AMD: Volcanic Islands R1100/1200 (8***/9*** series) Speculation/ Rumour Thread

[gongo]

Playing Company heros 2 and the GPU load does not go beyond 50%??
Core clocks starts from 1ghz and as the game wore on, it drops to 750-900mhz...and ime..game chugs along more than 7970 in the later stages...wtf! nooo...this is all so strange...my 290(X) is slower than 7970 in Coh2..???

And yes i already did set 290(X) fanspeed to 100% and even lower the max temps to 85c....Hawaii Turbo mode is bad bad bad!

On the other hand, i found 9.4b CCC OD works with setting the fan speed after a restart, but core/mem clocks still cannot be changed...this gpu is so not ready for prime time..

 

[gkar1]

By lowering max temp to 85C you are effectively telling the card to throttle itself to lower clocks to achieve that temperature. /facepalm

 

[gongo]

no that's not how it works..
correct me if I am wrong Dave, but Hawaii PT works this way...if ASIC hit >85c...ramp fan up to 100%...if fan 100% yet ASIC climbs above 85c...throttle gpu clocks...

The thing is my temps hit 85c..but my fan only need to run at 50% speed in coh2 to maintain <85c....I believe this case I should not be hitting the throttle clocks ...yet...

 

[Alexko]

But you do end up with a needlessly noisier card.

 

[UniversalTruth]

Kyle_Bennett HardOCP Editor-in-Chief, 16.5 Years

Status: Kyle_Bennett is offline
R9 290/X AIB Cards
Just talked to AMD as well as three big AIB partners and AMD as well as one big AIB told me that we should expect to see custom R9 290 and 290X cards in etail the second week of December. FYI....

My question is if nonreference cards will also be allowed to run at the super hot 95 degrees while fans almost not running? And if true- is this the "bright" future which we all must expect?

If so, I may consider stop buying any graphics cards in the future. I don't like where things are going to

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

I don't see why they wouldn't as AMD designed the chip to be able to cope with those temperatures.

I don't really see the point in all this temperature talk. If a card is going to have to get rid of a X amount of heat, does it really matter if it does that with the card running at 75, 85 or 95 degrees? If the card can take it, why not?

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Just seen a post from OCUK saying they've been told no non-stock cooler cards until middle of January now. AMD isn't selling them anything other than complete cards with stock coolers, so there's no chip/memory, chip only options for companies to buy and build their own cards with decent cooling.

I've just spoken with HIS.

AMD are still only shipping full built reference cards and so far no plans to change until end of December / early January.

So we won't see a custom cooled card on shelf's at stockist until at least mid-end January at this rate.

Absolutely ZERO chance this year!

 

[UniversalTruth]

I don't see why they wouldn't as AMD designed the chip to be able to cope with those temperatures.

I don't really see the point in all this temperature talk. If a card is going to have to get rid of a X amount of heat, does it really matter if it does that with the card running at 75, 85 or 95 degrees? If the card can take it, why not?

I haven't heard about any major breakthrough in their design regarding change of materials or so, so the new generation chips can last as long as the older ones running at normal acceptable temperatures.

Why would they in the first place allow the chip to go to so high operating temperature, and not run the fan to prevent it... It shouldn't be so high difference in noise, if any signicant at all.

Correct me if I am wrong.

 

[Alexko]

I haven't heard about any major breakthrough in their design regarding change of materials or so, so the new generation chips can last as long as the older ones running at normal acceptable temperatures.

Why would they in the first place allow the chip to go to so high operating temperature, and not run the fan to prevent it... It shouldn't be so high difference in noise, if any signicant at all.

Correct me if I am wrong.

Major breakthroughs? Lots of chips have been running above 100°C for many, many years. It's just a matter of careful engineering and proper materials, no breakthrough needed. Plus, companies don't always share everything they do.

Do you honestly think AMD would knowingly release a card that runs too hot by default? That would be a huge legal liability (see NVIDIA's bump problems).

 

[LittleJ]

My question is if nonreference cards will also be allowed to run at the super hot 95 degrees while fans almost not running? And if true- is this the "bright" future which we all must expect?

If so, I may consider stop buying any graphics cards in the future. I don't like where things are going to

They will be allowed to hit that high, but with the better heatsink and fans they hopefully don't come close to that high. So hopefully sapphire toxics, msi twin frozrs, etc give you plenty of thermal headroom at good acoustic levels.

