msi 280x thermal throttling in crossfire

kully1972

New member
Noticed playing Battlefield 4 that my FPS would drop from 60-70 to barely 40 and after some investigating the msi 280x gaming edition was dropping core clock speed to idle- 300-500 MHZ owing to high temp, 90 celcius but well within design parameters!

There are no bios fixes for the UEFI bios and after many hours of googling found a solution and thought I`d share the fix on this forum and how I`ll be honest, having long been a NVIDIA user I`m probably going back to them.

It transpired that I had to create a profile in CCC and edit the core clock and memory minimum setting ( idle clock) to the maximum clock. I also had to change the voltage range setting in the profile from 0850 to 1200 to 1000-1180 (1v to 1.18v) as the default max 1.2v was producing temps of over 103 degrees celcius and causing a shut-down

My problem is fixed but its really a work around and the other 280x , an XFX black edition runs happily at 1.275v.

All I can say having been a NVIDIA stalwart right up until my 580s gave up the ghost for 4k gaming I shall be returning to NVIDIA on my next upgrade.

I find this unacceptable from msi and TBH the drivers and crossfire support is generally much worse than NVIDIA. e.g. to date no FC4 crossfire profile.

Can`t wait for my next graphics card upgrade!
 
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The MSI card throttled because you needed to set a custom fan profile for it.
Battlefield4 doesn't have a crossfire profile for DX11. AMD stopped updating that and kept updating the mantle one
 
Yes i`ve set a custom profile on afterburner which cured the shut down. Nevertheless what a pain. Also the msi card has a fixed voltage, again leaving a lot to be desired.
 
Can you take a photo dude? If they are right next to each other its normal - if there is plenty of air for them to breathe then there might be something wrong.
 
Can you take a photo dude? If they are right next to each other its normal - if there is plenty of air for them to breathe then there might be something wrong.

one of my friends got the 290x Gaming edition for his Bitfenix Prodigy M. The card was hitting 95C almost instantly and he thought it was bad airflow he put it in hit full tower with adequate cooling and the same result happened. Turns out that MSI hadn't change the reference fan profile that AMD has made. Finetuning the fan profile on MSI afterburner made the card sitting happily at around 76C
 
one of my friends got the 290x Gaming edition for his Bitfenix Prodigy M. The card was hitting 95C almost instantly and he thought it was bad airflow he put it in hit full tower with adequate cooling and the same result happened. Turns out that MSI hadn't change the reference fan profile that AMD has made. Finetuning the fan profile on MSI afterburner made the card sitting happily at around 76C

These are 280X though, so the fan profile thing wouldn't be an issue. TBH it sounds like something is wrong as the 280X isn't the hottest running card out there.
 
These are 280X though, so the fan profile thing wouldn't be an issue. TBH it sounds like something is wrong as the 280X isn't the hottest running card out there.

I'm mentioning it because AMD had the same type of cooler down to the R9 270. The cards didn't get sold retail with that cooler though the same way the 290 and 290x do.
 
I`ve got adequate space between the two cards ( a good inch) . I remember running two 580s ( triple slot matrix editions) with no space inbetween them and they never throttled!
Bad bios I`d say!
Anyway I vow never to buy another AMD card again, true they`re better value for money but they come with a headache!
 
I`ve got adequate space between the two cards ( a good inch) . I remember running two 580s ( triple slot matrix editions) with no space inbetween them and they never throttled!
Bad bios I`d say!
Anyway I vow never to buy another AMD card again, true they`re better value for money but they come with a headache!

No not really. It all comes down to the specific card and drivers. Nvidia drivers aren't perfect either. Just because you had one bad experience doesn't mean you should never try it again. That just hurts competition, doesn't help.
 
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