AMD Radeon R9 M295X Core Clock Throttling, Heat, and Performance

[Grizzly Kid]

Long time lurker, first time poster.

This is all just for games under windows right? Should a non gamer be worried?

I plumped for the M295X because I use pro apps. Anyone tested GPU heat/performance in that arena? The Barefeat numbers look decent to my less than expert eyes.

 

[steve62388]

Period.

Ugh.

 

[yugiyogi]

If it's throttling at 105 on Windows, has anyone tested temps under OS X?

mine go to max 105 degrees when playing diablo 3 on OSX. but they go down REAL quick when i quit the game.

No significant drops in FrameRate noticed.
I play at 1440p @ max(everything High, including shadows, with AA on, 70 FPS foreground, 8FPS background.)

It usually hit between 58-70 FPS, dependent on the region / crowded...
nothing lower then 50...

I don't seem to have the issue you guys are mentioning, maybe it's a windows thing only... Is there any program to monitor Clock speeds in OSX? i'll try that if you want.

 

[Frozone9]

Like i said under OSX i get max of 75Celsius..with games like Diablo 3 or League of Legends

I played CIV 5 in OSX yesterday and temps go over 100° really fast.

 

[Charlemagne]

Can anybody confirm this only happens during games? What about watching 4K video or Photoshop / Lightroom or something like Logic?

 

[leenak]

NO! The M295X is an inferior card at 1440p than the GTX 680MX was at 1440p.

Anyone reading this: The M295X is just not good enough. If I hadn't already sold my 2012 iMac with GTX 680MX, I'd probably return this system. Yes, the Retina display is amazing, but next year will probably be a 980M or newer variant, and I'll just sell this iMac.

Apple screwed this one up. I had a feeling they had all along.. *sigh*

If you think Apple is going to switch back to Nvidia, you are dreaming. I'm guessing they will stick with AMD for a few years and then maybe look at Nvidia.

I've been enjoying my RiMac quite a bit and haven't had a problem with the various games I play. This thread is interesting though and I understand the concerns.

 

[FredT2]

Can anybody confirm this only happens during games? What about watching 4K video or Photoshop / Lightroom or something like Logic?

No for 4K video, Photoshop, and Lightroom. This is all too silly to believe.

 

[habeebhashim]

Can anybody confirm this only happens during games? What about watching 4K video or Photoshop / Lightroom or something like Logic?

We had this conversation in another thread... posting here for your benefit...

That was a true torture *** test....

for me! God... I wouldn't have been surprised if the iMac had become sentient and slapped me silly for playing that atrocity two times in a row.

Anyway... my earlier 4K test of a nature video was under Chrome running Win 7. Max temp reported by GPU-Z was 72c

Now tried your 4K link using Safari under OS X and max temp reported by iStat was 71c. Played it two times in a row.

And OMG! I had to go over and above the call of duty....

Looped it two more times running Chrome under OS X... and GPU temp was at 94c

----------

I found the new Safari build to be faster and more power efficient than Chrome. And the fact that it plays so much better with my iPhone makes it a no-brainer for me. But Chrome is the go-to browser under Win 7 for me.

Will have to revisit this argument once the 64-bit Canary builds of Chrome goes mainstream.

*** it was a torture as the poster had linked the trailer to that atrocious Transformers movie... and I watched that silly thing 4 times

 

[xgman]

For the life of me, I can't understand why any serious gamer would even consider buying an imac over pc for serious gaming.. Anyone who even contemplates frame-rates should be using a high end pc. Face it, imac is maybe only for a very casual gamer and that is even a stretch....

 

[iczster]

It's hard to determine if this is an issue or not. There are so many conflicting opinions, even on this forum alone.

 

[leenak]

For the life of me, I can't understand why any serious gamer would even consider buying an imac over pc for serious gaming.. Anyone who even contemplates frame-rates should be using a high end pc. Face it, imac is maybe only for a very casual gamer and that is even a stretch....

That is an exaggeration. There are many people who like to play games who also enjoy OSX. If you are going for max performance, then yes you need to build your own gaming rig or buy one from specialty companies. If you want to play games, the RiMac dos that fine.

And this is a review specifically focus on gaming
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2014/10/the-retina-imac-and-its-5k-display-as-a-gaming-machine/

 

[Mac32]

I always overclock my Nvidia 680MX at +250/+375, and temps over 85C are very rare - no throttling. I think I'll wait for the next riMac model with Nvidia graphics.

