R9 280x Overclocking - is it worth it?

[CGurrell]

Hi guys,

So I was thinking today about overclocking my Graphics Card, a Sapphire Dual-X r9 280x. It is currently overclocked slightly (GPU Clock 1040MHz instead of 1000MHz, Memory clock 6080MHz instead of 6000MHz), but I don't know if the rest of my PC could handle overclocking this card. My first issue is the motherboard, a piece of s*** ASUS P8-H61M R2.0. I know that this mobo doesn't allow CPU overclocking (I have a non-K i5 anyway so doesn't affect me) but I'm not sure of it's affect on GPU OC'ing.

Second of all is cooling, I am using a Dual-X r9 280x which is a great cooling system, but the whole system is air cooled using Corsair AF140s (apart from 1 CM BC120 at the rear). In a burn-in test on Furmark (1920x1080 res which is what I game at) the GPU peaked at 72c, which seems pretty hot to me, but I'm not sure whether or not it is extremely hot as a stock r9 290x was hitting over 90 degrees in a review I saw on another website.

My PSU can definitely handle overclocking (XFX Pro Series 1250w), but I'm worried mainly about temps. What do you guys think? Will OCing make all that much of a difference, and will that difference be worth it if it reduces the lifetime of the card?

 

[Romeru]

ok thanks guys, gonna lower the clock to around 1150MHz and see if that helps. I think the problem may have been the fan profile though, this is what I was running (Stupidly). http://gyazo.com/8c24bd15aff5bff86b18ee7851bc136c Should I make the fans go quicker at a lower temp than 50?

You can run those things in the 80's without any problems. Let the fan be on auto, it will do it's job. Just follow this:
Set everything to default. Increase the core clock by something bigger like 50-70mhz. Run valley until it has done all the tests. If no drivers crash and no artifacts (miss-renders across the screen) appear on the screen you're good. Increase the core clock by 10-20mhz at a time from now on. And keep running the benchmark until your drivers crash or artifacts appear. At this point you can increase the voltage of the card (if possible) or back down the coreclock a few Mhz until everything looks good.

Now you can do the same thing with the memory clock.

 

[CGurrell]

Thanks Romeru, will try that now, starting at 1100Mhz core clock speed Valley has just installed so here we go

Just quickly, what settings should I use on valley? (AA, detail etc)

 

[CGurrell]

Gone for the stock Extreme HD setting first benchmark is running fine at around 40-50fps

 

[unknownofprob]

great to know it's good, is that better then before?

 

[CGurrell]

great to know it's good, is that better then before?

up to now yeah, little bit of an issue on the 2nd benchmark but it's a windows issue I've been having for a while where the system decides to close full-screen applications :/ nothing GPU related and the benchmark was still better than the 1st

 

[CGurrell]

3rd benchmark had the windows full screen thing happen twice :/ Do you guys know how to fix this stupid issue? As far as i can remember, the issue predates me getting this graphics card

 

[unknownofprob]

you can't as of yet, but it's a benchmark, test the performance in games!

 

[CGurrell]

Just restarting the PC now as this normally temporarily fixes the full screen issue, gonna run another benchmark at 1190MHz (previous ones were 1100MHz, 1150MHz and 1170MHz, I know I jumped a bit high between the first and second benchmarks but it seems to be ok )

 

[unknownofprob]

sounds god, glad to hear on an update soon.

P.S. I have my R9 290X running @ 1295Mhz core clock, I must have an amazing OC card for the R9 290 series, as this is the only one I know that does this speed and is stable + good temps.

 

[CGurrell]

sounds god, glad to hear on an update soon.

P.S. I have my R9 290X running @ 1295Mhz core clock, I must have an amazing OC card for the R9 290 series, as this is the only one I know that does this speed and is stable + good temps.

Not bad I see you have a windforce cooled 290x though, could have something to do with temps

 

[CGurrell]

Gonna have to leave overclocking for now I think, windows keeps exiting the full screen every few seconds now, which ends up crashing the PC. Will contact windows support which I know will be pretty much pointless but oh well.

 

[CGurrell]

Decided to run another benchmark at 1170MHz, Got to around scene 6 and then the PC just crashed completely, frozen screen and buzzing from speakers. Have I gone too far with overclocking?

 

[CGurrell]

Also the temps in that particular benchmark never exceeded 65c

 

[Romeru]

Eh. Use extreme.

 

[CGurrell]

Figured out what the problem was, forgot to increase GPU voltage. Working fine now, up to 1180MHz no issues (not even stupid windows ones)

 

[oxiide]

Hi guys,

So I was thinking today about overclocking my Graphics Card, a Sapphire Dual-X r9 280x. It is currently overclocked slightly (GPU Clock 1040MHz instead of 1000MHz, Memory clock 6080MHz instead of 6000MHz), but I don't know if the rest of my PC could handle overclocking this card. My first issue is the motherboard, a piece of s*** ASUS P8-H61M R2.0. I know that this mobo doesn't allow CPU overclocking (I have a non-K i5 anyway so doesn't affect me) but I'm not sure of it's affect on GPU OC'ing.

