R9 290X and R9 290 Owners Noise Discussion (Most Important Question)

[tential]

Why would Anandtech base their conclusion on anything else besides the actual hardware they tested? It would be dishonest and misleading to do anything else. When retail cards with aftermarket coolers are released, you can bet Anandtech will review those, and their conclusion might be totally different than the reference conclusion.

The $100 price difference between the 290 and 780 is irrelevant to anyone who agrees with Anandtech that the noise produced by the 290 is unbearable for everyday use. It's like choosing between an average looking average income woman and a rich smoking hot chick with similar personalities. Every guy is going to pick the smoking hot chick until you reveal that she has this odd habit of stabbing you in the leg every night while you are sleeping. Suddenly all her advantages don't matter because no one wants to put up with getting stabbed every night.

I just felt Tomshardware of including the 290+cooler was a bit more thorough in its approach of making the two equal on a pricing point.

I do agree though that yes, the basic 290 with nothing done to it in reference form is pretty bad. But also, I feel like doing an open air test and using those results to say it's unbearable isn't something I'd have done. I mean, maybe they did use it normally, but I'd have at least liked to have heard "We used the 290 for a couple of days in a closed case system and the system noise was STILL TOO LOUD", or something of the sorts. A lot of people said the 290x was too loud based off reviews, but I've been talkign to a dude who bought crossfire the day it came uot and said the noise is perfectly fine, when you'd think it'd be unbearable. So at least some numbers in a closed system would have been nice just to even have not for comparison sake.

 

[Will Robinson]

Here are the results on all this "OMG it's a jet engine' commentary we are seeing here.
From Tweaktown:

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/5857/amd-radeon-r9-290-4gb-reference-video-card-review/index22.html

 

[Z15CAM]

Geez the GTX 780 can't come close to the R9 290 when it comes to 1440p or 1600P gaming.

I own a $300 Korean 2560x 1440 120Hz Samsung Display - Makes scene to me to buy the 290 for $150 less then a GTX 280, excuse me, a 780 that stalls on my Monitor.

 

[Rvenger]

That is a really long list of cards tested. I wonder if AMD shipped a bad batch of fans because my 290x made a ton of mechanical noise around 45%.

 

[krumme]

Here are the results on all this "OMG it's a jet engine' commentary we are seeing here.
From Tweaktown:

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/5857/amd-radeon-r9-290-4gb-reference-video-card-review/index22.html

Ryans weird omg rant is off otherwise owner of the card would say the same and not just its very loud. But this testing methology is not good imho. Who put his ear next to the gfx?
Now eg. both Ryan and Kyle can show some temper and go over the edge and it makes the review personal fine but i dont know what hit Ryan this time. Perhaps his prior conclusion with 40% was shattered. Or he is a little enthusiastic about nv. Lol.
Sound is so personal. I seldom game now a days and the 359 days a year i dont game i totally unplug my gfx card and the case fans. How do you meassure that ? Lol.

 

[Silverforce11]

That is a really long list of cards tested. I wonder if AMD shipped a bad batch of fans because my 290x made a ton of mechanical noise around 45%.

AMD blowers tend to be annoying at 45% onwards for me also. I hate noisy rig but too cheap to go full water... custom open fans are a must. This 670 is grinding my gears with its noise during hot summer conditions here. Moral of the story, don't buy reference cards if you can't stand the heat/noise!!

 

[Rvenger]

AMD blowers tend to be annoying at 45% onwards for me also. I hate noisy rig but too cheap to go full water... custom open fans are a must. This 670 is grinding my gears with its noise during hot summer conditions here. Moral of the story, don't buy reference cards if you can't stand the heat/noise!!

Well I am kind of stumped because I thought the actual fan was the same between the 290/290x and the 7970. The 7970 was definitely loud over 45% but I swear that I didn't hear all this grinding going on either.

 

[Vesku]

Fans have more variance than computer chips. Buy a few dozen of a highly rated fan and you are bound to get 1 or 2 that are noisier at any given RPM.

If it's particularly unusual sounding, rattling and such, I'd personally try to return or RMA it.

 

[tg2708]

I don't know but the heat and noise this thing produces is worrisome sure its has more performance than anything currently but man I'm not too sure. I'd rather go with an nvidia offering if this is not rectified with aib's. But if this card can give me a minimum of between 50 and 60 fps with almost all settings maxed I'm all for it (msaa fps hit seems rather huge for what it actually does).

