Trouble overclocking R9 280

[JumBie]

Long story short, I purchased a second hand R9 280 thinking it was a 280x (3 beers will do that). Now to ease the pain I am trying to overclock the darn thing as I have seen you can gain some nice performance out of these bad boys.

The model I own is the Sapphire Dual X R9 280 OC edition. Comes stock at 940mhz clock and 1250mhz memory. I ran a valley bench stock speeds, everything max, and got around 33fps.

I decided give a sizeable O.C and bumped it up to 1000mhz clock and 1350 memory. Ran the test again and got 30fps, had to do it a second time just to make sure I wasn't seeing things, same thing 30fps. I bumped it up again to 1050/1375, no difference the score kept hovering around 30fps. I started to wonder what the heck is going on. This is what brings me here, what the heck is going? The performance seems to be getting worse the more I oc. The bench runs stable there is no artifacts or anything what so ever, but I see no performance increase.

SPECS:

i5 3470
8GB DDR3 1333
550w PSU
Sapphire R9 280 Dual X OC

Update:
It appears any number above 940/1250 causes the scores on the benchmark to be lower. Is this a joke? The card has hit its max at stock speeds, there has got to be more to it than just this.

 

[96Firebird]

Try overclocking the core and keeping memory stock. Sometimes, if the memory is over clocked too far, it will harm performance rather than help it... BTW, what are you using to overclock, and are you monitoring clockspeeds while running Valley?

 

[JumBie]

Try overclocking the core and keeping memory stock. Sometimes, if the memory is over clocked too far, it will harm performance rather than help it... BTW, what are you using to overclock, and are you monitoring clockspeeds while running Valley?

I am using MSI afterburner to overclock, and I am using the in bench monitor plus GPU z to monitor clock speeds and temps.

EDIT: Changing only the core speed provides no performance gain what so ever, the same thing is happening the FPS is actually lower.

EDIT 2: MSI afterburner shows the core speed jumping from 200mhz-880mhz no idea what is going on there.

 

[LTC8K6]

Another thread suggested disabling Powerplay with Afterburner.

 

[JumBie]

Another thread suggested disabling Powerplay with Afterburner.

No difference.

 

[96Firebird]

What are the temps?

 

[rancherlee]

I have have pretty much the same card (7950) and use TRIXX for overclocking it. If your using the default "extreme" setting at 1080P your numbers sound low even for a stock card. Mine has 925/1250 base clocks and pulls around 36fps on the extreme 1080p setting. One thing to watch for is the Stock "boost" cards have the volt core set at 1.25v which WILL push some of the cards past TDP which results in throttling. Mine is one of them and actually throttles pretty hard during benchmarks if I leave the "power limit" set to 0%. Either drop your core voltage OR raise the power limit to get rid of the throttling. Mine runs fine at 1.15v on the core for 925/1250 and doesn't throttle and for more FPS I set it at 1100/1500 @ 1.25v with a +30% power limit using Sapphire TRIXX. Your 280 should be able to do the same or better since its "fresher" silicone at which point it should be beyond 280x performance.

 

[guskline]

JumBie: Here's my suggestion. wait until the 390x is released; drink 5 beers, hit the buy now button and all your pain (other than in your wallet) will be gone!

 

[rancherlee]

just went are reran my 7950 for you on Extreme HD 1080p setting

925/1250 default 29fps with throttling
925/1250 1.15v 35fps NO throttling
1100/1500 1.25v +30% power limit 41fps

And this is with a FX chip so my single thread performance holds back my numbers a touch, your i5 should do a hair better. Bumping up the the core without changing the Voltage OR power Limit resulted in more throttling and lower numbers for me also.

 

[JumBie]

Okay, so I downloaded trixx and increased the power limit by 20% (max). The stock voltage is 1.25 so I left it at that. The test is run under:

Quality - ULTRA
AA- x8
1920x1080

940/1250 w/o power limit 33.1fps - 57 degrees
940/1250 w/ power limit 34.3fps - 57 degrees
1100/1500 w/power limit 43.5fps - 68 degrees

The only problem is the fanspeed bumps up to 56% and its so loud I actually find it unbearable. Plus the fan made some rattling noise as I closed the benchmark and the fan started throttling down.