 

[gongo]

a lot of third party coolers ignore the vrm portion though...
now that i seen Nvidia fan in pictures, i guess the taller fan blades will make things better and the heatsink Nvidia use seems to have more open surface area for air to flow...that's like something relatively cheap to implement...no? ..further more u guys went back to the half slot cooling AND slicing off a small angle from your heatsink...why AMD?

Oh i am going to try and install back the older CCC while keeping the new graphics drivers...hopes this will make OD functional again

okay my hunch was right. installing the older 9.2b CCC makes OD working again...

btw i just noticed more video adjustment options with Hawaii..de-contouring? upscale reduction? steady video for non-AMD cpu..nice! what does automatic for de-noise/mosquito noise do?

 

[silent_guy]

I haven't heard about any major breakthrough in their design regarding change of materials or so, so the new generation chips can last as long as the older ones running at normal acceptable temperatures.

Where normal acceptable temperature is 125C: that's been the case for decades.

 

[Kaotik]

Just FYI, first Sapphire R9 290 that modded to R9 290X (that I know of) popped up earlier today at MuroBBS.

Also, if it wasn't posted yet, there's now software to check whether the card will mod or not before BIOS flashing: http://www.overclock.net/t/1445030/is-your-r9-290-unlockable-find-out-here

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

OCUK are selling a couple of different pre-modded R290s. One that's unlocked to full shaders and voltage, one that's just voltage unlocked.

 

[Kaotik]

OCUK are selling a couple of different pre-modded R290s. One that's unlocked to full shaders and voltage, one that's just voltage unlocked.

Yeah, and the voltage unlocked ones won't mod, that's why they're cheaper than unmodded 290s

 

[thatdude90210]

Just FYI, first Sapphire R9 290 that modded to R9 290X (that I know of) popped up earlier today at MuroBBS.

Also, if it wasn't posted yet, there's now software to check whether the card will mod or not before BIOS flashing: http://www.overclock.net/t/1445030/is-your-r9-290-unlockable-find-out-here

I think that's the one that was bought in France. My Sapphire (from Newegg) is like all the other Sapphires so far, not unlockable (F8010005).

Btw, if anyone has trouble downloading that Hawaii info utility, I had to temporarily stop Malwarebyte. It just wouldn't allow any traffic to the download site.

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Yeah, and the voltage unlocked ones won't mod, that's why they're cheaper than unmodded 290s

Looking at their stock levels I'm guessing they are seeing pretty good conversion ratio. It's pretty clever of them. Take a less popular 290 model (VTX3D) flash them in house and ask £30 for the flashing. The "turds" can still be sold as special edition voltage unlocked models and probably still move ok with the 10£ discount. 30£ more per card is huge extra profit percentage on video cards and I don't think the non convertibles lower that figure too much. They can even use those in their system builds if they want. edit: The successfully flashed cards offer amazing value over the regular 290X and should fly off the shelves while giving great profit margin to the store, they must be loving this situation.

 

[gongo]

I thought Hawaii uses some special phase changing screen imprinted thermal paste like Taihit but i was wrong??

AMD went back to the gobby cream tim??

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-r9-290x-thermal-paste-efficiency,3678.html

 

[Malo]

Playing Company heros 2 and the GPU load does not go beyond 50%??
Core clocks starts from 1ghz and as the game wore on, it drops to 750-900mhz...and ime..game chugs along more than 7970 in the later stages...wtf! nooo...this is all so strange...my 290(X) is slower than 7970 in Coh2..???

And yes i already did set 290(X) fanspeed to 100% and even lower the max temps to 85c....Hawaii Turbo mode is bad bad bad!

On the other hand, i found 9.4b CCC OD works with setting the fan speed after a restart, but core/mem clocks still cannot be changed...this gpu is so not ready for prime time..

Doesn't that just sound like the GPU is starved and not really doing much in the game thus lowering clocks since it's doesn't need higher speeds, and thus lowering power and fan usage?

 

[gongo]

Doubt it...i think i found the cause...PT/CCC is not saving my settings with 9.4b drivers...I can set what i want but upon restart, CCC fan settings goes back to default of 47% even though the screen still shows my last settings....the temp still remembers my last setting.... so thats what causing the throttling...47% fan speed cannot keep Hawaii at 85C at 1.1ghz...i need to reset my CCC on every boot to prevent throttling

I also found 3dmark11-Game Test 2 to best test core overclock stability..loop it a few times and you should see artifacts if your core is not stable....or throttles...unlike Coh2, 3dm11 shows 100% core usage....my ASIC VDDC runs between 1.107 to 1.158v on this load test....fan speed goes up to 70% to keep the core at 85C..voltage swings seems more great than Tahiti