Review of the AMD Radeon R9 390X video adapter using the example of SAPPHIRE Tri-X R9 390X

To specify settings for a specific algorithm, select it from the Algorithms list. For each algorithm, you can create an individual set of settings. When you select "Default config", your settings will apply to all algorithms, but they can be overwritten by settings in the algorithms themselves.

Now let's talk directly about overclocking and undervolting settings for Nvidia GPU. You have the opportunity to set one common value for each parameter for all GPUs in the rig, or specify separate values ​​for each video card separated by a space. For example:

Creating an Overclocking Profile

If you are a beginner, or have not dealt with Hive OS until now, we recommend that you read the article “Installing and configuring HiveOS - Linux operating system for GPU mining rigs and ASICs,” which describes in detail and step by step the process of installing and initially configuring this operating system mining systems. More about settings

More about settings

• 100 — general value for all video cards in Riga.
• 0 100 0 150 0 — value 0 for GPU0, 100 for GPU1, 0 for GPU2, 150 for GPU3 and 0 for GPU4.

After changing the parameters, simply click on the “
Save ” button.

AMD R9 NANO Driver

When installing AMD R9 NANO drivers, it is always recommended to uninstall the current drivers first. This way you can be sure that DCH drivers will not be installed by Windows 10.

For older AMD video cards (for example, AMD R9 290 or AMD HD 7870), Catalyst (Crimson) 15.12

can show the best performance and compatibility.

For other video cards, the latest driver version from the official website of the AMD manufacturer is best suited.

Overclocking AMD video cards.

Now let's talk directly about overclocking and undervolting settings for Nvidia GPU.
For example, overclocking the Nvidia GTX 1060.

• 100 — general value for all video cards in Riga.
• 0 100 0 150 0 — value 0 for GPU0, 100 for GPU1, 0 for GPU2, 150 for GPU3 and 0 for GPU4.

Initially, the card was popular among miners, but over time it was supplanted by its main competitor, the GTX 1060. The GTX 970 video adapter showed good results in mining, but over time there was not enough power for cryptocurrency mining.

Comparison of Radeon R9 380 with similar video cards

Testing was carried out on: T-Rex, Manhattan, Cloud Gate Factor, Sky Diver Factor, Fire Strike Factor. Performance per 1 W

Computing power

why do we need a farm... we don’t need a farm, we take the thermaltake core v21 case and build a mini-farm there. And comrade Vyacheslav Admin, what motherboards would you recommend in the microATX form factor? To prevent the 390 from overheating, I recommend a minergate hashrate of less than 12.8, but the temperature of one card is 67.

+1 Nikolay 12/27/2017 07:24 Please tell me if mining on the r9 390 x is still relevant, there is an opportunity to buy for 13 tyr, the socket is a freebie.

⇡#Test stand, testing methodology

Energy-saving CPU technologies are disabled in all tests. In the NVIDIA driver settings, the CPU is selected as the processor for PhysX calculations. In the AMD settings, the Tesselation option is moved from the AMD Optimized state to Use application settings.

Results.

Quote 0 10 stZerg 04.
Price-performance ratio
That's it, the 300th generation is not profitable for mining and is outdated. Look towards the RX570 and RX 580 4 or 8 GB. almost everything can be forgotten and up to 30 megahashes on air, read https://ready-for-job.ru/index.php/mining/majning-na-videokartakh/nastrojka-videokart/97-kak-proshit-bios-rx-580 -i-kak-razognat-videokartu-dlya-majninga-ethereum Quote Update list of comments

7). Press Enter, write the following command. “ethminer -G -S coinotron.com:3344 –O”, put a space, then enter in order - your login from the pool, dot, worker name, colon, worker password. Everything is written without spaces. To start mining, click Enter (p. 7).

Pool selection

• AIDA 64 – allows you to monitor the temperature of the GPU, CPU, as well as the north and south bridges. The first month of use is free.
• SpeedFan – shows the temperature of the GPU and CPU (read CPU mining), allows you to adjust the rotation speed of the coolers. The program is free.

Checking the video card temperature

Choosing a video card for mining

You can even mine cryptocurrency on your “native” video card, provided that you have at least 2 GB of free RAM. True, the amount of your earnings will be very small, and the load on the processor will be very noticeable. If we take into account the price-power ratio, then the best video cards for Ethereum mining will be models from the manufacturer Radeon:

1. Coinotron – collaborative mining pool;
2. Coinmine – Dutch pool;
3. ETHpool – the first pool for Ethereum mining;
4. Nanopool is one of the largest pools;
5. DwarfPool – American pool;
6. Mininng Pul Hub is a platform for mining various cryptocurrencies.

⇡#Clock speeds, power consumption, temperature, overclocking

Since the Radeon R9 390X is initially sold as original design partner cards, the “physical” characteristics of the SAPPHIRE Tri-X R9 390X - GPU supply voltage, frequency and temperature conditions - may differ from those of cards from other manufacturers.

However, this is what we got. First of all, the card manages the GPU clock quite aggressively: it constantly stays at the upper limit of 1050 MHz (for tests we shot 5 MHz, which SAPPHIRE added to the reference specification) - at least in Crysis 3.

From tests at standard settings, we also learned that the GPU voltage at maximum frequency is 1.234 V - higher than the 1.11 V typical for the reference version of the Radeon R9 290X.

It is not surprising, after all, that reducing power consumption compared to the Radeon R9 290X is out of the question. All reserves that could be freed up as a result of optimizing GPU production and replacing RAM chips were used to further increase performance. In contrast, the SAPPHIRE card beats the reference Radeon R9 290X by 63 and 24 W in average system power in Crysis 3 and FurMark, respectively.

