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

[Pariah]

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.

The industry trend is towards smaller enclosures and more efficient components. It would appear that almost everyone is heading in this direction except AMD (Exhibit A: 220W FX-9590, Exhibit B: 290x). One of the real advantages of the Titan is that you can use it in small form factor PC's. Which again SFF is quite popular for LAN boxes. Who wants to lug around a full tower case? There's absolutely no way you would want a 290x in a small form factor case even if it could physically fit. It's complete malarkey to claim everyone is going to be doing this. Remember the GTX 470? Nvidia hasn't repeated that mistake in 3 years, why would they suddenly reverse course after the public beating they took over that release?

 

[boxleitnerb]

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.

30%??? Nope, it's more like 10% under realistic prolongued gaming load. Look at the ratings here:
http://ht4u.net/reviews/2013/amd_radeon_r9_290x_hawaii_review/index46.php
https://www.computerbase.de/artikel...r9-290x-im-test/5/#rating-5760-1080-8xaa16xaf

 

[ShintaiDK]

So the 290X cant keep up what it promises.

Even baseclock cant be kept. What an appaling bad card. Its a benchmark cheat card.

 

[krumme]

As Hardocp said just put this card to 100% fan profile. It will only use it when nessesary. As easy as that. Then you have headroom for your 7-15% oc core and 5 to 6.4 mem.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

I'm sure the girls, kids, and cats would love to hear a blower fan operating at 5000 RPM all night.

Just be realistic, the reference cooler isn't a good solution for the card. It needs non-reference or it's a non starter.

 

[Pariah]

As Hardocp said just put this card to 100% fan profile. It will only use it when nessesary. As easy as that. Then you have headroom for your 7-15% oc core and 5 to 6.4 mem.

THG measured full fan speed at 72.9dB. Who would want to listen to that racket? A vacuum cleaner is typically 70-80dB. So all the dust buster jokes of the past would actually be factually accurate when applied to this card.

 

[GaiaHunter]

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 card that is slower than a 998MHz Titan even before it starts to throttle, or barely faster than a 1038MHz 780?

And what is preventing those people to also buy R9 290X?
Do you only have to have one brand of cards?

From what I've seen, at uber mode the R9 290X isn't slower than the Titan.

Also, just because one already has a water loop, it doesn't mean spending $749 or $1100 is better than spending $650.

 

[2is]

This is a very impressive card, though given its performance, I think AMD did them selves a disservice with the cooling. They could have easily priced the card $30-50 more and provided for a better reference cooler and it would still have looked like a steal compared to nVidias current offerings. I just recently bought a 7970 for my 2nd machine, thinking about returning it for one if these, though I'd want an ASUS Direct CUII version.

 

[ShintaiDK]

From what I've seen, at uber mode the R9 290X isn't slower than the Titan.

In short benchmarks? No, In prolonged? Oh yes... :awe:

 

[3DVagabond]

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?

Maybe because 6-8 months ago it cost $1000 to get this performance?

It is entertaining though to see arguments from people completely reverse. When you had your 470's under water everyone said you can't just count the price of the cards, like you always did, because of the additional cost of water cooling. Now you are on the other side of the fence.

When people complained about Fermi's operating temps it was fine because they were designed to run at that temp, today it's the opposite.

The 290X cooling solution obviously isn't adequate for the hardware. AMD probably decided they'd just slap Tahiti's cooler on it and let the AIBs put their custom coolers on it. Look at the money nVidia spent designing the Titan cooler and nobody wants to buy it (They have no choice with Titan). Everyone wants 780's with custom AIB coolers. Why increase the cost of the 290X by $80 like nVidia did for the Titan cooler when nobody's going to want to buy it anyway?

 

[Abwx]

When we're talking about ear damage, 3 dB difference is twice as loud.

This card is definitely producing high enough dBA to produce long term damage.

Especially if you crank up the fan to 95% duty cycle to try to keep 1000 mhz clock.

43db = long term hearing damage? dbA is a scale used to measure amplitude that is weighted to the relative sensitivity of human hearing across the audible frequency range. It's not a measurement of absolute sound pressure.

THIS is what the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services says.

One must be a die hard fanboyz in complete disarray
to resort to such obviously ridiculous claims...

43dB sound pressure would be the one you d experiment
at say 1 metre of a poorly efficient speaker wich is sent
about 0.1mW average power.....

 

[ShintaiDK]

Is there even any aftermarket 290X yet? All I see is refrence designs.

 

[UaVaj]

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.

got to go underwater to make it worth it. no other way around it. that stock air cooling is a no win situation.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Maybe because 6-8 months ago it cost $1000 to get this performance?

It cost $100 more to get this performance 6 months ago.

I'm not saying the 290X is a bad card.

It just has its faults, same as Titan and the 780 had theirs.

It's not all rainbows and butterflys for AMD either.

It is entertaining though to see arguments from people completely reverse. When you had your 470's under water everyone said you can't just count the price of the cards, like you always did, because of the additional cost of water cooling. Now you are on the other side of the fence.

It is funny to see people take up the torch for water cooling high power usage cards, after ripping me apart for doing the same.

Though to be fair, I did say either in this thread or the other that it comes down to setup.

On my old water setup I wouldn't care.

On my current on air setup, not with those overclock power consumption numbers.

When people complained about Fermi's operating temps it was fine because they were designed to run at that temp, today it's the opposite.

Why are you putting this in a response to me? I never said anything about it personally. Though I never ran my cards at 95C, even when they were on air pushing 900MHz, not even close.