 

[KingFatty]

The memory speed can be tricky, because the memory uses error correction. So, as you start hitting higher speeds and get errors, the memory still appears to be operating error-free because of the error correction. But, the total effect is lower FPS due to the error correction happening in the background, compared to using a lower memory speed that doesn't need to apply error correction because the speed is low enough to avoid memory errors. So achieving a high memory clock can be counter productive sometimes.

 

[Headfoot]

I had a card just like that one when it was still the 7950. I didn't find the fans loud at all. Make sure there isn't a cord hanging in the path of the fan blades causing that rattling and extra noise

 

[JumBie]

I had a card just like that one when it was still the 7950. I didn't find the fans loud at all. Make sure there isn't a cord hanging in the path of the fan blades causing that rattling and extra noise

There isn't anything in the way of the fans...kind of surprising that it made that sound TBH. Also, I am testing it in an open rig, maybe it will be bearable in a closed rig.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Those Sapphire Dual X/Vapor X fans go bad after a while. I just had to replace mine with new ones off of Amazon to bring down the noise level.

 

[JumBie]

Those Sapphire Dual X/Vapor X fans go bad after a while. I just had to replace mine with new ones off of Amazon to bring down the noise level.

Well that sucks....


I managed to get the card with no issues to 1075/1450 I played World of tanks, BF3 and GTA V with no problems. However, I started a game of league of legends and noticed the fps was dropping randomly, I looked and saw that the card was randomly dropping down to 2d clock levels and then back up to 3d clocks at random intervals. Any idea what could be causing this?

UPDATE: Resetting the clocks back to normal stopped the fluctuations in FPS....weird how it didn't occur in GTA V which is very gpu intensive.

 

[LTC8K6]

Is it possibly your power supply?

A 500watt supply is listed as the requirement, and you are right at that with 550?

Just a thought.

 

[JumBie]

Those Sapphire Dual X/Vapor X fans go bad after a while. I just had to replace mine with new ones off of Amazon to bring down the noise level.

Is it possibly your power supply?

A 500watt supply is listed as the requirement, and you are right at that with 550?

Just a thought.

I doubt the system as a whole even reaches 400w.

 

[LTC8K6]

I was thinking in terms of good voltage regulation and accurate voltages.

Perhaps not a steady voltage to the card, or voltage sagging under load?

 

[JumBie]

I was thinking in terms of good voltage regulation and accurate voltages.

Perhaps not a steady voltage to the card, or voltage sagging under load?

http://www.coolermaster.com/powersupply/office-home-elite-power/elite-power-v2-550w/

 

[Headfoot]

Your card dropping to 2d clocks can be indicative of either 1) very light GPU load, so light that it can downclock while staying under VSYNC limits or 2) CPU bottleneck. My brother had this happen with his TriX 290 in Neverwinter the other day because his 8320 couldn't push the frames fast enough to keep the 290 fed.

There could be other issues causing that too but I'd check those two things. I'd suspect (1) for LoL, it's not a very tough game to run. Were your FPS dropping with the clock drop?

 

[JumBie]

Your card dropping to 2d clocks can be indicative of either 1) very light GPU load, so light that it can downclock while staying under VSYNC limits or 2) CPU bottleneck. My brother had this happen with his TriX 290 in Neverwinter the other day because his 8320 couldn't push the frames fast enough to keep the 290 fed.

There could be other issues causing that too but I'd check those two things. I'd suspect (1) for LoL, it's not a very tough game to run. Were your FPS dropping with the clock drop?

Yes the FPS was dropping during the clock drops. I cant see it being issue 2 as the i5 3470 @3.2 and 3.6 boost shouldn't be a bottleneck at all. But what you are saying makes sense. The gpu never downclocked and caused issues with games such as BF3, Arma 2, GTA V etc... those games ran fine and ran a lot better than they do at stock clocks. I just need to figure out a way for the GPU to not downclock.

 

[Headfoot]

That is strange behavior -- perhaps its a LoL issue if you're not seeing it in other games? Is there a frame rate limiter in game perhaps thats throttling you?

 

[JumBie]

You know what, now that I play other games with the overclock I notice that all of them are doing it. Not as harsh but they aren't smooth to say the least. Reverting to stock solves it, but I ain't happy with stock speeds.

Update: FPS is fluctuating in all games even at stock speeds, games will run at 60fps (vsync) then will drop down to 40 or 50 fps and then back up and random times. This wasn't the same with my old 270x.