AMD R9 290X?

[ivanlabrie]

Who said it's bad that it runs at 95c? It's a safe temp for those chips...

otoh, who said it is safe? The company releasing a card with crappy cooler and wants to sell hardware? It's up to the end user to determine if he wants to keep at 95ºC a piece of hardware that costs him $550.

As far as power draw, the guy who posted results reported 270w+- for 900kh/s, which is pretty decent imho.

900 Kh/s at 270w is indeed decent. What is not is getting 900 Kh/s at 270W after paying $550. Compare with getting 750 Kh/s at $275 and ~180W out of the 280x or 650 Kh/s for $200 out of the 7950.

AMD wants people to buy their new cards so they are jacking up 7950 and 7970 prices, hard to find a good deal (at least new).

There is a new R9 290 non x version coming soon, in 3 or 4 days, and it'll cost 400 to 450usd for very similar performance with lower consumption. Similar to the 7950 vs 7970 scenario you mentioned. I agree with the $550 is too much though.

As for temp headroom, what you say is not correct...95c is the max safe temp the manufacturer determined. It's like an intel cpu, the new ones load at say 90c temps, vs the 50c an AMD cpu runs at full load. You'd think 90c is outrageous compared to the AMD cpu, but it's not. Temperature is not the same thing as heat, and not all architectures work the same way, so your statement makes no sense.
If you keep the card cool it won't throttle, but you can also achieve that with a modded bios. (google 290x pt3 modded bios)

[1715098667]

1715098667

[1715098667]

1715098667

[coin@coin]

I have two sapphire dual-x 280x cards, both manage right around 750kh/s with these settings.

-setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
-setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1
cgminer --scrypt -o stratum+tcp:// -u  -p  -I 13 --shaders 2048 --thread-concurrency 8192 --worksize 256 -g 2 --lookup-gap 2 --gpu-engine 1080 --gpu-memclock 1500

Thanks for sharing! I'll give your settings a shot. 

[goxed]

I got my R9 290X,  but when hashing scrypt using cgminer, I get lots of HW error. Cgminer 3.3.1 as well as 2.11.2 on windows.
 I have tried almost all reasonable settings of clock speed / memory speed / shader counts, lookup-gap, thread concurrency, etc, but I cannot get rid of HW errrors. It mines SHA256 without any hardware errors at 750MH/s. I am using AMD drivers beta 8, the one released on Oct 30 2013.
Battlefield 4 works great as well.

[Kimowa]

I got my R9 290X,  but when hashing scrypt using cgminer, I get lots of HW error. Cgminer 3.3.1 as well as 2.11.2 on windows.
 I have tried almost all reasonable settings of clock speed / memory speed / shader counts, lookup-gap, thread concurrency, etc, but I cannot get rid of HW errrors. It mines SHA256 without any hardware errors at 750MH/s. I am using AMD drivers beta 8, the one released on Oct 30 2013.
Battlefield 4 works great as well.

Mind sharing your settings?

[ivanlabrie]

I got my R9 290X,  but when hashing scrypt using cgminer, I get lots of HW error. Cgminer 3.3.1 as well as 2.11.2 on windows.
 I have tried almost all reasonable settings of clock speed / memory speed / shader counts, lookup-gap, thread concurrency, etc, but I cannot get rid of HW errrors. It mines SHA256 without any hardware errors at 750MH/s. I am using AMD drivers beta 8, the one released on Oct 30 2013.
Battlefield 4 works great as well.

Look at the overclock.net thread and try to properly uninstall and reinstall drivers.

[pontiacg5]

http://www.overclock.net/t/1437876/290x-mining-performance

Thanks for sharing, looks like I will pass until the price of the GPU drop..

I got a 280X and I'm able to get ~740KH/s @ 1100/1500, I love this card and I want to order 10 more!
Running @80C at maybe 30DB, its almost silent.


I really want to get a 270 and see if I can get 700KH/s, because its almost 100 USD cheaper

Which one did you get?

I tried MSI TwinFroz OC Gaming (which failed after a week of mining) and HIS IceQ X2 Boost. Both freshly released 280X.

- MSI was silent and performed around 700KH/s at stock 1000/1500 with temp 80/81 C, really like this card, compact
- IceQ same performance at 1000/1500, silent but at a max of 68/71 C (+1 from me), only thing it's huge at 31cm length, but solid and hopefully long lasting

Haven't overclocked nor undervolted yet but if anyone could post their CGMiner settings for the same kinda cards maybe of help, I'm sure I can squeeze a little more out of them. I use

Code:

-I 13 -g 2 -w 256 --shaders 2048

Looking forward to see price and availability of 290 and 280 non X versions but as per the 290X it's a nono cos of the noise that thing makes!

I have two sapphire dual-x 280x cards, both manage right around 750kh/s with these settings.

-setx GPU_MAX_ALLOC_PERCENT 100
-setx GPU_USE_SYNC_OBJECTS 1
cgminer --scrypt -o stratum+tcp:// -u  -p  -I 13 --shaders 2048 --thread-concurrency 8192 --worksize 256 -g 2 --lookup-gap 2 --gpu-engine 1080 --gpu-memclock 1500

Nice, and do you have to have a have a watt tester?