The 290X cooling solution obviously isn't adequate for the hardware. AMD probably decided they'd just slap Tahiti's cooler on it and let the AIBs put their custom coolers on it. Look at the money nVidia spent designing the Titan cooler and nobody wants to buy it (They have no choice with Titan). Everyone wants 780's with custom AIB coolers. Why increase the cost of the 290X by $80 like nVidia did for the Titan cooler when nobody's going to want to buy it anyway?

That is all I've said, it needs aftermarket at the very least, preferably water. Seems to be a pretty popular card for $1000 that nobody wanted.

Why even ship a reference card? Why not GHz it which couldn't handle the power either?

 

[PrincessFrosty]

Wait, so this card has dynamic clocks and they lower down past it's stock speeds when you're gaming?

:/

 

[krumme]

Looking at the 55% mode and the 5ghz mem its easy to see whats in line for the dec non reference cards; 100% mode plus the usual voltage hike like 5-15% oc core and 6.4ghz mem and up meaning at least 20% mem bandwith hike.

Looking at eg. Hardocp results where 290x ref beats titan at 15-20% at 4k. The new non ref card with high speed mem will make this 4k difference even bigger. Those cards are really made for high res and the future games in particular.

Now in dec mantle for bf4 is comming. Take one of those non ref cards and play at 4k. Titan is going to look very very bad.

 

[JDG1980]

It's not a bad card, just a bad cooler. That's easily fixable, and probably will be fixed once the reviews are digested by AMD.
I suspect an ASUS DirectCU version of this card would do far better than stock in terms of heat and noise. That's usually been the case in the past.
A closed-loop water cooler designed for this card would also work well.

 

[2is]

Is there even any aftermarket 290X yet? All I see is refrence designs.

I haven't seen any, but I'm sure we will. AMD will have to do something if they want to avoid law suits from hearing loss.

 

[3DVagabond]

It cost $100 more to get this performance 6 months ago.

I'm not saying the 290X is a bad card.

It just has its faults, same as Titan and the 780 had theirs.

It's not all rainbows and butterflys for AMD either.

So you could get the 780 on the 24th of April? On what planet?

Edit: Also, please list the companies that will honor their warranty after you flash your card with a bios that removes all protections from the card.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Looking at the 55% mode and the 5ghz mem its easy to see whats in line for the dec non reference cards; 100% mode plus the usual voltage hike like 5-15% oc core and 6.4ghz mem and up meaning at least 20% mem bandwith hike.

Looking at eg. Hardocp results where 290x ref beats titan at 15-20% at 4k. The new non ref card with high speed mem will make this 4k difference even bigger. Those cards are really made for high res and the future games in particular.

Now in dec mantle for bf4 is comming. Take one of those non ref cards and play at 4k. Titan is going to look very very bad.

They need to fix the massive cooling problem first. The 290X loses aroound 30% performance over prolonged gaming due to it.

 

[Pariah]

Maybe because 6-8 months ago it cost $1000 to get this performance?

It is entertaining though to see arguments from people completely reverse. When you had your 470's under water everyone said you can't just count the price of the cards, like you always did, because of the additional cost of water cooling. Now you are on the other side of the fence.

When people complained about Fermi's operating temps it was fine because they were designed to run at that temp, today it's the opposite.

The 290X cooling solution obviously isn't adequate for the hardware. AMD probably decided they'd just slap Tahiti's cooler on it and let the AIBs put their custom coolers on it. Look at the money nVidia spent designing the Titan cooler and nobody wants to buy it (They have no choice with Titan). Everyone wants 780's with custom AIB coolers. Why increase the cost of the 290X by $80 like nVidia did for the Titan cooler when nobody's going to want to buy it anyway?

First off, the 470 was pretty universally trashed for it's dreadful ergonomics. There may have been a few diehard Nvidia people that argued otherwise, but they were by far the exception to the rule. So the 290x deserves the same treatment here.

Secondly, the Titan cooler was said to have cost $80, not an additional $80 vs a standard cooler. So unless AMD paid nothing for the 290x cooling system (and based on its performance they got ripped off if they did pay more than nothing), adding a Titan style cooler would not add $80. Also, part of the huge cost of the Titan cooler was for cosmetic reasons which didn't actually improve performance. At $550, the 290x is $450 less than a Titan. That is ridiculous, in a good way. But it is also irrelevant to a number of people who don't want to have to live with the terrible ergonomics. AMD would have been much smarter to release the card at $600 with a better cooler that would appeal to a larger audience. Adding $50 to $550 would lose AMD fewer customers than the number they would gain having an even average performing cooling system.

 

[ShintaiDK]

I haven't seen any, but I'm sure we will. AMD will have to do something if they want to avoid law suits from hearing loss.

Considering the 290X cant even keep baseclocks without throttle. Its simply a broken card that needs RMA.

 

[wand3r3r]

Awesome card, will be interesting to see aftermarket cards since the reference cooler sucks.

This thread is a disaster to read with the goalpost shifting.

 

[UaVaj]

30%??? Nope, it's more like 10% under realistic prolongued gaming load. Look at the ratings here:
http://ht4u.net/reviews/2013/amd_radeon_r9_290x_hawaii_review/index46.php
https://www.computerbase.de/artikel...r9-290x-im-test/5/#rating-5760-1080-8xaa16xaf

that 30% was "quoted" from tech power up.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/R9_290X/33.html

can you copy the exact "quote" from those two other reviews where it say 10% for prolong gaming?

 

[boxleitnerb]

So the 290X cant keep up what it promises.

Even baseclock cant be kept. What an appaling bad card. Its a benchmark cheat card.

Unfortunately, TPU doesn't say what load they used. I guess Furmark, because in no review that investigates clocks while gaming have I seen such low clocks in either mode.