Why is my 290x throttling when the temp is low?

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mikelz85

[H]ard|Gawd
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So I recently picked up a 290 unlocked to 290x from another forum member, and I've been having throttling issues, even when the temp is quite low.

In doing some testing, I've noticed that with WoW open, the core speed throttles alot. With the graphics turned down, the core went as low as 600mhz. After turning up the graphics and going to a more demanding zone, the core went up to 800, but still fluctuates down as low as 600. I've tried setting the 50% power setting in both CCC and AB. The clock speeds appear the same in CCC AB and GPU-Z.

The core temperature is very low (60C), and not approaching anywhere near the cap of 95C. The fan speed is set to 70%, but again, the fan isn't kicking in because the temp. is quite low.

I've noticed that in GPU-Z, there's a "render test". This 3d image causes the card to max the clock out at 1000mhz, even if wow is also open.

I've tried raising the maximum power limit, but this doesn't seem to have any influence over the throttling.

Does anyone have any idea what could be causing this?

I've done a bit of reading, and I can't find anything that would force a constant clock speed in 3d. In my EVGA overclocking tool there was something called "K-Boost" which would force maximum clocks 100% of the time.

Surely there is some way to make sure this card runs at 100% clock speed...

BTW I'm using 14.4 CCC
 
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Xinmosni said:
Uhhh, I don't play WoW, but it's pretty common knowledge that the game is more CPU-intensive than GPU after a certain point (like playing any older game, unless downsampling)

See

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/10587208878

(and for downsampling, see http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=509076, though I don't know how nice current AMD drivers play with the method since I've been doing Eyefinity for a while and can't really downsample at those resolutions)
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How would that have anything to do with the card throttling down, or not being able to manually set a constant max clock speed?
 
It has to do with you thinking that it's throttling when in fact it's not even utilizing its max power to run the game. When you play Minesweeper or Solitaire do you also expect clock speeds to remain constant? You should be glad the card is smart enough not to run at max always, because it DOESN'T NEED TO.

Just because I have x amount of games open and my 290X isn't running 100% doesn't mean it's throttling, similar to how just because your CPU isn't running at 100% doesn't mean it's throttling back below its potential. If you seriously expect higher clock speeds to help anything in such an undemanding game that doesn't even utilize 100% of the card's potential, then that's a logic flaw and beyond the help of any forum.

You might as well have set up Tri-SLI Titan-Zs and complained your FPS are still the same in WoW, or that things are being "throttled". The card is straight up overkill for the game. Do I need to draw a picture or something?
 
Xinmosni said:
It has to do with you thinking that it's throttling when in fact it's not even utilizing its max power to run the game.

Just because I have x amount of games open and my 290X isn't running 100% doesn't mean it's throttling, similar to how just because your CPU isn't running at 100% doesn't mean it's throttling back below its potential. If you seriously expect higher clock speeds to help anything in such an undemanding game that doesn't even utilize 100% of the card's potential, then that's a logic flaw and beyond the help of any forum.
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I'm quite confused. Perhaps I am wrong in thinking that if I have WoW open, and the core is running at 600mhz, that I will see improved frame rates when the core is running at 1000mhz? The idea that there is no performance difference between the two is absurd.

Also this statement "Just because I have x amount of games open and my 290X isn't running 100% doesn't mean it's throttling, similar to how just because your CPU isn't running at 100% doesn't mean it's throttling back below its potential".

If my CPU isn't running at 100%, and it's throttling, then it would be throttling. If the GPU is throttling, then it's throttling.

Like is this just WoW hate or something?

You've absolutely done nothing to indicate why throttling might be occurring, or helping me to understand the mechanics of how throttling works on these cards. In addition, you're extremely rude about it. By your logic, everyone should be happy if their CPU sits at 1ghz with a browser window open. There are those that prefer to disable throttling entirely. The notion that there is no performance difference between a throttled core, and a non throttled, seems flawed.
 
