Radeon R9 290x QUADFIRE (Hell yeah)

[Slomo4shO]

I just got my 4 290 and was able to unlock all 4 to 290X. Just waiting on the water cooling parts. Planning on 5 rads in a 900D

 

[KaRLiToS]

I just got my 4 290 and was able to unlock all 4 to 290X. Just waiting on the water cooling parts. Planning on 5 rads in a 900D

Nice man :awe:

What power supplies will you be using?

 

[Slomo4shO]

Went with the ENERMAX Maxrevo 1500W

 

[tolis626]

I'd be curious if you guys (Slomo4sho and Karlitos) can maesure power draw with a single card being watercooled at stock settings.That could answer the question of whether power draw drops (A little,dramatically,or even if it drops at all) with better cooling.I suspect you'll see quite lower power figures than those on air with the reference cooler.

 

[Piklar]

Went with the ENERMAX Maxrevo 1500W

Great choice on the PSU! congrats on your 4 unlocks, looking forward to see how you get on :thumbsup:

 

[KaRLiToS]

I'd be curious if you guys (Slomo4sho and Karlitos) can maesure power draw with a single card being watercooled at stock settings.That could answer the question of whether power draw drops (A little,dramatically,or even if it drops at all) with better cooling.I suspect you'll see quite lower power figures than those on air with the reference cooler.

One of my friend borrowed my Kill-A-Watt to test how much watts his heater pulls. When he brings it back, I will test that for you.

I will test 1000/1275 and 1200/1600.

 

[tolis626]

One of my friend borrowed my Kill-A-Watt to test how much watts his heater pulls. When he brings it back, I will test that for you.

I will test 1000/1275 and 1200/1600.

You da man!Time to see if those who whine about power and heat are right...

 

[King4x4]

Getting any black screens karlitos?

 

[IEC]

Getting any black screens karlitos?

Install Catalyst 13.11 Beta v9.4 or higher.

 

[tolis626]

Getting any black screens karlitos?

Until your post I hadn't noticed his screens were silver.Why would he get black ones?Silver's fine...
I think an updated Catalyst fixes it like IEC said.

 

[OCGuy]

Went with the ENERMAX Maxrevo 1500W

Seems like a OC and you would be riding close to the comfort zone if all 4 are stressed.

 

[moonbogg]

I love the OPs rig. Its a large chunk of heavy duty kickass. Also like the symmetrical layout of the man cave and orderly cleanliness. This kind of orderliness is conducive to extreme Pwnage and is why my accuracy is only about 30% on a good day.

 

[Slomo4shO]

Seems like a OC and you would be riding close to the comfort zone if all 4 are stressed.

The Maxrevo is capable of running at full load for extended periods without any issues. I don't plan on going with an extreme oc for 24/7 use, I run the 4770K at 4.6GHz at 1.196V and will go with the highest clock at stock voltage on the GPUs which should be in the 1100MHz vicinity. I have a Rosewill Lightening 1300W as backup for benchmarking :biggrin:

 

[3DVagabond]

The Maxrevo is capable of running at full load for extended periods without any issues. I don't plan on going with an extreme oc for 24/7 use, I run the 4770K at 4.6GHz at 1.196V and will go with the highest clock at stock voltage on the GPUs which should be in the 1100MHz vicinity. I have a Rosewill Lightening 1300W as backup for benchmarking :biggrin:

I would be shocked if you had any problems at all with that PSU running your rig. Actually, with either PSU. The Lightning is no slouch either. :thumbsup:

 

[rtsurfer]

The Maxrevo is capable of running at full load for extended periods without any issues. I don't plan on going with an extreme oc for 24/7 use, I run the 4770K at 4.6GHz at 1.196V and will go with the highest clock at stock voltage on the GPUs which should be in the 1100MHz vicinity. I have a Rosewill Lightening 1300W as backup for benchmarking :biggrin:

I am sorry for off topic, but,

4770K at 4.6 at 1.196V..?
You sure..? This is pretty rare.
Did you stress test it properly...

If yes, then congratulations on winning the CPU Silicon lottery..

 

[Slomo4shO]

4770K at 4.6 at 1.196V..?
You sure..? This is pretty rare.
Did you stress test it properly...

If yes, then congratulations on winning the CPU Silicon lottery..

Stress tested with AIDA64, Prime95, and various different benchmarks. After killing my first 4770K, I have been having pretty decent luck with picking hardware.

Here is an old benchmark:

I would be shocked if you had any problems at all with that PSU running your rig. Actually, with either PSU. The Lightning is no slouch either. :thumbsup:

In a worst case scenario I can always add in the Cooler Master SP Gold 1200W and run 3 PSUs for 4 cards rofl.

 

[rtsurfer]

Stress tested with AIDA64, Prime95, and various different benchmarks. After killing my first 4770K, I have been having pretty decent luck with picking hardware.

Here is an old benchmark:

Congratulations then.

Unfortunately I wasn't so lucky.
My 4770K is OKAY OCer.

 

[DaZeeMan]

Any new/recent developments Karlitos, etc. with your quadfire 290 implementations, guys?

 

[Jacky60]

I love the OPs rig. Its a large chunk of heavy duty kickass. Also like the symmetrical layout of the man cave and orderly cleanliness. This kind of orderliness is conducive to extreme Pwnage and is why my accuracy is only about 30% on a good day.

