Overclocking Sapphire R9 290X Tri-X Help!

[SachMcFunny]

Hi.
I recently bought a Sapphire Tri-X R9 290X and I'm thinking of overclocking it.
I'm not sure exactly what or how to do it, so please give me tips.
1. What do you think I should overclock with? MSI AfterBurner?
2. How much should I overclock it? How much should I change things?
3. Should I overclock now or wait a while until my GPU is getting old and I need more power?

Thanks in advance 😉

 

[Anonymouselite5]

To overclock I would recommend either sapphire trixx or MSi afterburner. It's basically personal preference between those two.

When overclocking, some people do wait for when their card is not sufficient for what they want, but there is always this feeling that the card always has more potential that' even better than what it is. You may be running 60fps bf4, but why not 70? haha that's how I feel anyway.

Okay the thing that will determine the most performance is overclocking the gpu core, overclocking the memory may add 1-2fps. The core if given enough can actually add 10+ depending on the overclock.
On the Sapphire tri-x I beleive the core clock is currently at 1000mhz, if you increase that by 20mhz and then test the stability of the overclock on a benchmark, such as uniengine. Such as heaven benchmark.
http://unigine.com/products/heaven/

If it crashes or bsod's then your overclock is unstable. Go back down. If it works then continue up in steps and test every single step. Eventually when it crashes that is your highest overclock on stock voltages, back down a little in mhz say 10mhz and test again. If all is fine then go to your favorite games and play full games on that overclock. If all works you're good to go.

WARNING: watch your temperatures while gaming and benchmarking, you don't want anything above 80 degrees.

Now after you've done all this you can actually add more voltage to your card to overclock even higher, warning that over volting can cause damage to your card if not done correctly. Overvolting is the thing that will cause degradation in the life of your card.
Add 0.05v more and test the overclock above, if it crashes add 0.05v more and continue to take steps up. Do not go above 1.25v as most cards can only take that much. THIS STEP PROBABLY IS NOT NESSESARY BUT CAN BE USED WHEN YOUR CARD REALLY NEEDS THAT BOOST LATER ON.

-good luck
-happy overclocking.

 

[iamlegend]

Very well said "Anonymouselite5".

 

[SachMcFunny]

Thanks so much 😉
Just downloaded AfterBurner and gonna try it out now.

 

[Anonymouselite5]

Thanks so much 😉
Just downloaded AfterBurner and gonna try it out now.

Just ask here if you receive any problems.

 

[Leonman44]

Hello , i also bought a r9 290x the best program i could find for overclocking was trixx. i managed to reach 1220 on core and 6800 effective memory clock with 50% power limit and +200 on VDDC offset my temps are great but should i reach 1250 at least at core speed?

 

[Anonymouselite5]

Hello , i also bought a r9 290x the best program i could find for overclocking was trixx. i managed to reach 1220 on core and 6800 effective memory clock with 50% power limit and +200 on VDDC offset my temps are great but should i reach 1250 at least at core speed?

Every r9 290x is different. Some score lower and some score higher. It's all based on the luck of the GPU card draw in overclocking.
If 1250mhz is un-stable for you then it's just luck. However anything over 1250mhz is quite hard to hit, some people hit 1300mhz on these cards but alot of people don't.

 

[Leonman44]

Yeap , even in 1230 it starts to show up stripes :/ but i am still happy with my memory clock !! some r9s have elpida crappy memory type that doesnt oc well. could my cheap and old gigabyte GA-970A-D3 provides an unstable oc for my gpu?

 

[Anonymouselite5]

Yeap , even in 1230 it starts to show up stripes :/ but i am still happy with my memory clock !! some r9s have elpida crappy memory type that doesnt oc well. could my cheap and old gigabyte GA-970A-D3 provides an unstable oc for my gpu?

I doubt your mother board affects your GPU. Most of it's power delivery is through the PCI-e cables anyway not the actual slot.
I have Elphida memory which sucks but hey, still kicks ass.

1230mhz is quite a good overclock anyway, anything above that you'll need to increase voltage ALOT to actually get a small increase. Around 1200mhz is the wall for overclocking the 290.