Uh no, if your CPU or GPU aren't running at 100%, they can't be throttling, because they haven't even reached the threshold at which they would throttle down clock speeds for temperature purposes. This is what I meant by logic flaw: you're insistent on things running at 100% when they don't even have to, and when they're not even being called upon to do so by the software they're running.
 
It's probably just down clocking because it's not being a 100% used. Mine do this a lot in games like Diablo 3. I'll see them drop down to 600 from 950 all the time . Since I run vsync. If you trun off vsync it should run at max speed and not clock down to save power. But it's going to get loud and hot.
 
Well, to be clear, WoW still hits 100% GPU load on GPU-Z. I also notice that it drops to 0% at times, fluctuating, even when the amount of content to render is relatively constant. I'm not sure why the GPU load would be dropping to 0% and then spiking up to 100%.

I've noticed that the frame rates are generally not as high as I saw with my 580. Turning settings down like AA, result in an even lower clockspeed, likely due to a lessened GPU load.

I've tried turning off V-sync, but this didn't make a difference at all, other than introducing tearing.
 
Wow will most likely not max out your GPU. I have wow installed also and my 2700k is at 4600mhz, but my vid card never hits more than 50% or so usage. Your card isn't throttling, its that you are CPU bottlenecked. Wow uses about 1.5 threads CPU wise and it could probably scale to 20ghz. Your video card is waiting for your CPU in wow, hence down clocking to save power as it was designed to do. Try a game like metro last light or bf4. You will notice your card temps will be 20+ degrees hotter and running the highest clocks you have it set to.

Hopefully this helps clear it up a bit for you.
 
I''m guessing that people are hostile towards this thread because it's about WoW?

Doesn't matter what game it is, if the 290x is performing worse than a 580 there's a problem.

I have a ton of issues with the 290 series and the buggy power saving function is just one.

Are you running WoW in Directx10/11 mode?

Try MSI Afterburner and the "Force constant voltage" option.

Might need to contact your GPU's manufacturer and inquire about a BIOS

It's also possible that the 290 series just doesn't work well with WoW, since it is an older game and AMD seems openly hostile towards coding for older games.
 
geforce man said:
Wow will most likely not max out your GPU. I have wow installed also and my 2700k is at 4600mhz, but my vid card never hits more than 50% or so usage. Your card isn't throttling, its that you are CPU bottlenecked. Wow uses about 1.5 threads CPU wise and it could probably scale to 20ghz. Your video card is waiting for your CPU in wow, hence down clocking to save power as it was designed to do. Try a game like metro last light or bf4. You will notice your card temps will be 20+ degrees hotter and running the highest clocks you have it set to.

Hopefully this helps clear it up a bit for you.
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I'm confused though, if it's dropping the core clock speed, isn't that throttling?

Maintaining a constant clock speed is important in a raid setting where things can rapidly become more graphics intensive, and a hiccup from throttling can be costly. I play other games, but WoW is my bread and butter, it's an old engine, with alot of issues, but having the best performance I can afford in a raid is important. I raid competitively, and the performance hiccups when throttling happens can easily cause a wipe. Often times we intentionally turn graphics settings down in raid, just to make that 1% of the time when the game is rendering way too much, smoother.

I understand that the game is incredibly CPU bound, and have done my best to ensure that this doesn't happen.

I'd much rather be able to set the card to run at a constant clock speed, than dealing with it constantly throttling all over the place, causing frame rate issues.

With previous card, I was able to force it to maintain a constant clock speed. While this was probably 'wasteful', it was preferable to throttling. I'm more curious if this simply isn't possibly to do on newer AMD cards?
 
Bluesun311 said:
I''m guessing that people are hostile towards this thread because it's about WoW?

Doesn't matter what game it is, if the 290x is performing worse than a 580 there's a problem.

I have a ton of issues with the 290 series and the buggy power saving function is just one.

Are you running WoW in Directx10/11 mode?

