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

[SimianR]

Does having more money also mean higher tolerance to high heat output?

When we're talking high end GPU's where were looking for maximum performance, usually I would say the user should have adequate cooling in their case? There are builds where people go for ultra silent/ultra cool setups, usually those arent using the top of the line cards, though.

 

[amenx]

Guru3d review

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/radeon_r9_290x_review_benchmarks,1.html

 

[Saylick]

Dat Perf/$!

With that said, I previously made some predictions on the power consumption and it unfortunately looks like my pessimistic estimates were right; >250W power consumption isn't all that great, but the savings over a 780/TITAN more than make up for the long-term increase in electricity costs. It also looks like the rumors about the high temperatures were spot on as well; I really am hoping aftermarket designs help reduce the thermal throttling which is holding back the card. It seems these babies would soar when given enough cooling.

 

[toyota]

Is power use really a huge concern for someone buying a high end GPU? The value it offers more than makes up for it IMHO.

at some point it would be for me. again just look at the massive increase in power consumption when they overclocked it. total system usage went from just over 400 watts to well over 600 watts. well over 200 watts ADDITIONAL power usage on top of an already 300 watt card sounds bananas. that is at least 500 watts for the card alone which makes no sense.

 

[ShadowOfMyself]

Holy crap, I dont think anyone was expecting 549$... This has to be the first time in video card history a card beats another card almost twice as expensive... Not even the 4870 did that
And whats with this card offering the best value out of ALL price brackets? My mind is blown right now

And that crossfire scaling, jesus... Nvidia fans wont even be able to bring frame times and crap into the argument anymore

The only bad thing about it is the furnace temps, although HardOCP says its fine... Id still be cautious of putting a 95C monster in my case, Id be afraid it would randomly catch fire or something

Still, its amazing to see how much 64 rops improved the architecture... Best decision AMD could have made

 

[Kallogan]

Dat chopper with reference cooler lol. No overclocking headroom, hot as hell power sucker. No buy.

Well, you can still undervolt it a bit if u want to use it with decent noise levels, but i'll seriously wait for better coolers.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

When we're talking high end GPU's where were looking for maximum performance, usually I would say the user should have adequate cooling in their case? There are builds where people go for ultra silent/ultra cool setups, usually those arent using the top of the line cards, though.

Entirely depends on the setup.

With my old 470 SLI setup, water cooled with the rad/fans outside... I couldn't care less.

With my current setup, on air, hell no.

I notice the heat from 220-250 draw, I use lucid to fix tearing and use sub 60 fps in some games. It's winter but that just means my body wants to be cooler but the overloards have the heat on all the time.

The 630+ watts they achieved at 1170~ MHz is above the max I've ever seen personally with my system, with my i5 at 4.8GHz and my 7950s at 1200/1750, and that was for benching, you'd have to be cracked out to do that on a single card 24/7 on air.

(IMO/Personal Preference/Current Setup)

 

[Aeiou]

Could this finally save us from absolutely disgusting prices?

 

[NIGELG]

Inferno temperatures?

 

[sniffin]

I can't believe how bad this makes Nvidias lineup look lol

 

[chimaxi83]

For anyone out there ordering, you can use the mobile app to do it and save a few bucks. I got almost $30 off.

Code is MBLEMC10G, pretty sure it's not email specific.

 

[Saylick]

Does having more money also mean higher tolerance to high heat output?

Higher tolerance to heat output, probably not, unless you live in a place where you frequently turn on the heater. Higher tolerance to higher power consumption, definitely yes.

If we go by the national average for electricity costs, which is roughly $0.13/KWh, and you were to run the card for 5 hours every day of the year at 300W, you'd rack up an additional $71.17 in energy costs after 1 year. This is in reference to not having a video card to begin with.

If you only look at the relative difference in energy consumption vs. TITAN, which uses about 60W less juice at load, you'd break $100 in additional energy costs after running the 290X for 12,820.5 hours or 1.46 years.

If we say that an OC'd 290X uses an extra 100W of juice (i.e. bumping the difference from TITAN to 160W), then we are looking at 4807.7 hours or 0.55 years.

Ofc, in both cases, no one will be running their card at load for 24/7 365, so you could probably stretch those numbers out a lot further.

 

[toyota]

lol no one cares about the miniscule power bill difference. its the increase in heat and noise that would be annoying as hell.

"Power draw also increases immensely, going from just above 400 W for the whole system to around 650 W!"

thats beyond insane to add an additional 225 watts or so on top of an already power hungry card.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

Oh, stop complaining about the stock cooler. In quiet mode you have no noise issues and it ties the Titan and in uber mode it's slightly faster than the Titan while making itself noticed.

And if AMD decided that 95C was the max safe temperature who are you to say otherwise? Same as people complaining about high temps in Ivy Bridge and Haswell when overclocking. The GPU can handle 95C.

 

[rtsurfer]

You are forgetting that is a stock 780 used in reviews. Aftermarket 780s are as fast as Titans and once the prices drop are going to increase in value.

Also, the new 780Ti is going to run much cooler and quieter for similar performance, though it will likely cost a bit more.

Not to rain on the parade, the 290X is a good card, but you really do have to factor in heat and noise in cards these days.

Do I want a 95c dust buster in my comp screwing up my cpu and ram overclock? Not a chance. But, not everyone has the same purchasing criteria I do. I'd happily pay a premium for card that runs cooler and quieter.

But, like I say...I'm not here to down the 290X. It is obviously a very good performing card if you have a system capable of handling it.

.

I think you are forgetting that this is also a STOCK 290X. Aftermarket 290X should bring down the Heat/Noise levels even if they don't bring up the performance.

