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The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 24c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this.Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes.Load measurements were acquired by playing Crysis Warhead for 30 minutes and measuring the peak temperature.
We also have included Furmark results, recording maximum temperatures throughout a 30 minute stress test. All fan settings were left on automatic.
As we mentioned earlier in the review the BIOS switch on the R9 290X doesn't actually adjust core clock or memory speeds. It changes the maximum fan speed from 40% to 55% (Quiet Mode to Uber Mode) while holding a maximum default temperature of 95c. Running an intensive game (or Furmark as shown above) will load the GPU until it sits at a constant 95c. If the maximum fan speed can't hold 95c it will downclock the core clock speed.
At the default BIOS setting -‘quiet', the fan speed is limited to a maximum of 40 percent while the software simultaneously holds a maximum default temperature of 95c. We noticed that to maintain the temperature of 95c running the synthetic load test Furmark that the software would actively downclock the core. The image above shows the core running at 727mhz – while holding the temperature at 95c.
If you have been reading the review from the start then you will know that some game titles also push the fan speed to the limit at the Quiet BIOS setting. This means the core clock speed will downclock to compensate – reducing potential performance.
At the other ‘Uber' BIOS setting, the fan speed is limited to a maximum of 55 percent while the software holds a maximum temperature of 95c. Sadly Catalyst Control Center will not switch from 40% to 55% fan settings automatically – even with the BIOS switch in the correct place. We need to manually click ‘default' in the Performance Overdrive tab – to reset the max speed to 55%. We are hoping that future revisions of the driver will automatically adjust this as it is easy to forget if you are moving between BIOS configurations.
As the fan is more active at this setting, the card isn't actively downclocking as much as it does when tasked with the synthetic Furmark test. We noticed the core speed would often drop from 1000mhz to around 900mhz.
AMD have clearly had to work out a rather sophisticated set of parameters to try and maintain a maximum default core temperature of 95c, which seems very high in our opinion.
We discussed this with AMD and we were told ‘R9 290X GPU running at 95C is absolutely normal and intentional.'
I strongly believe if AMD had improved the reference cooler on the 290X that the core speed could have held at 1,000mhz at all times without the need for this active downclocking based on a set threshold temperature parameter.
On a more positive note, the software does allow the user to adjust settings and drop the maximum temperature to say 85c. Setting the maximum fan speed percentage to around 70% would ensure the temperatures would drop – at the expense of a lot of fan noise. We need to add, that if you moved the temperature slider from 95c to 85c and left the maximum fan setting on 40% then the core would downclock even further to compensate, subsequently losing even more performance.
For most people we suggest leaving the card set at UBER mode and to ensure that the correct 55% fan speed is set within Catalyst Control Center. If you can deal with additional fan noise, then by all means move the slider further up the scale.
You seem to have put dBa rating on power consumption by mistake 😛
Awesome, thanks – very very interesting!
Just an amazing card, can’t wait for the custom coolers + OC editions
Impressive performance, I can’t even get that at 1080p with my system :p
I want a 4K monitor badly, but I can only stretch to £2,000 savings. waiting patiently for this one to drop next year. fingers crossed!
Nice review, very interesting to see how things go in the future. I prefer gaming on consoles recently, but PC’s are miles ahead, lets be honest about it.
£3k for a monitor? holy crap on a stick. awesome though to drool over. I think this makes more sense long term for people as using three monitors needs such a massive desk it isn’t practical. a single monitor with super high resolution is the way forward.
Do you find some of the textures on older games look really nasty though? I bet only the latest games with tight afflliation with AMD or NVIDIA look great. Which reminds me, I need to get that batman game soon!
Did you really put 6 expensive pieces of hardware on your carpet? ..for photo purposes?
That’s fairly outrageous. Your negligence puts me at a loss for words.
@ jjj – the cards with the slot directly on the ground are actually resting on a small clear plastic sheet. The other cards are side ways on the floor, and as you might imagine the plastic coolers won’t self destruct if they touch a carpet. We appreciate your concern, but we weren’t going to bill you, don’t panic.
I was actually looking for a review on this and its just what Ineed
Amazing to see such a useful article and some idiot complaining about negligence (probably owns a HD7770 and has some serious jealousy issues!), Shame his loss for words didnt translate into his hands moving away from the keyboard.
Good review, got a lot of useful info from the results. GTX Titan is very good at this res, im sure the 6GB of memory helps in some games too.
Lovely indeed, want that monitor for sure!
well that was a great read, thanks. Wish I could afford the 290X, any news on the 290 pricing or release date yet? please?
Wow, even the 280x outperforms the GTX780 in many of the tests. It’s still early days for 4K gaming though, but definitely something I look forward to.
all the benchmarks i’ve seen so far Nvidia outperform Amd in low resolution, but as resolution increases beyond 1920×1080 ,AMD GCN outperforms Nvidia , even R7-280x pulls close to gtx 780 ,so $300 amd card matching $650 Nvidia card, wow.seems like AMD GCN is why superior to NVIDIA kepler.
just a 7970 GHz edition card notting more!
I did not take jjj comment too seriously. Provided me with a nice dose of laughter.
I’m not 100% on this but I’m pretty sure these aren’t the first AMD cards to offer crossfire without bridges… The bridges are almost an achilles’ heel anyways.