Overclocking

We used AMD's Catalyst Control Centre for overclocking as MSI Afterburner doesn't fully support certain features like the target temperature yet. We also used the free GPU-Z utility to check our actual clock speeds, as CCC annoyingly insists on presenting them as percentages, with no option to change this.

We left the target temperature at the default 95°C. Even though this is hot, we experimented with lowering it to achieve higher overclocks on the R9 290X but to no avail, and it's no hotter than the card runs under load with its default clocks anyway. We set the maximum fan speed to 100%, so that we wouldn't be limited by thermals, and adjusted the power limit to its own maximum of 150% to prevent power limiting us too. Presently, no manual voltage control is offered for the 290 series.

AMD Radeon R9 290 Review AMD Radeon R9 290 Review - Overclocking
Click to enlarge

We achieved a final maximum core clock speed of 1,110MHz, which is a very tasty 17.2 percent boost over stock. It's also just 10Mhz behind the clock we got our R9 290X to. We tried pushing the R9 290 further, but in doing so quickly experienced unwanted graphical glitches and instability. As for the memory, we reached a speed of 1.425GHz (5.7Ghz effective) before seeing failures, and this is a 14 percent boost. This is actually a little faster than we got the R9 290X to here, but this is most likely explained by variation in the performance of the individual memory chips. At these speeds, the fan reached peaked at a speed of 53 percent, which is definitely on the loud side of things (for an indicator of just how loud, check out the video in our feature on the 290X's temperature), and this is also in an open chassis with good GPU airflow; a favourable thermal environment for a graphics card if ever there was one.

Overclocking - Battlefield 3

2,560 x 1,600, 4x AA 16x AF, ultra detail settings, DirectX 11

  • AMD Radeon HD 7990 6GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 690 4GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan 6GB
  • AMD Radeon R9 290 4GB (OC)
  • AMD Radeon R9 290X 4GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 3GB
  • AMD Radeon R9 290 4GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 770 2GB
  • AMD Radeon R9 280X 3GB
    • 72
    • 87
    • 72
    • 85
    • 61
    • 72
    • 60
    • 73
    • 56
    • 70
    • 55
    • 65
    • 52
    • 65
    • 43
    • 52
    • 41
    • 50
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
Frames Per Second
  • Minimum
  • Average

Overclocking - Crysis 3

2,560 x 1,600, 0x AA, Very High Settings

  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 690 4GB
  • AMD Radeon HD 7990 6GB
  • AMD Radeon R9 290 4GB (OC)
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan 6GB
  • AMD Radeon R9 290X 4GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 3GB
  • AMD Radeon R9 290 4GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 770 2GB
  • AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB GHz Edition
    • 45
    • 49
    • 42
    • 49
    • 37
    • 44
    • 37
    • 42
    • 33
    • 41
    • 32
    • 37
    • 31
    • 38
    • 28
    • 32
    • 26
    • 30
0
10
20
30
40
50
Frames Per Second
  • Minimum
  • Average

Overclocking - Unigine Valley 1.0 Benchmark

2,560 x 1,600, Ultra Detail

  • GeForce GTX Titan 6GB
  • AMD Radeon HD 7990 6GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 3GB
  • AMD Radeon R9 290 4GB (OC)
  • AMD Radeon R9 290X 4GB
  • AMD Radeon R9 290 4GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 770 2GB
  • Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 2GB
  • AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB GHz Edition
    • 2587
    • 2544
    • 2298
    • 2295
    • 2157
    • 1989
    • 1934
    • 1772
    • 1636
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
Score (higher is better)
  • Score

Discuss this in the forums
YouTube logo
MSI MPG Velox 100R Chassis Review

October 14 2021 | 15:04

TOP STORIES

SUGGESTED FOR YOU