Re:The beauty of the rig I agree. Re:the orderliness of the room I have to disagree, a battlefield is messy just like my man cave. While there are no corpses strewn about in here if there were my scores would improve even further.

 

[KaRLiToS]

Any new/recent developments Karlitos, etc. with your quadfire 290 implementations, guys?

Hey man, thanks for your interest.

I have some issues lately that i'm trying to find out. The problem is, I can run my QuadFire just fine when CPU and memory are running at stock but as soon as I try to OC the CPU or memory, even if its only 4.1 Ghz on the CPU and stock (1333mhz) on the memory, I get crash in games.

I can run 4.6Ghz CPU and 2133Mhz memory with 3 cards just fine, but I think QuadFire is not stable when I OC the CPU. I really don't know what the problem is. I tried to change Motherboard BIOS, update drivers and everything. I tried every possible UEFI settings.

I don't understand why QuadFire will work stable when the system is at stock but games crash when I OC just a little.

I suspect the new crossfire technology but I don't see anyone yet with Quad R9 290x so its hard to diagnose those problems when you are alone in the boat.

:'(

 

[Silverforce11]

Hey man, thanks for your interest.

I have some issues lately that i'm trying to find out. The problem is, I can run my QuadFire just fine when CPU and memory are running at stock but as soon as I try to OC the CPU or memory, even if its only 4.1 Ghz on the CPU and stock (1333mhz) on the memory, I get crash in games.

I can run 4.6Ghz CPU and 2133Mhz memory with 3 cards just fine, but I think QuadFire is not stable when I OC the CPU. I really don't know what the problem is. I tried to change Motherboard BIOS, update drivers and everything. I tried every possible UEFI settings.

I don't understand why QuadFire will work stable when the system is at stock but games crash when I OC just a little.

I suspect the new crossfire technology but I don't see anyone yet with Quad R9 290x so its hard to diagnose those problems when you are alone in the boat.

:'(

Maybe your MB is at its limits of power delivery, with 4 PCIE lanes occupied by R290X, an OC on your CPU pushes it over the limit? A possible solution is getting PCI-E extender cables that come with a power plug so it takes power directly from the PSU instead of through the MB..

But then it will be fudgly since where are you gonna put that GPU with the extenders, right? heh

Living on the edge with these fancy setups..

 

[KaRLiToS]

Maybe your MB is at its limits of power delivery, with 4 PCIE lanes occupied by R290X, an OC on your CPU pushes it over the limit? A possible solution is getting PCI-E extender cables that come with a power plug so it takes power directly from the PSU instead of through the MB..

But then it will be fudgly since where are you gonna put that GPU with the extenders, right? heh

Living on the edge with these fancy setups..

It was running fine with QuadFire HD 7970 with the exact same setup. But the drivers were mature and the CrossFire technology wasnt the same. I have a couple of tests to do again.

I have a couple of possibilities in mind
-New CrossFire technology without Crossfire bridge.
-Immature drivers
...

I have been testing for like a month now trying to make it work and reinstall windows so many times. What is funny is I can run my benchmarks with CPU at 5Ghz and memory at 2400Mhz but only for a couple of loop. Took me a lot of time just to narrow down where the issue could come from. I tried like 7 x Rampage IV Extreme BIOS.

With a kid and the holidays, time to test was hard to find.

Thanks for your suggestions mate :thumbsup:

 

[Silverforce11]

7970 uses less power so if your MB was near its limits already...

Cannot be driver related since its due to your CPU OC, 4 cards work fine on stock CPU.
Crossfire tech also shouldn't be affected by CPU OC.

The only factor here is CPU OC, meaning its putting more stress on your MB's power delivery subsystems.

The fact you say its stable for a few loops with your OC really screams to me that its power related, as you loop, your mosfets/chokes on the MB get hotter. Hotter = efficiency drops and your limit is lower, to a point where it interferes with clean power to the PCIE lanes to feed the R290s.

This is a well known issue for people who setup mining rigs with 4 cards from 1 MB, they need extra power straight from the PSU to feed the cards. Because mining tend to use ~30% more power than gaming, it puts extra strain on MBs.

 

[KaRLiToS]

7970 uses less power so if your MB was near its limits already...

Cannot be driver related since its due to your CPU OC, 4 cards work fine on stock CPU.
Crossfire tech also shouldn't be affected by CPU OC.

The only factor here is CPU OC, meaning its putting more stress on your MB's power delivery subsystems.

The fact you say its stable for a few loops with your OC really screams to me that its power related, as you loop, your mosfets/chokes on the MB get hotter. Hotter = efficiency drops and your limit is lower, to a point where it interferes with clean power to the PCIE lanes to feed the R290s.

Yes, I have the same hypothesis in mind. But what I don't get is why I ccould run my Quad HD 7970 at 1250/1625 mhz 24/7 with CPU at 4.6Ghz and Memory at 2133Mhz but I can't run the Quad R9 290x at stock and with 4.1 Ghz CPU and 1333Mhz Ram.

Its also funny that I can run CPU and Mem at stock with Quad 24/7.

I will do more testings today.

 

[wand3r3r]

I think Silverforce is on to the correct point. I'd be willing to bet it's power as well. Overclocking, particularly overvolting increases the power usage exponentially and the symptoms you describe point to just teetering on the edge and a certain combo (everything OCed) causes failure.

Did you have a watt meter? Then again if it's the MB failing to supply the voltage it's not necessarily at the PSU limit. so I don't know how you'd test that.