Why is the stock voltage so high R9 280?

[lamborghini392]

I have a Powercolor R9 280 and the stock clocks are 960 core and 1250 memory. The stock voltage is 1.25v however. I ended up hitting my max OC of 1225MHz on that stock voltage. Something seemed odd there so I reverted to stock clocks and started undervolting and ended up dropping to below 1v (.990v to be exact) before the stock clocks became unstable. My question is why does powercolor ship the card at such a high voltage that would further increase wear and temps? My temps decreased a whole 8C by dropping the voltage and would suspect my GPU will last longer too (not that it matters because I'll be upgrading soon enough).

 

[thor220]

That stock voltage is nothing unusual nor is being able to max out the core clock on stock. The R9 280 is an excellent overclocker. Each OEM has different voltages. I'm guessing that power color choose 1.25v because each card is different and that's the value they determined would get every card stable, so long as it isn't defective.

You could easily get more speed out of the card if you were to mod the Bios.

 

[lamborghini392]

That stock voltage is nothing unusual nor is being able to max out the core clock on stock. The R9 280 is an excellent overclocker. Each OEM has different voltages. I'm guessing that power color choose 1.25v because each card is different and that's the value they determined would get every card stable, so long as it isn't defective.

You could easily get more speed out of the card if you were to mod the Bios.

Oh, so powercolor doesn't individually tune all the cards? They just apply the same BIOS settings to all of them that pass through the production line? Also yeah, I know the R9 200 series is no maxwell when it comes to OCing but I'm happy of the capabilities of this card, gets a nice 6-8fps increase in most games. I can go up to 1250MHz on the max 1.3v, might look into BIOS modding the voltage to go higher, but I'm worried of higher voltages on air (GPU hits 68C under load at 1250MHz).

 

[thor220]

All OEMs have one bios for each product line. It's why you can go download someone else's for the same card and not have any issues.

I wouldn't raise voltages too much but you can unlock a higher max clock. I think I got my previous 7970 (which is the same as a 280x) to 1590 core clock without increasing the voltage.