I don't, but I do have a corsair i series PSU with a watt meter built in. I believe it shows around 650-700W load when mining. I'll check more closely tonight.

[RandomQ]

http://www.overclock.net/t/1437876/290x-mining-performance

Thanks for sharing, looks like I will pass until the price of the GPU drop..

I got a 280X and I'm able to get ~740KH/s @ 1100/1500, I love this card and I want to order 10 more!
Running @80C at maybe 30DB, its almost silent.


I really want to get a 270 and see if I can get 700KH/s, because its almost 100 USD cheaper

Which one did you get?

I tried MSI TwinFroz OC Gaming (which failed after a week of mining) and HIS IceQ X2 Boost. Both freshly released 280X.

- MSI was silent and performed around 700KH/s at stock 1000/1500 with temp 80/81 C, really like this card, compact
- IceQ same performance at 1000/1500, silent but at a max of 68/71 C (+1 from me), only thing it's huge at 31cm length, but solid and hopefully long lasting

Haven't overclocked nor undervolted yet but if anyone could post their CGMiner settings for the same kinda cards maybe of help, I'm sure I can squeeze a little more out of them. I use

Code:

-I 13 -g 2 -w 256 --shaders 2048

Looking forward to see price and availability of 290 and 280 non X versions but as per the 290X it's a nono cos of the noise that thing makes!

MSI TwinFroz OC Gaming ( On my 4th day of mining)
~761Kh\s on these settings
-g 2 --thread-concurrency 8192 -I 13 --gpu-engine 1085 --gpu-memclock 1500 --lookup-gap 2 --gpu-powertune -10

but it doesn't look like the powertune is working

I'm so tempted to order 2 more this weekend.

[42davidsmith42]

RandomQ,

Have you tried to go higher then intensity 13?  Also is the card voltage locked? I'm thinking about ordering a couple myself.

[pontiacg5]

My cards appear to be voltage locked. 7970's run too damn hot to worry about voltage 

They dislike anything more than i13 running two threads. Will handle i19 rather well as a single thread, but not optimal. Anything higher than 13 will h/w error like crazy with two threads.

Here's some power consumption, but this is my "best gal" computer doing many things that a miner wouldn't need to do.

[Prelude]

Just picked up a 290x, going to mess around with it tonight and post results.

[Sythyn]

My cards appear to be voltage locked. 7970's run too damn hot to worry about voltage 

They dislike anything more than i13 running two threads. Will handle i19 rather well as a single thread, but not optimal. Anything higher than 13 will h/w error like crazy with two threads.

Here's some power consumption, but this is my "best gal" computer doing many things that a miner wouldn't need to do.

Wohoo, nice rig you have there...

[pontiacg5]

Haha, thanks!

[ivanlabrie]

Haha, thanks!

Y no gpu waterblock?

(I have the same case but I modded it and rotated it...the front is now the bottom)

[Prelude]

Preliminary results: Took an hour and 15 minutes to get the drivers to install. 

[pontiacg5]

Haha, thanks!

Y no gpu waterblock?

(I have the same case but I modded it and rotated it...the front is now the bottom)

I'm still looking around at options for waterblocks, don't think any will fit without modding slightly. Think I might give the heatkiller a try, looks like the layout is right, but capacitors are in the way. I may be able to mod the block where it interferes, maybe! EK had my cards listed as compatible for a while, but then they changed it a few days after I got these...

I love these cases! I've built a few with this case, it's got nearly everything and it's easily moddable too 

[ivanlabrie]

Haha, thanks!

Y no gpu waterblock?

(I have the same case but I modded it and rotated it...the front is now the bottom)

I'm still looking around at options for waterblocks, don't think any will fit without modding slightly. Think I might give the heatkiller a try, looks like the layout is right, but capacitors are in the way. I may be able to mod the block where it interferes, maybe! EK had my cards listed as compatible for a while, but then they changed it a few days after I got these...

I love these cases! I've built a few with this case, it's got nearly everything and it's easily moddable too 

Definitely...love the cm 690 II as well. Mine looks like a Silverstone FT-02 these days xD
You won't find fullcover blocks for those me thinks, it's better to go ref gpu with AMD in general, specially if you can get wc.
I'm gonna grab a 290 non x and wc it, got a Glacer 240L and an i7 3820 atm.

[Thenen]

Preliminary results: Took an hour and 15 minutes to get the drivers to install. 

Dont they come together with drivers???

[ivanlabrie]

Preliminary results: Took an hour and 15 minutes to get the drivers to install. 

Dont they come together with drivers???

If he had an nvidia driver before it's a pain...but not too terrible.

[Prelude]

Having a really hard time finding proper settings. I thought I might have a bum card so I picked up a second 290x today, same results. Right now my best result is 850KH/s @ 885/1250 TC 32765 -g 1.  I tried duplicating the settings in the OCN thread Ivan linked, but they don't work for me.

[ivanlabrie]

Having a really hard time finding proper settings. I thought I might have a bum card so I picked up a second 290x today, same results. Right now my best result is 850KH/s @ 885/1250 TC 32765 -g 1.  I tried duplicating the settings in the OCN thread Ivan linked, but they don't work for me.

885mhz is super slow for the core...up that thing in the 1000-1100 territory and man up :p