XFX R9 290 DD Double Dissipation Review

[section_title title=”Overclocking”]Overclocking

My previous experience of overclocking on the AMD R9 290 Hawaii core has been a pretty mixed affair really but since partners started releasing custom coolers, it certainly has improved.  The reference AMD coolers were to put it bluntly, rubbish and that probably won’t be forgotten for a long time to come but obviously reference isn’t on offer here, the power of the Double Dissipation is and that is going to be the focus.

Now the 28nm Hawaii core runs very hot (being modest) and only the best coolers are going to be able to tame the heat wave it produces which of course is an attributing factor to over clocking as more power = extra heat.  The XFX card itself has stock clocks of 947/1250MHz which isn’t the fastest out of the box on the current market but more than suffices in my opinion.

Upon tweaking, numerous benching runs and about an hour of finding 100% stable overclocks, I finally managed to get 1105MHz on the core and 1400MHz on the memory before the card would start artifacting; this equates to around 16% on the core and a 12% on the VRAM.  Not bad at all considering the R9 290 is notorious for having thermal issues but the DD cooler does a good job; there are better clocking cards out there though.