

That's a 9% total increase from stock 3DMark11 and a 6% increase from stock for Fire Strike.

 

You mean it increase 2% from the new 14.6 driver?

 

Yep and I feel I could push the frequencies a little higher if I wanted to. I'm happy where I am for the moment though.

 

what did you used for over clocking and where to download it?

 

I was initially using AMD's Overdrive tool which is included within the AMD Catalyst Control Center. I've since switched over to MSI Afterburner. Afterburner is more feature rich and has many sensors that you can monitor, not to mention an awesome remote app that you can install on your phone and monitor current readings on your phone.

Check it out:

View attachment 112672

 

Can someone please provide a link to download to 14.6 driver? For some reason I can only find 14.4 on AMD's website.

Thanks in advance

Edit: never mind found them elsewhere.

Cheers

 

What are the stock clocks for the R9 290MX? Is it 900/1200 or something?

 

850, boost to 900 and 1250 mem.

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I'll be giving my R9 M290X a spin then. Pushed the CPU up slightly already (+2 multipliers only), and it's time for the video card too.

I'm not usually an overclocker, but I like pushing the my sislightly above their limit. Will keep you posted on my findings.

 

Cool! Let us know if you get some increases! I'm having CPU overheating issues atm so I'm waiting on parts to get here. I'm curious to see if, after fixing my CPU heating issues, if my numbers get even better.