at wits end with r9 290x cf performance...

[Nightfury117]

So i've posted about this before, essentially, my crossfire performance is extremely shabby, I'm running two r9 290x's with stock coolers. So far, I've determined
1) it's unlikely to be the power supply, A corsair rm1000
2) Unlikely it is bottlenecking from the processor, i7 4790k.
3) It claims that both graphics cards are using 100% in many applications (when playing Witcher 3 I only get 60 fps and 2300 for heaven 4.0)

The drivers are up to date (15.12) the graphics cards are in a PCI-E x8/x4 configuration which although not ideal shouldn't stunt performance this much, nor is it likely to be thermal throttling as the top card is rarely above 85 and the bottom above 80)

Here is the other hardware
8gb Kingston Hyperx 1333 mhz ram
Samsung 840 evo 500gb
z97m MSI gaming motherboard
H100i water cooler
Corsair 350D case

ANY suggestions or ideas would be greatly appreciated

 

[Sakkura]

Update to newer drivers maybe. 15.12 is a bit out of date.

 

[Nightfury117]

I've looked on the AMD website and it seems that 15.12 is the newest driver offered?

 

[jerdle]

http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/desktop?os=Windows+7+-+64
windows 7 link

scrolling down
This is the one you want:
Crimson Edition 16.3.1 Hotfix

Did not link to other versions of windows because there is no reason for you to have downgraded to any of the more recent versions of windows.

 

[Nightfury117]

Thanks I'll give that a go, I also just ran firestrike pro and got around 13400?

 

[Nightfury117]

The new drivers didn't seem to have an effect for heaven, when I ran firestrike in extreme (1440 x 2560) with the new drivers I only got 9367 :/

 

[jerdle]

wait, you're complaining about 60 fps in witcher 3 @ 1440p?

There are no problems.

 

[Nightfury117]

wait, you're complaining about 60 fps in witcher 3 @ 1440p?

There are no problems.

No my monitor is only 1920 x 1080 (benq gl2450) , the Firestrike just scales up to 1440 x 2560
Also, my witcher 3 settings aren't maxed out

 

[Nightfury117]

I should also mention that the FPS in Witcher 3 is pretty sporadic, it will go between 45-60 fps quite quickly (I have a fairly recent patch v1.10)

 

[renz496]

How about other games? And double check your core clock during gaming as well. The 290s with stock cooling is very very notorious causing thermal throttling and impacting in game performance. In one test by reviewer they only need 20 minutes to raise the temperature up to 95c and causing the core clock to go as low as 600mhz+ from the advertised 1Ghz speed.

 

[Nightfury117]

I've run some tests with firestrike extreme, so when running the whole test, in the final"combined" test I got 17.02 fps, in this the cards were running hot (recorded with MSI afterburner around 88 for the top and 84 for the bottom with a high fan speed) for around 5 minutes. However, I ran just the combined test, which is honestly about 15 seconds long (the cards barely scratched 60) and the fps was only 17.87. If it were thermal throttling, I imagine I would see a significant fps improvement in the short test, for this reason I don't see it being thermal throttling.

 

[jerdle]

test both cards individually

 

[renz496]

Try the card one by one first. It is better if you can replicate reviewer benchmark to compare with yours. Then try doing crossfire as well.

 

[Nightfury117]

ok so I just reran fire strike extreme v 1.1 with 1 of the cards running at PCI-E x16 Gen 3 OC'd with a core clock of 1070 and a Memory clock of 1320 and with a max temp of 68 C and I got 5240, and then 10,501 with just Fire strike, which actually seems reasonable (I actually ran this with the 15.7.1 drivers) I'm going to the same with this card and this driver and I'll re-upgrade to 16.3.1 hotfix

I also now just ran Heaven 4.0 at full screen, 8x AA, 1920x1080, Tessellation extreme, Ultra quality and got 1431 or 56.8 fps average, does this seem normal?

 

[Sakkura]

That Heaven score looks right. You should be able to check the Firestrike score yourself with their database. 10501 sounds about right to me as well though.

 

[Nightfury117]

I've now also tested the second card, same max temp for firestrike extreme (68 c) score was 5220 and for just firestrike it was 10428,

I've just benchmarked it in heaven with the same conditions and it got 740 😵, I'm going to try it again and see what was wrong...

Ok i've just checked temps and it maxed out at 94, I recon thermal throttling here 😛

YES, thermal throttling was the case, I just ran it again with pre-defined user fan softare in afterburner and I got 1434 with 56.9 fps average

 

[Nightfury117]

I've updated the drivers (16.3.1) , and for the card posted about, I just got 10659 for firestrike , 5238 on firestrike extreme and 1447 with 57.4 fps average
For the card I talked about previously, I got 10654 for firestrike, max 69 C (same with above), 5248 on firestrike extreme and 1446 or 57.4 fps avg