Second of all is cooling, I am using a Dual-X r9 280x which is a great cooling system, but the whole system is air cooled using Corsair AF140s (apart from 1 CM BC120 at the rear). In a burn-in test on Furmark (1920x1080 res which is what I game at) the GPU peaked at 72c, which seems pretty hot to me, but I'm not sure whether or not it is extremely hot as a stock r9 290x was hitting over 90 degrees in a review I saw on another website.

My PSU can definitely handle overclocking (XFX Pro Series 1250w), but I'm worried mainly about temps. What do you guys think? Will OCing make all that much of a difference, and will that difference be worth it if it reduces the lifetime of the card?

Decided to run another benchmark at 1170MHz, Got to around scene 6 and then the PC just crashed completely, frozen screen and buzzing from speakers. Have I gone too far with overclocking?

Don't worry too much about crashes and errors. That's just what happens when a processor doesn't have enough voltage for its clock speed; it returns errors and crashes. It doesn't mean you've hurt it. You're looking for crashes, because that shows you where your boundaries are.

 

[CGurrell]

Hi guys,

So I was thinking today about overclocking my Graphics Card, a Sapphire Dual-X r9 280x. It is currently overclocked slightly (GPU Clock 1040MHz instead of 1000MHz, Memory clock 6080MHz instead of 6000MHz), but I don't know if the rest of my PC could handle overclocking this card. My first issue is the motherboard, a piece of s*** ASUS P8-H61M R2.0. I know that this mobo doesn't allow CPU overclocking (I have a non-K i5 anyway so doesn't affect me) but I'm not sure of it's affect on GPU OC'ing.

Second of all is cooling, I am using a Dual-X r9 280x which is a great cooling system, but the whole system is air cooled using Corsair AF140s (apart from 1 CM BC120 at the rear). In a burn-in test on Furmark (1920x1080 res which is what I game at) the GPU peaked at 72c, which seems pretty hot to me, but I'm not sure whether or not it is extremely hot as a stock r9 290x was hitting over 90 degrees in a review I saw on another website.

My PSU can definitely handle overclocking (XFX Pro Series 1250w), but I'm worried mainly about temps. What do you guys think? Will OCing make all that much of a difference, and will that difference be worth it if it reduces the lifetime of the card?

Decided to run another benchmark at 1170MHz, Got to around scene 6 and then the PC just crashed completely, frozen screen and buzzing from speakers. Have I gone too far with overclocking?

Don't worry too much about crashes and errors. That's just what happens when a processor doesn't have enough voltage for its clock speed; it returns errors and crashes. It doesn't mean you've hurt it. You're looking for crashes, because that shows you where your boundaries are.

Thanks oxide, I'm able to up the voltage and, after doing this, have so far had stable overclocks at 1190MHz core clock, with the voltage at 1300mV (Mem clock still at stock). I can go up to 1400mV in ASUS GPU Tweak, but will this cause problems?

 

[CGurrell]

Final settings: http://gyazo.com/f83274699b85e83aa5380bed7ac5eaf4

What do you guys think? At 1190MHz on a second benchmark I noticed some parts of the screen weren't rendering correctly, a lot of small white areas that weren't visible as 1170MHz (They were still slightly visible at 1180)

 

[CGurrell]

Ok something VERY weird is happening. If I try to burn the settings to the BIOS, it says burn successful, tries to reboot, and says to insert the boot media onto the drive and press a key. If I press the power button to power down, and power up again, the PC boots fine but the GPU is at stock settings.

 

[unknownofprob]

did you save the OC settings how I suggested?

 

[CGurrell]

did you save the OC settings how I suggested?

I had a big problem with my HDD/ReadyCache SSD which was preventing the GPU settings burning to the BIOS, basically on reboot the RC drive wasn't being recognised, and the HDD had a bad bootloader. Had to make a windows recovery USB to fix the HDD bootloader, enabling me to remove the RC drive, but the problem i've got now is that I've burned the settings into the bios, but GPU-Z shows that the card is still at stock clocks. Is this normal?

 

[unknownofprob]

with GPU-Z, yes. If it is at that speed according to GPU tweak and/or BIOS, then it is at that clock speed.

 

[CGurrell]

How do i check with the BIOS? (This is a H61M mobo remember lol so it's kinda crappy)

 

[unknownofprob]

if you burned it, then no need.

 

[CGurrell]

if you burned it, then no need.

lol ok then Just opened up valley benchmark without opening GPU Tweak and the GPU clocks shown are the ones I set during overclocking