 

[habeebhashim]

For the life of me, I can't understand why any serious gamer would even consider buying an imac over pc for serious gaming.. Anyone who even contemplates frame-rates should be using a high end pc. Face it, imac is maybe only for a very casual gamer and that is even a stretch....

I agree about this being more suitable for casual gamers. Personally, I play Shadows of Mordor, Tomb Raider, Dota2 and CS:GO on this 5K iMac

I "tried" Crysis 3 just now as I felt that maybe I needed to throw a more demanding title. Played for about 30 mins now... avg 23 frames but settings on very high. Room ambient temp at 23c

According to MSI Afterburner;
GPU temp at this time was 105c and GPU usage at 100%. Fan speed at 100% CPU temp was avg 84c.

According to Fraps, avf fps was 23... min 18, max 27.

Crysis I believe is a demanding game from 2013 even for desktop cards. So its laudable that the i7/295X iMac is able to handle it at very high. I'm sure it'll be playable at high settings

 

[rainydays]

imac is maybe only for a very casual gamer and that is even a stretch....

Nah, I don't think that's a stretch. But even the 290x seems to be good enough for casual gaming.
If I was looking for a gaming machine first hand, I sure wouldn't be looking at the iMac though. But some people are looking towards the iMac for other reasons but would like to have as good of a gaming experience as possible.

I think that if the 295x had some adequate cooling it would be quite a performer. Does not seem to be the case in the iMac however.

 

[WilliamG]

I agree about this being more suitable for casual gamers. Personally, I play Shadows of Mordor, Tomb Raider, Dota2 and CS:GO on this 5K iMac

I "tried" Crysis 3 just now as I felt that maybe I needed to throw a more demanding title. Played for about 30 mins now... avg 23 frames but settings on very high. Room ambient temp at 23c

According to MSI Afterburner;
GPU temp at this time was 105c and GPU usage at 100%. Fan speed at 100% CPU temp was avg 84c.

According to Fraps, avf fps was 23... min 18, max 27.

Crysis I believe is a demanding game from 2013 even for desktop cards. So its laudable that the i7/295X iMac is able to handle it at very high. I'm sure it'll be playable at high settings

Thanks for the results. More confirmation of throttling as we can see from your GPU core clock.

 

[Fenn]

295x has no drivers for WINDOWS !
every game under OSX is better or the same as 780M

295X under OSX i never had more than 75 celsius on GPU

Actually the 295x downloadable Bootcamp installs the latest beta of the full suite of Ati Catalyst. There are fully working drivers for windows. Remember, even though the Tonga core is new, the 290 has existed for a while now.

 

[spyguy10709]

NO! The M295X is an inferior card at 1440p than the GTX 680MX was at 1440p.

Anyone reading this: The M295X is just not good enough. If I hadn't already sold my 2012 iMac with GTX 680MX, I'd probably return this system. Yes, the Retina display is amazing, but next year will probably be a 980M or newer variant, and I'll just sell this iMac.

Apple screwed this one up. I had a feeling they had all along.. *sigh*

That's false, in every way shape and form. You have to realize, that even at 1440p it has to do scaling to fit the 5K monitor. Look up the benchmarks... the m295X is literally a desktop r9 285 - which is in every way shape and form faster than a mobile 680MX - which was a underclocked desktop 670.

 

[habeebhashim]

Thanks for the results. More confirmation of throttling as we can see from your GPU core clock.

A couple of caveats;

1) this is an iMac not a gaming rig

2) this is Crysis 3 and has pretty high spec requirements

3) played again with all settings on High and with 4xSSA instead of the previous Very High and FSAA
a) looks gorgeous - sorry... thought I took screenshots... guess I didn't
b) no lag at all....
c) Fraps reports avg fps at 39...

4) whats the delta of the freq throttling? I estimate between 100-150 Hz max?

so here's what I'm thinking...

I am more interested in how well a demanding game actually plays rather than how much it is throttling on tests. Now if the game was skipping, I'd be disappointed as well. But that isn't the case with Crysis or with all the other games I've tried.

 

[WilliamG]

That's false, in every way shape and form. You have to realize, that even at 1440p it has to do scaling to fit the 5K monitor. Look up the benchmarks... the m295X is literally a desktop r9 285 - which is in every way shape and form faster than a mobile 680MX - which was a underclocked desktop 670.

