Review - AMD Radeon R9 290X

[davejcb]

That's great news!

[epixoip]

Cool, I'll have to experiment more with this then when I return from my travels. I'm interested to know what the temps are like at reasonable clock rates under ALU-bound workloads.

[atom]

There is 13.12 stable now, you might want to try again with that one

[magnum]

Would you be so kind as to post performance results? I'm particularly interested in descrypt and md5crypt.

The following benchmarks are per-device speed from dual-device runs, at respective stock clocks and using -b:

Code:

format       R9 290X            7970
NTLM       19542.5 MH/s    15603.8 MH/s
descrypt     120.1 MH/s    85013.6 kH/s
md5crypt    3340.0 kH/s     3512.1 kH/s
wpapsk       178.9 kH/s      131.3 kH/s
sha256crypt  23159 H/s       81143 H/s
sha512crypt  16389 H/s       12379 H/s

Running a real crack using a single NT test hash and -n800, the difference to a 7970 is smaller than indicated above - but 290X is the faster one. Temps are surprisingly good (70-80C) with fan at 100% and stock clocks.

[davejcb]

Thank you very much!

That's a nice increase on the descrypt, a little disappointing on the md5crypt though!

[magnum]

Temperatures leave room for some overclocking though. Also, I haven't tried the 13.12 release yet, only last beta.

It's a pity oHC can't do Overdrive6 yet. I made a ticket for that. Maybe it could/should include the min-clock workaround too (setting min to same as max at session start and resetting to original value at session end).

[epixoip]

i will be posting a follow-up review tonight, but yeah, all of the issues i had with the 290X are resolved and everything looks fantastic.

i was planning to create a ticket for OD6 as well, but i'm glad you beat me to it

[ragequit]

I eagerly await all news. one of my 7970s has died and the prices for these (Asus 7970) has gone up a lot in the last month. I'm looking for a suitable sub. this may be it...

[epixoip]

magnum, can you confirm that you get the same speeds at 925 Mhz as you do at 1000 Mhz or 1100 Mhz? this is driving me mad. even though the card runs hotter at higher clock rates, i can't seem to get any additional performance out of it at higher clock rates... it's almost like the firmware is limiting the clock rate, but yet the temps are higher...

[magnum]

magnum, can you confirm that you get the same speeds at 925 Mhz as you do at 1000 Mhz or 1100 Mhz?

No, actually I think I saw indicated speed going up "too much" when bumping from 1000 to 1100 MHz. I'm not yet sure it wasn't just me being confused. If I see that again I will verify things indeed get cracked and I'll also measure speed with other means.

Are you sure you ran with minclock same as maxclock? BTW, does amdconfig work properly with the release driver or are you using your own control? And if it does, does it really? ;-)

FWIW I have the silly switches in "über" mode.