Try MSI Afterburner and the "Force constant voltage" option.

Might need to contact your GPU's manufacturer and inquire about a BIOS

It's also possible that the 290 series just doesn't work well with WoW, since it is an older game and AMD seems openly hostile towards coding for older games.
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One more suggestion: In MSI AFterburner check the box for Disable ULPS and then check Unofficial overclocking mode WITHOUT powerPlay support.
 
I went ahead and disabled ULPS support via the registry setting. I don't think this changed anything.

However I finally stumbled upon a thread that mentioned this issue, and referred to radeonpro, which can manually set a constant clockspeed via a profile. This let me set the clockspeed manually, and effectively disable the throttling problem. Framerates seem better, and the stuttering issues I was seeing have gone away.

Thanks for the help troubleshooting this problem.
 
I'm glad you got what you are looking for, but no what you described is not throttling. Throttling is when temperature / power limits are reached and the card slows itself down. You aren't hitting the thermal limits so its not throttling as intended. The card is giving more information to the CPU than it can handle so it is dropping to a different idle state.
 
it all makes sense to me...if the card can do the work at a low power, like playing a movie, it will use lower clocks to save power....if it bugs you that much then yea just disable the power saving....does seem odd that would impact performance but i don't have that game either...seems like i have heard that game loves very powerful cpus
 
primetime said:
it all makes sense to me...if the card can do the work at a low power, like playing a movie, it will use lower clocks to save power....if it bugs you that much then yea just disable the power saving....does seem odd that would impact performance but i don't have that game either...seems like i have heard that game loves very powerful cpus
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It does impact performance at times when it clocks down and doesn't clock back up in time when the added performance is needed. Which can be very annoying at times.
 
Makeroflostsouls said:
It does impact performance at times when it clocks down and doesn't clock back up in time when the added performance is needed. Which can be very annoying at times.
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+1 my 7950 did that (part of the reason I sold it). I tried registry tweaks, bios hacks, but nothing could get rid of the power savings crap.
 
I have this problem with browsing at 120Hz using a 290x. Get really nice smooth scrolling in Internet Explorer or Chrome when it's not trying to run at low voltage. RadeonPro helps a ton, but some apps like Flash and Java still seem to cause problems.
 
david_ said:
+1 my 7950 did that (part of the reason I sold it). I tried registry tweaks, bios hacks, but nothing could get rid of the power savings crap.
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i guess it all comes down to what games your playing....since i have never encountered it...if anything my gpu is always at 99% usage in games and at full clocks...must just be certain games i guess
 
OP--don't have time to retread thread but I'm wondering if our problems are related. Do you have Google chrome installed? I recently discovered my card was "throttling" my frame rate in normal non intensive apps like internet explorer and Firefox. The cause turned out to be a plugin I was auto installing with chrome called "chromium wheel browser"

Wow is a dx9 32bit game that is being emulated with windows on windows just like ffxiv. That game has been refusing to play in crossfire for me, and so have Unigine dx9 benches.
 
if you are watching the graphs while WOW is minimized then you are doing it wrong.

Play in full screen mode for a while and have the perf logged for later viewing.

games always throttle down if minimized, windowed, etc.
 
Bluesun311 said:
I have this problem with browsing at 120Hz using a 290x. Get really nice smooth scrolling in Internet Explorer or Chrome when it's not trying to run at low voltage. RadeonPro helps a ton, but some apps like Flash and Java still seem to cause problems.
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Did you disable hardware acceleration in Chrome?
 
Kwisatz Haderach said:
Did you disable hardware acceleration in Chrome?
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I've tried that doesn't help and actually causes more problems.

However, I solved the problem. Had an addon for chrome that was being auto installed when I signed in. Addon is "chromium wheel smooth scrolling". It was causing all tees problems system wide. Uninstalled it, made Firefox my default browser instead, and the wheel scrolling smoother addon for Firefox works fine. Been trying to figure that out for 2 months... :)
 
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