R260/270/280/290/290x Review thread

[skipsneeky2]

I am impressed by this card,good job Amd but wow at those reference cooler numbers for noise and heat.Been there and done that before with a 7970 reference and regret it enough to get rid of it.:awe:

Waiting for Mantle to see how it fares in BF4 before making a move upgrade wise ,maybe the 780ti will have something to show by then @$550-$600 or the 780 will drop below $550 as it should have to about now or maybe the 290x will have some bad ass after market cards that clock so damn high it will man handle anything nvidia has with locked down voltage control.

Love nvidia and their cards but personally i am annoyed with how my 770 overclocks,measly 61+ core offset and its stable and oh temperatures are great but anything higher and the sorry for a excuse 12+mv max increase allowed with its 106 tdp makes this thing fall on its face so i wish nvidia could give us back our balls with more voltage so we could clock a bit higher for christ sake.:awe:

 

[bunnyfubbles]

So health damage = total brain death to you.

I see no reason to speak with you further.

Logic escapes you.

and yet he agrees with you about the card...

 

[tential]

Really, its like AMD wants to fail and there's some guy in charge deliberately sabotaging their attempts at making a good product.

Awesome performance, awesome pricing.. some moron forgot about a proper cooling solution. This isn't a dirt cheap card, adding an extra $10 on parts to have a better cooler = win.

Or maybe they dont care and AIBs cards are the ones moving in volume anyway.. which could it be??

That's what I'm thinking. Lets be real. We want aftermarket cooling not a reference board.

 

[FalconHorse]

So . . . did anyone see what the 290X can do once you give it some liquid nitrogen? :biggrin:

http://hwbot.org/submission/2441980_smoke_3dmark11___performance_4x_radeon_r9_290x_41531_marks

Russia is beating the US!

So health damage = total brain death to you.

I see no reason to speak with you further.

Logic escapes you.

This seems to be an odd worry. Noise is annoying, but this is not a 'dangerous' level of noise.
http://www.noisehelp.com/noise-dose.html

 

[AtenRa]

I will bet $549 for the R9 290X at release.

Nice card, but they will hold the Gold only for a month.
Next month NV will release GTX780 Ti at $649, i bet it will be faster than TITAN.

R9 290 at $449 will be the real kicker, almost %90-95 of 290X performance at $100 less ???

 

[Silverforce11]

If you actually want the cards to not be stuck at 727 mhz you're gonna have to crank those fans.

Right here from AT:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7457/the-radeon-r9-290x-review/19

Why must you keep up with the slander, its unbecoming of even the devout NV fan.

Its a prelude to what is going to be a great product from MSI, Gigabyte, Asus, Sapphire, etc. Top dog performance for bargain pricing.

 

[Silverforce11]

Nice card, but they will hold the Gold only for a month.
Next month NV will release GTX780 Ti at $649, i bet it will be faster than TITAN.

R9 290 at $449 will be the real kicker, almost %95 of 290X performance at $100 less ???

All good if it makes NV launch a properly priced product..

And indeed, R290 with custom coolers.. given the history of massive OC on the 2nd tier card.. me want!!

 

[GaiaHunter]

So health damage = total brain death to you.

I see no reason to speak with you further.

Logic escapes you.

That is called a straw man.

You said that 43 to 50 dB caused damage.
It doesn't.

According to the US department of health, lower than 75 dB will not cause damage.

Once your argument was dismantled you said that damage is different from hearing loss.

Damage caused by sound to the ear provoke hearing loss, otherwise it is not damage.

By the way hearing loss is not brain damage.

I'm sure you can post what other types of health problems a R9 290X fan @50 dB can cause.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

What RIDICULE
Seriously, I just don't know what you are referring to.
Seems like the 290X is a decent GPU so long as one gets one with a good non-reference cooler. Of course, look at my avatar, I'm a bit of a nvidiot (don't hate AMD, just prefer NVidia**), so what do I know.



** Though NV did p*ss me off by not offering an optimized (or even any) OpenCL 1.2 solution for Kepler. CUDA has a lot of tools, but it's useless for developing a cross platform compute code base (every platform needs to be tweaked for optimal performance, but at least you have a base you can work from). Hopefully they will get with the program with Maxwell.

Mantle update for BF4 comes out in December. An AMD spokesperson said that the 290x will "ridicule" the Titan once the mantle update hits.

 

[Silverforce11]

Seems like a lot of enthusiasts don't care about the noise/heat.. sold out in one of Australia's largest e-tailer:

http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php...3_1555&zenid=42bf06f2b0a897016a1c0a0a2c807a7b

 

[24601]

Right here from AT:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7457/the-radeon-r9-290x-review/19

Why must you keep up with the slander, its unbecoming of even the devout NV fan.

Its a prelude to what is going to be a great product from MSI, Gigabyte, Asus, Sapphire, etc. Top dog performance for bargain pricing.

So much slander.

So, I stick with Quiet mode. Once Hawaii is at 95 °C and the fan hits 40%, frequencies start retreating quickly. It’s not uncommon to see them bouncing between mid-700 to mid-800 MHz in single-card configs. In CrossFire, they’ll drop to 727 MHz and stay there. The bummer is that a more effective thermal solution could keep acoustics down and allow Hawaii to operate toward the top of its range more consistently.

 

[hyrule4927]

Add some liquid nitrogen to quadfire R9 290X and we have a new 3DMark11 World Record!

Guess that puts an end to all the speculation that Hawaii wouldn't clock as high as Tahiti and Kepler with extreme cooling.

