R9 380X - Overclocking?
R9 380X - Overclocking?
I have a Sapphire r9 380X Nitro without any bios mods. I can set the power limit to 120% and add +200 mV using Sapphire Trix. I began overclocking with those settings (just lazy!).
Currently, I have it at +160 core and +500 vram, passing Firestrike and a few other tests. I haven’t pushed it higher yet.
From other posts, I see that voltage and power limits can be lowered slightly while staying stable. I expect similar results if I adjust accordingly.
My questions:
- Do you have any experience overclocking this card? If yes, what were the best stable settings achieved (frequencies, power, voltage, temps)?
- Have you tried modifying the bios? What were the outcomes?
- Can the voltage go above +200 mV and the power limit too? I’m not sure if there’s much room left. But did this help get any more stable overclocks?
Thanks.
It's really not worth it. A 1200Mhz core clock should be the upper limit for stable performance. The BIOS can't do much more.
The highest frequencies differ from card to card. If you're satisfied with the temperatures at +200mV, simply continue increasing the Core Clock until you reach your stable maximum. You'll likely discover the optimal stable Core Clock before even adjusting the memory clock.
MSI Afterburner lets you circumvent AMD's "safe" overclocking boundaries if you're determined to push further.
For a custom BIOS setup, such as with the R9 380X, it's not recommended unless you're confident in your abilities.
I have some background on overclocking Nvidia cards but not much with AMD yet, so I'll keep the BIOS settings unchanged for now!
I checked the bios.rom for the 380X and it doesn’t resemble Nvidia’s format at all. However, it seems simpler, with fewer options to tweak.
My model has a 1200MHz core cap defined in the bios.rom. When I tried to push it past 1200MHz, I saw a black screen at 1205MHz and had to restart.
Right now I plan to locate the minimum voltage that keeps it stable at 1200MHz and then explore what more I can achieve with VRAM.
You’re right about a BIOS mod likely offering limited gains. I’m already drawing close to 190 watts, and I believe the real upper limit is around 225 watts—considering power for fans and extra VRAM if I push overclocking further. That leaves only a small margin.
The card appears to be constrained by the real power delivery because it only features two 6-pins. It might be worth checking the BIOS settings to determine if you can bypass the core clock limit, allowing further overclocking at +200mV. It would be best not to raise the voltage beyond that unless a more specialized cooling setup is in place.
Yeah, figure I'll I'll give it a shot now. I noticed it has a dual bios - so if it goes wrong I should be able to recover it.
At the moment I have got it back up to 1200MHz with only +85mV after doing it the non-lazy way.
I went back to +0mV and then increased the core in steps.... after testing and a few black screens I eventually had to go up to +85mV to get it stable @ 1200MHz. If you modify the fan curve the temps can be kept nice and reasonable too. It uses less power now, 147.5 watts at this frequency vs. nearly 190 watts earlier today when at +200mV. (Obviously!)
Won't bother with >1200MHz until I can get the bios modified.