Bitcoin Forum

Am I allowed to ask about unlocking this to a 290x bios? Has anyone tried it?
What else do i need to do with this card ( overclocking,undervolting etc) to maximise its performance?

Check here: http://www.overclock.net/t/1443242/the-r9-290-290x-unlock-thread

None of my 6x 290x were unlockable, so I didn't flash. I think if you flash an ASUS BIOS you can enable undervolting, but I'm not sure about that.

AFAIK, only the early models of the 290's were 'shader' unlockable to the 290X as there was a shortage of 290 binned chips, hence the 2 week delay on release. I bought 6 Powercolor 290's, 5 unlocked and had sequential serial numbers, the 6th had a serial number +200 and did not unlock the extra shaders. Saying that, the ASUS bios worked on it fine, just without the extra shaders.

thanks... some noob questions..
i think this card is overclocked out of the box? is that right?
what is the benefit of overclocking it further? and the downside?
could you also explain what undervolting is and why i would do it?

Undervolting is lowering the default voltage of the gpu.  This will save on your electricity bill, and generate less heat, but will generally drop your hashrate as you may have to lower your clocks to run stable.  There is a lot of tweaking involved :)

Ok thanks.
I figure i shouldnt need to go near that then as these cards run near 70 degrees?
If I overclock the card to the max will I get even higher hashrate?

Overclocking balls-to-the-wall won't necessarily increase your hashrate. I've seen it where increasing your mem clocks by 25MHz will drop your hashrate by 200KH/s!

The generic steps for optimizing your hashrate:

1. Figure out the best TC to mine at. Higher TC will prolly require 1 threads and high intensity, while lower TC might use 2 threads and a lower intensity.
2. Get your RAM speed up as high as it will go.
3. Find the proper core speed you should be running at for your given TC and RAM. Usually this is between 0.6 and 0.8 of your RAM speed.
4. Undervolt your core as low as you can while still stable at your given core speed.

For my 290 cards, I run TC of 32765 (with 1 thread and I:20), mem of 1500, core of 1105 (a 0.736 ratio), and I can't undervolt those 290s (yet). Gets me 850KH/s.
For my 280x cards, I run TC of 8192 (with 2 threads and I:13), mem of 1500, core of 1020 (a 0.68 ratio), and undervolted to 1.01V (stable up to a core of 1050). Gets me ~720KH/s.

Just my personal experience. I'm still playing with my 280x cards. I can get a TC as high as 43008(!), but I haven't figured out any good mem/core ratios to get good performance (>700KH/s). I'll play with them tomorrow.