So your aftermarket 780s being better is going to turn useless because they will also have to compete with aftermarket 290Xs..

 

[SimianR]

To me - heat/power use are things you look at when cards offer similar performance at the same price point, currently this is not the case. Also - Heat is a big factor when it effects system stability - but with a decent cooling setup I'm not sure why you'd have to be "cracked out" to run a single 290X with a decent power supply.

 

[Jaydip]

Fast card for sure but the temp/power could have been way better. AMD really needs to work on this.It offers a great value @ $549 but people already with Titan/780 can sit tight.

 

[NIGELG]

This card is built for people using extreme cooling. Those on air will need to get ear plugs when running this card in uber mode and crossfire uber mode will probably result in bleeding ears :biggrin:. Here is part of TPU's conclusion:




Apart from the price, I'd call this card an engineering train wreck.

Of course you would,MR Titan buyer.....

3.5 years later and people no longer care about a ridiculously loud card running in the mid 90's? Where are all the "its a good thing winter is coming" and "it doubles as a space heater". How about someone try cooking an egg on one? Instead we get "it just needs a good aftermarket cooler or "this beast screams water". Gtx 480 and Gtx 470 are rolling over in their grave. lol

Valid and fair comparison.The GTX 480 had it's supporters as well.This 290X card is worthy.

 

[Rvenger]

Bought one. Great value if planning on getting bf4.

 

[HurleyBird]

Aftermarket versions of this card are going to shine. Despite the fact that this is a better buy than GTX780 or Titan, I feel no compulsion to buy the reference version.

One thing to consider is that the 95 degree temperatures aren't doing anything good for power consumption. Transistors are more leaky at higher temperatures, and with proper cooling dissipation should go down moderately.

 

[Pariah]

Price performance ratio is incredible, but I will definitely wait for cards with an aftermarket cooling solutions. The heat and noise from the stock cooler do not look like they would be something I'd want to put with. Once again, AMD is that close to having something special, and some how manages to screw it up. Let's see what the board makers come up with.

From the THG review:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-r9-290x-hawaii-review,3650.html

"We decided to forgo the video demonstrating what a 95% duty cycle sounds like. It’s pointless and potentially bad for your long-term hearing. The noise is simply unbearable without commercial-grade ear protection."

"The 225 W we measured using a compute-heavy load and stock settings can be pushed as high as 295 W by giving the fan more room to spin up and targeting a lower thermal ceiling. Unfortunately, those conditions don't last. Once the Radeon R9 290X hits its target temperature, power consumption drops considerably. This explains the card’s relatively low performance in our GPGPU benchmarks."

"AMD says it gives you total control over this and, thanks to an updated PowerTune technology that defines maximum fan speed (rather than dialing in an absolute value), indeed it does. But you also get stuck with the same noisy thermal solution that makes reference Radeon HD 7970s so acoustically grating. Company engineers insulate you from having the same loud experience by implementing two firmware modes: Quiet and Uber. Quiet keeps the fan under 40% duty cycle. Uber lets it get up to 55%, and that’s too loud for me. 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."


As someone else mentioned, this looks like an engineering train wreck.

 

[Grooveriding]

Bought one. Great value if planning on getting bf4.

I want one too! $550 is too much though for an upgrade on my 7950 machine that sees light gaming. I want to try Mantle in BF4 with one of these though.

Going for the 290 next week if there are aftermarkets available at launch. I would have waited for aftermarket on one of these too if I was not watercooling it. There are already aftermarket 290x in a few reviewer's hands. Shouldn't be long till they are available.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

The crossfire scaling and frame times are really good. I want 2 now.

 

[Saylick]

Aftermarket versions of this card are going to shine. Despite the fact that this is a better buy than GTX780 or Titan, I feel no compulsion to buy the reference version.

One thing to consider is that the 95 degree temperatures aren't doing anything good for power consumption. Transistors are more leaky at higher temperatures, and with proper cooling dissipation should go down moderately.

^ This. Aftermarket 290Xs need to be released ASAP.

Anyone here planning on water cooling these cards? If so, please do a mini-review for the benefit of the forums and post your findings.

 

[Pariah]

Whoops, I just posted this in the wrong thread. So I'll cut and past it here.

Price performance ratio is incredible, but I will definitely wait for cards with an aftermarket cooling solutions. The heat and noise from the stock cooler do not look like they would be something I'd want to put with. Once again, AMD is that close to having something special, and some how manages to screw it up. Let's see what the board makers come up with.

From the THG review:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...view,3650.html

"We decided to forgo the video demonstrating what a 95% duty cycle sounds like. It’s pointless and potentially bad for your long-term hearing. The noise is simply unbearable without commercial-grade ear protection."

"The 225 W we measured using a compute-heavy load and stock settings can be pushed as high as 295 W by giving the fan more room to spin up and targeting a lower thermal ceiling. Unfortunately, those conditions don't last. Once the Radeon R9 290X hits its target temperature, power consumption drops considerably. This explains the card’s relatively low performance in our GPGPU benchmarks."

"AMD says it gives you total control over this and, thanks to an updated PowerTune technology that defines maximum fan speed (rather than dialing in an absolute value), indeed it does. But you also get stuck with the same noisy thermal solution that makes reference Radeon HD 7970s so acoustically grating. Company engineers insulate you from having the same loud experience by implementing two firmware modes: Quiet and Uber. Quiet keeps the fan under 40% duty cycle. Uber lets it get up to 55%, and that’s too loud for me. 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."


As someone else mentioned, this looks like an engineering train wreck.