Well it seems like you've found the problem, hot VRM's! And it looks like your custom fan profile has worked wonders.
geekl33tgamer wrote:Does the benchmark score fall where is expected for this system now (Straight from the XML)?
I've ran Valley on my single R9 290 (non-x) to give you a rough idea of what one card does but I think you're right about where you should be now.
Unigine Valley Benchmark 1.0
FPS: 61.4
Score: 2568
Min FPS: 30.7
Max FPS: 116.5
System
Platform: Windows 8.1
CPU model: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4770K CPU @ 3.50GHz (3499MHz) x4 (4100MHz actual)
GPU model: AMD Radeon R9 200 Series 14.100.0.0 (4095MB) x1
Settings
Render: Direct3D11
Mode: 1920x1080 8xAA fullscreen
Preset: Extreme HD
Here's what MSI Afterburner was set to. (I copied your settings as best I could.)
This guy on Youtube has two 290X's in Crossfire and gets about the same score as you do.
Valley Benchmark R9-290x CrossfireI think you might find it interesting tinkering with the Powertune setting. You can take some of the load off of the VRM's pretty easily by lowering the power limit and even under volting a little. I've also found that there's not much of a performance boost overclocking the cards memory probably because it already has a crazy amount of bandwidth so there's a few more watt's saved putting that back to default.
Here's an example of what I mean.
Unigine Valley Benchmark 1.0
FPS: 60.8
Score: 2543
Min FPS: 31.9
Max FPS: 114.6
As you can see there's not much difference between the scores.
Anyway have a play around and see what you think. As an experiment maybe try setting the power limit to -20%.