AMD 14.x Catalyst Overclocking is Broken

[Shmee]

If you don't increase voltage or clocks to the point where it draws a certain wattage it won't throttle.

Ok that makes sense I guess. Is this still true when mining though?

 

[VulgarDisplay]

Ok that makes sense I guess. Is this still true when mining though?

It should still be true.

 

[Alusan]

I've had the same issue with my own Sapphire Tri-X R9 290, though in my case it's good up to 1100MHz on the stock voltage without ever throttling with 14.x drivers (ASIC quality is 79.9%). I posted about it earlier:

I've had the same experience as you on my Sapphire 290-loads of temp head room, but as soon as any voltage is added I get clock throttling. It seems to be a bug in the 14.x beta releases, since I don't get the throttling in 13.12s. No matter what, the power limit controls in CCC, Trixx or RadeonPro don't seem to do anything for single card configs in any of the beta drivers. I noticed a slight performance improvement in the games I'm playing with the 14.x drivers so I'm using those for now and I'm good up to 1100MHz/5600MHz on stock volts of ~1.11 with Hynix memory. Hope AMD fixes it by the time the WHQL drivers are out.

For what it's worth LtMatt posted a temp fix over at overclockers.co.uk using RadeonPro: http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?p=25719851#post25719851
Didn't work for me though.

I've also seen people say the powertune throttling goes away if you're running cards in Crossfire, though I can't test that myself. Anyone running the cards in Crossfire willing to chime in?

I thought about flashing this newer bios to see if that could fix the problem but I haven't gotten around to it yet. Anyone running that bios version who's still having problems?

 

[Fastx]

http://www.overclock.net/t/1436497/official-amd-r9-290x-290-owners-club/19610#post_22001037

This post in in reply to me asking why my card was throttling was the first I saw of it. The thread is massive and its mentioned often in there.

Depending on your bios you may not see this issue. Some bios do not have a power target so there is nothing to adjust.

Ok thanks for the link will take a look later today no time now. So some cards are not throttling per bold above quoted so it is a problem with some cards. I saw you partial logs but just curious have you monitored the clocks on your card using AB OSD while gaming at 1130 and seen them drop on the OSD?

If so how low did the GPU clock drop?

 

[VulgarDisplay]

When I get time I'll try afterburner again. I thought I saw some people say after burner was not reporting clocks correctly, but I can't find it anymore.

 

[Kenmitch]

I updated my rig with the XFX DD 290 to the latest beta drivers to see.

ASIC = 73.2 %

Initial results using Unigine Valley for testing are as follows.

No issue with the beta drivers and overclocking it looks like.

The DD is no overclocking champ so only tested up to 1125/1350 and it maintains the clocks. I didn't have to change the vdcc or power limit. VDCC shows 1.148

I'll test my TriX later tonight to see.

Already swapped to the latest beta drivers on that rig also. Ran out of time as it's off to work I go.

ASIC on TriX is 81.6 % and has a default VDDC that is much lower.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

If you didn't increase your vddc offset there is a chance that your chip uses a low enough wattage to not hit the board limit with no additional power limit added.

Try to add some vddc and see when it throttles because it will. This hurts the stability of higher overclocks because the board won't feed the needed wattage.