 

[blackened23]

Ryans weird omg rant is off otherwise owner of the card would say the same and not just its very loud. But this testing methology is not good imho. Who put his ear next to the gfx?
Now eg. both Ryan and Kyle can show some temper and go over the edge and it makes the review personal fine but i dont know what hit Ryan this time. Perhaps his prior conclusion with 40% was shattered. Or he is a little enthusiastic about nv. Lol.
Sound is so personal. I seldom game now a days and the 359 days a year i dont game i totally unplug my gfx card and the case fans. How do you meassure that ? Lol.

His opinion is a valid one. What was acceptable during the GTX 480 days it no longer acceptable, I really don't understand why a single person would defend AMD for putting that cheap junk reference blower on the 290/290X. You understand that nobody would bad mouth the 290 series had it not been for that design decision, yes? How many pages and pages of complaints about heat and noise have you seen?

Heat and noise are no longer considered status quo, the GPU landscape changed. Stop acting like they're a victim to reviewers. It's a completely valid opinion since NV raised the bar with efficiency and acoustics, everyone expected AMD to do the same. Instead they raised the performance to super high levels and put a 2 dollar crap cooler, the same one used on the 5870, 6970, and 7970 - on the 290 series of cards. It was a bad design decision. It was a bad design decision.

FOR EMPHASIS: It was a bad design decision.

I cannot to this day understand why anyone defends this, seeing as every complaint is about heat and noise, with nothing else. The drivers are fine from what i've heard, the software is fine, but the user experience.....not as good as what Kepler offers. If AMD had spent 20$ on a better blower how many heat and noise complaints would we see? Would the review thread here be 80+ pages with complaints of heat and noise or would it be 20 pages with far fewer complaints? I think you know the answer to this.

AMD made a bad design decision. Waiting for AIB makers is not a valid excuse. Not everyone can use an open air card. So the situation now is, some people can overlook the user experience aspect because hey the 290 is 400$. What a deal. I actually do think it's a hell of a card for the price, but I still cannot excuse AMD for overlooking the user experience with that cooler - this isn't an excusable design error.

 

[blastingcap]

His opinion is a valid one. What was acceptable during the GTX 480 days it no longer acceptable, I really don't understand why a single person would defend AMD for putting that cheap junk reference blower on the 290/290X. You understand that nobody would bad mouth the 290 series had it not been for that design decision, yes? How many pages and pages of complaints about heat and noise have you seen?

Heat and noise are no longer considered status quo, the GPU landscape changed. Stop acting like they're a victim to reviewers. It's a completely valid opinion since NV raised the bar with efficiency and acoustics, everyone expected AMD to do the same. Instead they raised the performance to super high levels and put a 2 dollar crap cooler, the same one used on the 5870, 6970, and 7970 - on the 290 series of cards. It was a bad design decision. It was a bad design decision.

FOR EMPHASIS: It was a bad design decision.

I cannot to this day understand why anyone defends this, seeing as every complaint is about heat and noise, with nothing else. The drivers are fine from what i've heard, the software is fine, but the user experience.....not as good as what Kepler offers. If AMD had spent 20$ on a better blower how many heat and noise complaints would we see? Would the review thread here be 80+ pages with complaints of heat and noise or would it be 20 pages with far fewer complaints? I think you know the answer to this.

AMD made a bad design decision. Waiting for AIB makers is not a valid excuse. Not everyone can use an open air card. So the situation now is, some people can overlook the user experience aspect because hey the 290 is 400$. What a deal. I actually do think it's a hell of a card for the price, but I still cannot excuse AMD for overlooking the user experience with that cooler - this isn't an excusable design error.

I don't think it's inexcusable as long as end users understand what they are getting into. Some people just want the cheapest well-made card possible because they are going to watercool it from day one. Others demand radial fans because they intend to SLI/XFire so they prefer to avoid dumping TWO cards' heat into their cases, though I agree with you that for those SLI/Xfire people they might be disappointed with how lame the blower fan is. But heck if you can afford that you can probably afford to watercool them, too.

