$400!
Anandtech said:As a result rather than having a 5% clockspeed deficit as the official specs for these cards would indicate, the 290 for all intents and purposes clocks higher than the 290X. Which means that its clockspeed advantage is now offsetting the loss of shader/texturing performance due to the CU reduction, while providing a clockspeed greater than the 290X for the equally configured front-end and back-end. In practice this means that 290 has over 100% of 290X’s ROP/geometry performance, 100% of the memory bandwidth, and at least 91% of the shading performance.
So in games where we’re not significantly shader bound, and Metro at 2560 appears to be one such case, the 290 can trade blows with the 290X despite its inherent disadvantage. Now as we’ll see this is not going to be the case in every game, as not every game GPU bound in the same manner and not every game throttles on the 290X by the same degree, but it sets up a very interesting performance scenario. By pushing the 290 this hard, and by throwing any noise considerations out the window, AMD has created a card that can not only threaten the GTX 780, but can threaten the 290X too. As we’ll see by the end of our benchmarks, the 290 is only going to trail the 290X by an average of 3% at 2560x1440.
Ya pretty amazing how most of the forum was way off on R9 290/X prices. For weeks people thought R9 290X would be $649-699. Now with 290 at $399, 780 is too expensive and 780Ti at $699 makes no sense since you might as well get 2x R9 290s for $100 more! Spectacular price/performance. The noise and temperatures will be fixed shortly with after-market versions. I bet we'll have $410-430 after-market R9 290s. Now the R9 290X seems too expensive too. Pretty amazing that in a period of 6 months AMD has brought GTX780's performance level from $649 to just $399. Competition FTW!
So the card sounds like a foghorn? I mean, the performance is unbelievable for the price but it's not worth it if you have a card screaming all the time. Any chance Anand got a dud card?
So the card sounds like a foghorn? I mean, the performance is unbelievable for the price but it's not worth it if you have a card screaming all the time. Any chance Anand got a dud card?
No, I'm sure the card reviewed was just fine. At anything beyond ~55% fan, it's annoyingly loud. Wouldn't bother someone wearing a headset, but it's definitely loud when that fan cranks up.
Are all these reviews using launch 290X numbers against 290 with the latest driver? If so I guess 290X will be getting a boost as well.
AMD released a second driver, which we used, after the initial driver provided to reviewers. It yields additional performance to beat the GTX 780 by increasing maximum fan speed from 40% to 47%. The fan is unfortunately also much noisier, so much so that noise output might actually turn into a real dealbreaker for many.
AMD also confirmed that this "new" driver adheres to the way this product is designed to work, and its changes will be included in all future drivers. The driver does not affect the fan speed/performance ratio of any other AMD product.
So the card sounds like a foghorn? I mean, the performance is unbelievable for the price but it's not worth it if you have a card screaming all the time. Any chance Anand got a dud card?
Are all these reviews using launch 290X numbers against 290 with the latest driver? If so I guess 290X will be getting a boost as well.
From Anandtech GTX 480 review:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/2977/...x-470-6-months-late-was-it-worth-the-wait-/20
"Meanwhile lets talk about the other factors: price, power, and noise. At $500 the GTX 480 is the worlds fastest single-GPU card, but its not a value proposition. The price gap between it and the Radeon 5870 is well above the current performance gap, but this has always been true about the high-end. Bigger than price though is the tradeoff for going with the GTX 480 and its much bigger GPU its hotter, its noisier, and its more power hungry, all for 10-15% more performance. If you need the fastest thing you can get then the choice is clear, otherwise youll have some thinking to decide what you want and what youre willing to live with in return."
From Anandtech Radeon 290 review:
" The problem is that while the 290 is a fantastic card and a fantastic story on a price/performance basis, in chasing that victory AMD has thrown caution into the wind and thrown out any kind of balance between performance and noise. At 57.2dB the 290 is a loud card. A very loud card. An unreasonably loud card. AMD has quite simply prioritized performance over noise, and these high noise levels are the price of doing so.
To get right to the point then, this is one of a handful of cards weve ever had to recommend against. The performance for the price is stunning, but we cannot in good faith recommend a card this loud when any other card is going to be significantly quieter. There comes a point where a video card is simply too loud for what it does, and with the 290 AMD has reached it."
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7481/the-amd-radeon-r9-290-review/17
Hmmmmm. Granted this reference card is not to my taste but the disparity in tone between the two loud reference design reviews, by the same author, actually leaves me sympathetic to the 290. It actually gives more performance for less money while being loud yet gets a drastically more negative conclusion than a card that gave more performance for more money while being loud.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-r9-290-review-benchmark,3659-19.html
Tom's HW apparently slapped on an Accelero XIII on their 290 sample. There are a couple of videos as well for sound comparison purposes, and all I have say is this: 290 reference cooler, i.e. hairdryer vs. 290 + AXIII = night v. day.
Either way, this ought to be a taste of whats to come...
I think it's just an indication of how low-noise performance has become more and more relevant today than it was a few years ago, which I find interesting when you consider that it was nVidia who made the first real push at placing low-noise performance as an important parameter for video cards.
I really don't think the attitude among actual gamers has changed so drastically in 3 years time. But yes there has been quite a change among reviewers.
Gigabyte must be drooling right now. Their Windforce cooler is pretty much the same thing almost...and that AXIII does make an absolutely wonderful difference.
I really don't think the attitude among actual gamers has changed so drastically in 3 years time. But yes there has been quite a change among reviewers.
I would agree that reviewers currently place more importance on noise than they used to, but I would disagree that gamers think the same way as they used to. I don't know if it can be attributed to nVidia's big push for noise performance, if people now genuinely understand and value the benefits of a low-noise card, or maybe a combination of both, but I personally find myself reading numerous forum posts - from various forums, for that matter - about how X card is too noisy, or Y card is worth the money because it is less noisy. With that said, I truly believe there has been a noticeable change in attitude towards noise performance across the entire community.
AMD seems to encourage their partners to come up with fancy cooling, to build a brand, ie. MSI twin frozor, Asus DCII etc, because of this, they keep their reference models basic on the HSF but go with good components on the VRMs and caps, so that reference board + water cooling becomes beastly and is a valid choice. One of the most frequent things people often state in the past is that AMD seems to "over-engineer" their reference PCB but the cooling is horrible.
Not buying it, sure the marketing is there and that results in more reviews and posts about it. But I'd need some actual consumer evidence that after ~20-30 years of pushing for performance suddenly "quiet" is more important. I think marketing, and to a much lesser extent actual electricity price rises and an aging gaming demographic, has made power and noise a bigger factor but I don't think performance has been knocked off its pedestal.
Fan noise at 47% is negligible, we heard the fan, but it was nowhere near annoying or loud while gaming. Even when we increased it to manual of 100% it did not increase much beyond 50% while gaming.