 

[3DVagabond]

That is called a straw man.

You said that 43 to 50 dB caused damage.
It doesn't.

According to the US department of health, lower than 75 dB will not cause damage.

Once your argument was dismantled you said that damage is different from hearing loss.

Damage caused by sound to the ear provoke hearing loss, otherwise it is not damage.

By the way hearing loss is not brain damage.

I'm sure you can post what other types of health problems a R9 290X fan @50 dB can cause.

The stock cooler is obviously a placeholder.

 

[seitur]

Nice card, but they will hold the Gold only for a month.
Next month NV will release GTX780 Ti at $649, i bet it will be faster than TITAN.

R9 290 at $449 will be the real kicker, almost %90-95 of 290X performance at $100 less ???

I guess 780Ti will be fighting with 290X Custom Cooling OC editions by then, so it may be interesting heh

 

[ShintaiDK]

Right here from AT:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7457/the-radeon-r9-290x-review/19

Oh nice, reminds me of the people saying boost clocks would always kick in (Those people was obviously wrong.). Now the next question that needs answering, with prolonged gaming. Would these clocks keep on dropping? We already see the card hit 94C.

 

[Gikaseixas]

Non reference stuff is a must. I'll get one for sure

 

[lilxskull]

Competition is good. Wonder if Nvidia will discontinue Titan for 780Ti or something.

 

[djnsmith7]

That's what I'm thinking. Lets be real. We want aftermarket cooling not a reference board.

It depends on which side of the coin you're on. From what I've seen, the GPU WB manufacturers tend to start off with a reference card & work their way up. Using the 7990 as an example, there are a few AIB's that Swiftech didn't include in the Komodo series.

So, for those looking to WC, a reference card is a good place to start, but doesn't mean an AIB won't work or fit.

Going to need some ice water running through its veins to keep it cool though.

 

[GaiaHunter]

The stock cooler is obviously a placeholder.

For the price difference one can always put them under water.



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Guess some are already doing that.

1100-1150MHz should be doable and give crazy performance.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

So all I need is a copper block, no tubes, no compression fittings, no pump, or res, no rad?

Dang, wish I had known that before my last custom loop


Also you can get aftermarket 780s and custom bios that do 1300+, so lets wait for the OC reviews and user input :|

 

[UaVaj]

Oh nice, reminds me of the people saying boost clocks would always kick in (Those people was obviously wrong.). Now the next question that needs answering, with prolonged gaming. Would these clocks keep on dropping? We already see the card hit 94C.

TPU says it will throttle down from prolong gaming.

In "Quiet" mode, the card will basically always sit at the temperature limit, hoping for 3D load in-game to go down so it can increase clocks again. Short benchmark runs will show impressive numbers while the card is cool, though. Once you start gaming for extended periods of time, the card will get progressively slower as it heats up, and you'll be hit with a 30% performance penalty in the long run.



This GPU should be awesome under water.

 

[krumme]

In the last decade capacitor technology have improved gradually so you get good capacitor performance and durability even at high temperatures and get those capacitors cheaply. The capacitors is the weak part for temperature, so this technology improvement matters.

That means for gfx its cheap to use capacitors that is rated for 105degrees or higher instead of 80degrees. (Typical standard values).

Unlike the nv480 card that used the extremely expensive tantalum capacitors the 290 serious can do without and still be specced to the high temperatures.

When amd says the cards are specced to 90degrees be sure they are. We will get similar cards from nv in the comming year because it lowers cost at cooling or get better acoustics.

Get used to it. Its here to stay for all brands because the new technology enables it.

When the non reference non blower cards arive they will have more cooling power. But that power is best used to lower the acoustics than to lower the temp.

Because it simply doesnt matter those cards run at 95degrees. Its normal operating temperature for them.

 

[GaiaHunter]

So all I need is a copper block, no tubes, no ek fittings, no pump, or res, no rad?

Don't start on a crusade because I'm not trying to imply anything.

Obviously WC costs more than air cooling.
On the other hand most of the other components you listed are reusable, if you already have them, all you need is a copper block, if you don't it is something that you can use for multiple builds once bought.

For example, unless you sold the entire loop when you got ride of the GTX 470 SLI, you only need the card and the block.

 

[ShintaiDK]

TPU says it will throttle down from prolong gaming.

In "Quiet" mode, the card will basically always sit at the temperature limit, hoping for 3D load in-game to go down so it can increase clocks again. Short benchmark runs will show impressive numbers while the card is cool, though. Once you start gaming for extended periods of time, the card will get progressively slower as it heats up, and you'll be hit with a 30% performance penalty in the long run.



This GPU should be awesome under water.

Yep, it needs additional cooling.

So its the same as the Titan, tho the TItans delta is much smaller. The boost is simply for benchmark only. What a hoax. And another example on why we need to be extra careful when the delta between boost and baseclock is high. And on any boost/turbo clock at all.

If 30% slower in prolonged gaming. Then its borderlining to a cheat.

Even the Uber mode starts to throttle badly. It cant even keep its baseclocks! This is a (short) benchmark only card. Outside that its performance dissolves.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

You said for the price difference you could just get a block.

If you already have the water cooling parts why haven't you been taking 780s or Titans with Inferno bios mod on them to 1400+ for the last 8-6 months?

Instead of putt'n around waiting for a 250w card that is slower than a 206w 998MHz Titan even before the 290x starts to throttle, or barely faster than a 198w 1038MHz 780?