I also think R9 290 wasn't intended to go to 47%, it was meant to be 40% like many reviewers said. So if AMD had not sneaked in a last minute "upgraded" driver to set fan to 47%, then sure performance would be lower but also the volume of complaints about noise would also be lower. Just set fan to 40% and pretend the 47% thing never happened and enjoy 10% less performance or whatever it is. Boo hoo, going from 60 fps to 54 fps.

 

[njdevilsfan87]

Don't worry. It won't be long before the red side adopts the team green strategy : flash custom bios and forget about noise/throttling period. :thumbsup:

(Though your cards may actually burn out with that cooler if you do this)

 

[blackened23]

I don't think it's inexcusable as long as end users understand what they are getting into. Some people just want the cheapest well-made card possible because they are going to watercool it from day one. Others demand radial fans because they intend to SLI/XFire so they prefer to avoid dumping TWO cards' heat into their cases, though I agree with you that for those SLI/Xfire people they might be disappointed with how lame the blower fan is. But heck if you can afford that you can probably afford to watercool them, too.

I also think R9 290 wasn't intended to go to 47%, it was meant to be 40% like many reviewers said. So if AMD had not sneaked in a last minute "upgraded" driver to set fan to 47%, then sure performance would be lower but also the volume of complaints about noise would also be lower. Just set fan to 40% and pretend the 47% thing never happened and enjoy 10% less performance or whatever it is. Boo hoo, going from 60 fps to 54 fps.

You have a valid point, but I can't help but think that AMD should have looked to their competition and discerned why people tend to be very loyal to NV. That reason is user experience - from software to acoutics, the little stuff adds up and that's why a lot of people really like NV despite their relative higher price. Value isn't everything, user experience is everything, and NV *gets* that. Now, I understand that some people don't mind the AMD reference cooler - I was one of those people, I didn't mind the 7970 cooler at all (which is essentially the same as the 290 series cooler). The thing is, I was never forced to run the fan at 55% for maximum performance - I could overclock my cards with a far lower fan speed, and that's precisely what I did. The Hawaii chip ties cooling performance directly into real performance, so with that being the case it's a lot more difficult to get a balance of performance/acoustics without having to put up with some noise, you know? I know some people don't care about noise. But I still feel like AMD Should have stepped up just like nvidia did to create an excellent reference shroud - if they had done this, nobody would complain. Well, aside from some very staunch NV biased guys - they will bad mouth AMD no matter what. But typical users? I'm sure they would all be happy had AMD spent a few bucks on a better cooler.

I can't deny the value of the 290. It's a heck of a card for 400$ like I said. But AMD could have made it so much more, and i'm just really torn on the 290. The performance is downright amazing but the user experience without an aftermarket cooler (which, again, not everyone can use) isn't as good as Kepler.

 

[GaiaHunter]

The main problem is that dB is a crappy way of measuring noise.

Noise is very subjective - sometimes I hear noise and other people tell me it is music or vice versa.

Some noises might not be that loud but are extremely annoying and maddening. Other noises might be loud but not disturbing.

The only thing that is clearly crazy is the claims that the level of noise coming from the 290/290X will cause hearing damage.

Even 60 dB wont cause it, otherwise whenever we laugh we would be causing damage and lets not go into listening to music with headphones.

 

[blastingcap]

The main problem is that dB is a crappy way of measuring noise.

Noise is very subjective - sometimes I hear noise and other people tell me it is music or vice versa.

Some noises might not be that loud but are extremely annoying and maddening. Other noises might be loud but not disturbing.

The only thing that is clearly crazy is the claims that the level of noise coming from the 290/290X will cause hearing damage.

Even 60 dB wont cause it, otherwise whenever we laugh we would be causing damage and lets not go into listening to music with headphones.

This. If you really want to know how decibels are calculated it's really funky and yes, the absolute level of decibels doesn't necessarily tell all the story. I got into this a lot back when I was interested in buying powerful but quiet fans for my PC. A real eye-opener.

 

[tonyfreak215]

This. If you really want to know how decibels are calculated it's really funky and yes, the absolute level of decibels doesn't necessarily tell all the story. I got into this a lot back when I was interested in buying powerful but quiet fans for my PC. A real eye-opener.

Frequency also plays a large part.

 

[sniffin]

Noise is overrated. I ran a 6990 quadfire setup for 12 months and as soon as they passed 85c they went into jumbo jet mode. I never heard anything though if I had my headphones on and there was ingame audio. And if I had my headphones off they were usually idle.

