I think some of you guys are looking at this card from the wrong angle. You can buy this card, adjust the fan speed down and have GTX780 performance for $100 less. You can adjust the fan speed up and have Titan+ performance for $600 less (but of course more noise). This card allows the user to decide what they want at a lower price point.
The GTX780 needs another price cut, AMD is simply out flanking Nvidia on the big 28nm front.
Tom's Hardware is reporting that retail cards are struggling to run as fast as they should. 290X cards are meant to run the GPU at 1GHz and the fan at no more than 40 percent while keeping below a temperature of 94°C. The site tested retail cards that are dropping to just 727MHz. These cards are also seeing their fans run at more than 40 percent as they struggle to stay below their thermal limit.
This means that in practice, the R9 290 review units are running faster than at least some R9 290X retail units.
AMD has told Tom's Hardware that there's something wrong with the retail cards, but at the moment there's some uncertainty over just how well they perform.
The wording is pretty ambiguous but the Tom's article states.
"...the company insists something is wrong with the retail-purchased cards I tested"
This seems to say they claim something is wrong with the specific retail cards Tom's tested not all retail cards. So not such an interesting admission at least in my interpretation. If there is some grand conspiracy at work here I'm sure it will come out as more cards are hitting retail. I doubt it personally but time will tell.
This is an interesting admission on AMD's part:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/11/amd-stomps-nvidia-with-r9-290-at-least-in-reviews/
How many cards did Tom's Hardware test? That would have been good information for them to put in.
Tomshardware has two retail 290X's. Both of which perform more like a 770 than beating a Titan. If it was just one card I would suggest it was probably a faulty one, but two faulty ones is might suspicious.
Other sites are buying cards in retail now so we should see some tests coming out soon that confirm the problem or not.
Tomshardware has two retail 290X's. Both of which perform more like a 770 than beating a Titan. If it was just one card I would suggest it was probably a faulty one, but two faulty ones is might suspicious.
Other sites are buying cards in retail now so we should see some tests coming out soon that confirm the problem or not.
AMD is cooking up an abomination of a videocard: dual hawaii GPUs on a stick!
http://www.techpowerup.com/195038/hawaii-based-dual-gpu-graphics-card-codenamed-vesuvius.html
Ed Stark: winter is coming.
AMD : dual 290X got you covered.