If a game is running better on a 2GB 680MX with a 3.4Ghz i7 than it is on a 2-years newer 4GB M295X with a 4Ghz i7 at the SAME resolutions due to outrageous temperatures and instantaneous GPU throttling, I fail to see your logic. I don't really care about 3D Mark. I care about actual in-game performance. You could put SLI 980GTX in an iMac, but if it throttles the whole time what's the point?

----------

A couple of caveats;

1) this is an iMac not a gaming rig

2) this is Crysis 3 and has pretty high spec requirements

3) played again with all settings on High and with 4xSSA instead of the previous Very High and FSAA
a) looks gorgeous - sorry... thought I took screenshots... guess I didn't
b) no lag at all....
c) Fraps reports avg fps at 39...

4) whats the delta of the freq throttling? I estimate between 100-150 Hz max?

so here's what I'm thinking...

I am more interested in how well a demanding game actually plays rather than how much it is throttling on tests. Now if the game was skipping, I'd be disappointed as well. But that isn't the case with Crysis or with all the other games I've tried.

I haven't played a ton of games, but the throttling was immediately obvious in Diablo 3. Obviously there's more testing to do, but right now I'm disappointed beyond anything.

 

[Fenn]

I "tried" Crysis 3 just now...

According to MSI Afterburner;
GPU temp at this time was 105c and GPU usage at 100%. Fan speed at 100% CPU temp was avg 84c.

Yup, crisis 3 doesn't play that badly, but if you look under those graphs from MSI, you can see the core clock is throttling pretty heavily. I've never seen a core do that before. It's almost always completely the same MHz speed all across, just like the memory clock is.


Right now, the most important thing is trying to find someway to measure core clock fluctuations in OS X. For the life of me, I can't seem to find any piece of software that will allow us to measure even in a log file Temperature, GPU Usage, and Core Clock over time.

If the core is throttling itself in OS X, just like in windows, the issue is not so much that this is ruining gameplay or interrupting it to a point where things are unplayable, performances is just nowhere near what it should be because heat appears to be a huge issue in this form factor. There is no question that on paper the 295X is an amazing card, but it should be blowing the 680 MX out of the water in every test and it is not. Over time, as various issues contribute to reduced cooling efficiency, if this means that the GPU throttles itself even more, even faster, just to stay cool than this is bad news for me.

Theoretically any pro app as well that taps out the GPU at a maximum temperature is going to automatically throttle itself 50-100 MHz lower too, which means the performance that you're getting out of the GPU is not what it should be if your workflow is GPU limited. It won't interrupt the process or give an error, all it's going to do is just take longer. Like I said, the most important thing now is seeing if this throttling behavior is in OS X as well.

Trust me, I have been praying like you wouldn't believe that this may be a bug on the window side. You do not know how much I want this card to be good!!! So no one cancel your orders just yet, we will get to the bottom of this.

 

[Col Vandal]

So we don't know if it's throttling under OSX? But it appears to be under Windows?

If it is throttling under both and is affecting performance, isn't this now a false-advertising claim waiting to happen? I mean, why would I pay extra for the high-end card when it's not even really a better card performance wise than the base model?

 

[rainydays]

If the core is throttling itself in OS X, just like in windows, the issue is not so much that this is ruining gameplay or interrupting it to a point where things are unplayable, performances is just nowhere near what it should be because heat appears to be a huge issue in this form factor.

Yep. Apples claims on the performance of this GPU is borderline false advertisement in my opinion.

 

[FredT2]

Yep. Apples claims on the performance of this GPU is borderline false advertisement in my opinion.

Show us where they've done that.

 

[rainydays]

If it is throttling under both and is affecting performance, isn't this now a false-advertising claim waiting to happen? I mean, why would I pay extra for the high-end card when it's not even really a better card performance wise than the base model?

Yes and no. It is better performance wise, just not for an extended period of time, at least not that much better.
For pro apps that doesn't tax it all the time there will likely be a performance boost. Also keep in mind that there's twice the VRAM which can make a difference as well.

But I agree that it does give the false impression. For me personally I feel that there's no need to go for it, especially since it generates so much heat.

 

[Col Vandal]

Show us where they've done that.

Wouldn't just the fact that they are selling a 295 as an upgrade be enough? I mean, they don't mention that it can actually never reach its potential because it gets throttled down because of heat. So in effect, we're not actually getting a 295. We're getting a throttled one, which will impact more than just games.