They weren't quiet idlers though which in my opinion is a bigger issue than load noise.

 

[Z15CAM]

Quote from TECHSPOT Regarding AIB R9 290's

I took the IceQ X2 cooler off the HIS Radeon R9 280X and stuck it on our R9 290 sample. Cooling was dramatically improved. The FurMark stress test maxed out at 76 degrees while the card never exceeded 63 degrees in Crysis 3 and Battlefield 4. So it seems as expected the board partners will be able to solve the heat issues of the reference card.

I see the REF Gigabyte R9 290 listed in Canada for as low as $388.50. Say an AIB Model lists for approx $430. That's still $150 cheaper then say an eVGA GTX 780 for a card of the same if not better performance and much better at 1440p.

nVidia has to release the GTX 780 Ti below $500 before I would consider it, but rumors are is that it's around a ridiculous $700 in which case the R9 290X at $600 is a much better choice.

If you intend to Water Cool buy the R9 290 Reference Cards but personally I will be keeping a close eye on the AIB Radeon R9 290's to power my Single Display QNIX 2560 x1440 PLS at 120Hz.

---------------------------------------------

i7 2700k/ASUS P8Z68-V Pro Gen3/Corsair H110 AIO (running @ .996v/1600Mhz to 1.376v/4600Mhz 24/7 between 36 to 67C), 4 x's 4GB sticks of Samsung MV-3V4G3D-US DDR3 running at 1.34v/1866Mhz 9-9-9-24 1T with 4GB's assigned to a RAMDisk drive to handle Win7 64 Bit Sluff and negate writes to the SSD, Samsung 840 Pro 256 SSD, 2 x's WD5001AALS HDD's in Raid-0, 1 x's WD1002FAEX 1TB, ASUS DRW-24B1ST DVDRW, Hauppauge WinTV HVR-1250 PCIe, XFX 850W Pro Black Black Edition modular PSU, eVGA e-GeForce GTX 280, Fractal Design ARC Midi R2 case, QX2510 Samsung PLS 2560x1440 res display at 120Hz.

 

[Pariah]

Here are the results on all this "OMG it's a jet engine' commentary we are seeing here.

Who needs charts when we have videos with audio?

Boeing R9-290X taking off

 

[amenx]

Here are the results on all this "OMG it's a jet engine' commentary we are seeing here.
From Tweaktown:

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/5857/amd-radeon-r9-290-4gb-reference-video-card-review/index22.html

Never take any one reviewers findings as absolute. For any review to be meaningful, it must show some consistency with other reviews. Theres just too big a variance here between the 290 noise results here and what we see in other reviews.

 

[Erenhardt]

It may be a little OT, but:
I'm not and most likely not going to be owner of 290/290x. But I have to say I'm shocked by the amount of people who bought 290/290x after being so critical about that card. Nice to see you changed your mind guys. Enjoy.

 

[KingFatty]

They weren't quiet idlers though which in my opinion is a bigger issue than load noise.

I hadn't really thought about it, but I think you've hit the nail on the head here.

I utterly despise a noisy fan when my computer is not gaming, I *HATE HATE HATE* a noise idle computer when I'm browsing the internet.

But when gaming, I am like Tim the Tool man more power crank up the fans let this sucker rip full blast where I don't mind noise as much.

So overall, I think it's very important to have near-silent idle fan noise, but I don't care as much for full-load noise.

 

[tential]

This. If you really want to know how decibels are calculated it's really funky and yes, the absolute level of decibels doesn't necessarily tell all the story. I got into this a lot back when I was interested in buying powerful but quiet fans for my PC. A real eye-opener.

Frequency also plays a large part.

I really don't like the dB method of measurement sometimes. Either way though, almost every test is done in situations that 99% of people purchasing the card won't use. You don't place your GPU at ear level, it's under your desk usually so you don't listen to it on axis. You don't leave your case open(not everyone), etc. So in reality the tests just don't really reflect real world usage unlike most other tests.

 

[KingFatty]

But there is value to testing all the cards under the same conditions, so you can judge their relative performance. I think the dB method is used because it reflects how we perceive sound sort of logarithmically?

 

[DooKey]

I have 2x 290 and find them acceptable for noise up to about 60% fan speed. At that speed I can game 1050 stable with no problems. Will push it some more later today after an OS reinstall.

Specs in sig for case, etc.