2 of my 290's are 290X's?

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Wildace

Supreme [H]ardness
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Jun 16, 2004
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Ok so a while ago i bought 3 290's but i was using them for litecoin mining so i never really bothered to look at them in GPU-Z

1 is an XFX (still has reference cooler), 1 is a Power Color (after market AIO water cooler), 1 is a Sapphire (after market AIO water cooler)

I recently bought a 4790K and dropped that in my Asrock Z87 Extreme4 MB i had in my mining rig and moved over my 16GB of DDR3 to the system and now this is my primary system which replaced my 8120/990FX system.

any ways today i decided to check GPU-Z and the XFX and Sapphire is showing up as a 290X with 2816 Shader and 176 TMU's

while the Powercolor one in my primary slot is actually reading as a 290 with 160 TMU's and 2560 shaders.

this does not seem normal to me as you would think they should all show up as 290's with the limited shaders until a bios flash to actually unlock them.

Edit, also i believe all 3 have the bios switch pushed to the left (away from the power connectors and tword the video output) which i believe is the locked setting so you cant screw up the bios with a flash in that setting.

3gpu.jpg
 
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they were all purchased new. from new egg.

the Hawaii Info v1.2 data

Compatible adapters detected: 3
Adapter #1 PCI ID: 1002:67B1 - 1002:0B00
Memory config: 0x5A0013A9 Elpida
RA1: F8000005 RA2: F8010000
RB1: F8000005 RB2: F8010000
RC1: F8000005 RC2: F8010000
RD1: F8000005 RD2: F8010000
Adapter #2 PCI ID: 1002:67B1 - 1682:9295
Memory config: 0x00000000
RA1: 00000000 RA2: 00000000
RB1: 00000000 RB2: 00000000
RC1: 00000000 RC2: 00000000
RD1: 00000000 RD2: 00000000
Adapter #3 PCI ID: 1002:67B1 - 1002:0B00
Memory config: 0x00000000
RA1: 00000000 RA2: 00000000
RB1: 00000000 RB2: 00000000
RC1: 00000000 RC2: 00000000
RD1: 00000000 RD2: 00000000
 
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Did they look brand spanking new?
Wrappers, boxes, seals...
 
Newegg has a habit of occasionally selling used/returned items as new. It's possible someone flashed their r9 290 to an x, and returned it in the end.
 
tonyftw said:
Newegg has a habit of occasionally selling used/returned items as new. It's possible someone flashed their r9 290 to an x, and returned it in the end.
Click to expand...

Yup. If newegg thinks it looks new or unused the just re package it.
 
youre not reading memory info on the other two due to ULPS being enabled most likely.
 
They are new cards, they were all bought as soon as they went up for sale likely no time for them to get purchased and returned and repurchased by me again.

Pitbull said:
youre not reading memory info on the other two due to ULPS being enabled most likely.
Click to expand...

Compatible adapters detected: 3
Adapter #1 PCI ID: 1002:67B1 - 1002:0B00
Memory config: 0x5A0013A9 Elpida
RA1: F8000005 RA2: F8010000
RB1: F8000005 RB2: F8010000
RC1: F8000005 RC2: F8010000
RD1: F8000005 RD2: F8010000
Adapter #2 PCI ID: 1002:67B1 - 1682:9295
Memory config: 0x5A0013A9 Elpida
RA1: F8000005 RA2: F8010000
RB1: F8000005 RB2: F8010000
RC1: F8000005 RC2: F8010000
RD1: F8000005 RD2: F8010000
Adapter #3 PCI ID: 1002:67B1 - 1002:0B00
Memory config: 0x5A0013A9 Elpida
RA1: F8010005 RA2: 00000000
RB1: F8010005 RB2: 00000000
RC1: F8010005 RC2: 00000000
RD1: F8010005 RD2: 00000000
 
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The top 2 should be moddable to 290x or have been done already :) Great luck, both of mine arent.
 
well the top card is the only one not reading as a 290x so maybe if i get around to it ill flip the bios switch and try to flash it.
 
You can flash either BIOS so beware of that.
Initially, one BIOS is for lower noise, the other is for faster performance.
I advise making a backup of the BIOS before flashing and be very sure which one you are flashing if you encounter a problem, you dont want to end up with both BIOS making the card unusable.

If you find that one BIOS is a 290 and the other is a 290x, these have surely been in the hands of someone else that has performed the 290x flash.
Mine is the same but because I did it.
Keep the 290 BIOS if possible and flash the other if you want to play around, in case there is a reason it was binned to be a 290 that rears its ugly head.
 
It's a gpu-z bug. Disable ulps, reboot and rerun gpuz. It always shows the wrong shader count on any card besides the primary. I have the same issue.

Still looks like the top two *can* be unlocked, but considering the purchase date and single ownership, it's almost certainly the bug.
 
Sheppard said:
take out the locked card, its dragging the other two down.
Click to expand...

Not so sure.
AMD can run different cards (from the same series) at different speeds in crossfire and distribute the workload sensibly.
It will be a drag if the game doesnt handle 3 cards well compared with 2, but not because of the cards capabilities.
 
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