But operating temperatures with such a powerful cooler are, of course, much better than those of the reference Radeon R9 290X, as are the acoustic qualities of the cooling system.

The overclocking potential of the accelerator is not at all as bad as one might think, knowing that AMD left a small frequency resource for both key components of the device. SAPPHIRE Tri-X R9 390X allows you to push the boundaries within which GPU power supply varies. The maximum we were able to register was 1.328 V. Thanks to this, the graphics processor was able to reach a frequency of 1150 MHz - a hundred megahertz higher than the reference. There was no particular hope for overclocking the memory, and yet the microcircuits successfully worked at an effective frequency of 6800 MHz.

Features of setting up the R9 390/R9 390x for mining

One of the significant disadvantages of the video cards under consideration is their excessive overheating. This especially often manifests itself at the moment when the user wants to receive additional benefits and at the same time sets up the production of several cryptocurrencies. Radeon R9 390 is an excellent solution for Ethereum mining

Radeon R9 390/R9 390x for Zcash mining

If you set the core on the R9 390x card to 1080 mHz, you can achieve 414 H/s. This is the base Zcash mining speed.

In the following sections, we will evaluate the performance of the R9 390x and R9 390 from a cryptocurrency mining perspective.

⇡#Technical characteristics, price

Video cards based on the Hawaii graphics processor - Radeon R9 290 and R9 290X, introduced at the end of 2013, are perhaps one of the most successful products from AMD in the entire history of its graphics division, and before that from ATI. Thanks to them, AMD restored parity with NVIDIA in the upper price segment of discrete video adapters, but the situation changed when NVIDIA replaced the GeForce GTX 780 Ti, which was the flagship accelerator at that time, with the GeForce GTX 980. The latter turned out to be faster than the R9 290X, and at the same time time had significantly lower energy consumption. The only thing that the Radeon R9 290X could compare to its opponent was a more attractive price. AMD's flagship, originally priced at $549, has lost so much value over the course of its existence that the most affordable models are already selling for $319. At the same time, the GeForce GTX 980 only after the appearance of the GTX 980 Ti fell in price to $499, and before that it cost $649.

The positioning of the Radeon R9 390X is more ambitious – $429. The new product falls into the gap between the GeForce GTX 970 ($329) and GTX 980 ($499), which NVIDIA does not cover with anything. The question is what the R9 390X, based on the same Hawaii GPU (although the GPU is technically called Grenada), can offer at the new price.

Grenada/Hawaii is manufactured using a 28 nm process technology and contains 6.2 billion transistors. The Radeon R9 390X is equipped with a fully unlocked version of the chip, including 2816 shader ALUs (stream processors), 174 texture units and 64 ROPs. The GPU is a version of the Graphics Core Next architecture, informally called GCN 1.1. For a refresher on what Hawaii is all about, we recommend reading our long-standing review of the Radeon R9 290X.

The GPUs that go on sale as part of the Radeon R9 390X differ from the Hawaii chips of the previous wave in that the mature technical process has made it possible to raise clock frequencies without going beyond the TDP limits that were previously set (the typical power consumption of the R9 390X is estimated at 275 W, although AMD is sure embellished the picture). The GPU frequency limit has been increased from 1000 to 1050 MHz - thus, AMD included in the official specifications factory overclocking, characteristic of versions of the Radeon R9 290X of the original design, which have appeared since the official premiere of the latter.

What’s more interesting is that the RAM, which in the R9 390X clocks at 1500 (6000) MHz, has also been overclocked. As a result, the R9 390X achieves the highest memory bus bandwidth among video cards equipped with GDDR5 chips – 384 Gbps. Only the R9 Fury X with HBM memory (512 Gbit/s) has more. For the GeForce GTX 980 Ti, this parameter is 336 Gbps.

Such a load was not initially intended for Grenada/Hawaii memory controllers. After all, AMD at one time opted for a wide 512-bit bus precisely so that it could reduce its clock frequency to 5 GHz, and therefore make the RAM controllers smaller. In fact, this part of the ASIC in Grenada/Hawaii occupies less area than in the Tahiti chip (Radeon HD 7970, Radeon R9 280X). But the “effective frequency” of 6 GHz is already close to the limit that the Radeon R9 290X samples that passed through our hands reached when overclocked.

In addition, the Radeon R9 390X is supposed to have 8 GB of RAM as standard - twice as much as the R9 290X, GeForce GTX 980, and even AMD's current flagship, the Radeon R9 Fury X. It's hard to say how soon such a volume will actually be needed in games and will not be a problem Whether the performance of the Radeon R9 390X is faster in the computing resources of the GPU itself, but, as the GTA V precedent has shown, 4 GB no longer gives much confidence in the future.

Doubling the RAM volume also partly contributed to the increase in memory bus frequency, since the 4 Gbit GDDR5 chips that AMD replaced the 2 Gbit chips purchased for the Radeon R9 290X are characterized by a more favorable ratio of frequencies and timings.

Thanks to these changes, the Radeon R9 390X is obliged to give a worthy rebuff to the GeForce GTX 980 in benchmarks. The only thing that confuses us is the obviously higher power consumption of the card, which is unlikely to improve compared to the Radeon R9 290X, as well as the situation with support for rendering functions in DirectX 12. The GCN 1.1 architecture belongs to feature level 12_0 - the lowest of the two levels presented with new API. At the same time, competing solutions based on the Maxwell architecture, including the GeForce GTX 980, are at feature level 12_1.