I guess I'll wait for the 290x to drop price. I don't want a reference card and then I would need to sell my current card too.
Are you going to stick with Fast? I saw you cancelled your other order
The Biggest question is when it comes to PERFORMANCE is the Vapor X Hynix, Samsung or Elpida. You just can't push more then + 0.1.62 mV's through Elpida to get 1500Mhz's at the most.
For $400 you can buy a 2 month old Under Clocked R9 290X OEM Reference Card on eBay for $400 (There all Elpida because the Sellers keep Hynix and Samsung for themselves) but Man it's still a Great Deal particularily if you intend to put to Card Under Water.
Nice card, pretty decent OC, for an R290 at its price, hard to beat and makes the R290X irrelevant.
Nice card, pretty decent OC, for an R290 at its price, hard to beat and makes the R290X irrelevant.
Also, the cooler is better than the Tri-X in temps at the same low noise.
Makes the Reference 290X irrelevant.
You forget that 290Xs can be overclocked too.
Sure, clock for clock 5% faster for 20-25% more expense, not my cup of tea.
ps. R290/X reference wasn't relevant as soon as custom models were out, besides waterblock compatibility they weren't good for much else. Throttling even in uber mode is fail.
Is it better that gtx 770?
I have had more Sapphire RMAs than all other brands combined. It's not even close. Faulty Sapphire coolers are a waste of time and money. I will never buy Sapphire again unless the price is irresistible. Reliability is way more important than a few degrees or % in performance.
3-7-2014Well, I was about to buy a 290 MSI Gaming, but I read they are having a lot of leaky fan problems.
Hi Guys,
Thanks to OCUK Staff members for bringing this forum topic to our attention.
We are aware that some customers have been experiencing issues with our latest AMD GAMING Graphics Cards, notably the R9 Series.
MSI takes this issue seriously.
What is the issue?
Some cards manufactured pre-January are experiencing oil leakage from the fans.
How is this caused?
Oil leaks from the fans hub when the fans are spinning at 100% over a long period of time under high heat conditions.
Why is this happening?
We have seen a huge spike in sales numbers since late November when the BitCoin-Cryptocurrency mining craze started to kick off. Thus, customers have been using our R9 Series of GAMING Graphics Cards since mid-December to mine coins over a 24-HR, 7 days a week period which these cards are not designed for.
The details...
Basically our cards are designed mainly for one thing.. gaming (the clue's in the name). They are not intended for use under "industrial" load conditions where they would be needed to run flat-out continuously day after day, week after week with potential high heat levels.
MSI HQ have been working on the fix since late December to make some changes to our Twin Frozr coolers to stop this from happening. At the centre of the fan there is a 3mm gap inside where a specially made gel is inserted to keep our fans running smoothly and quietly to give you the award-winning silent conditions during idle and gaming modes you have seen and/or heard about. MSI has since reduced this to 2mm. This doesn't sound much but has in fact solved one of the issues whereby there was extra space for air to squeeze inside the area alongside the gel to cause tiny air bubbles that (while at 100% fan load for a long period of time) forces the gel to leak out onto the fan shroud and surrounding area.
The final issue that was fixed was simply not to put as much gel inside the fans core. We intentionally put more gel into this area during production to ensure your cards would continue to run smoothly and that durability would never decrease. Sadly our good intentions came back to hurt us since many customers are using R9 Graphics Cards (and R7) to mine for coins jumping quickly onto the Cryptocurrency bandwagon. Our cards we're not designed for this. Under normal gaming conditions this would not happen (rare cases it may). MSI HQ wanted (yet again) to improve our award-winning Twin Frozr coolers further by solving any and all reliability questions of the running of our fans... hence more gel.
Unlike our competitors, our bearing is made from a special ring made from a mixture of pressed cooper shavings and oil This unique design avoids the need of ball bearings so the fan can run quieter.
Those customers with Graphics Cards pre-January that are worrying about oil leaking in the future causing harm to the fans.. don't worry. The oil leaking is from the fans hub and not from the bearing, thus will not impact the lifetime running of the fans.
Is it safe?
Yes. The gel which has since turned into an oil like substance during high heat conditions will not harm you, nor your surrounding components in your PC. This gel is harmless, it is non-conductive and will not harm components on the motherboard The gel is designed to work up to 140C so it will not burn out.
What do I do now?
As mentioned, HQ knows about the problems you have been experiencing and recommends you RMA your Graphics Card to our RMA centre for a replacement card with the new fixes.
Can you not just send some replacement fans or coolers?
No. While there are 0 issues with the PCB's, we cannot send you replacement fans and/or Twin Frozr coolers to do it yourself. One reason is we want to ensure you do not damage the PCB or cooler during installation (and thus voiding your warranty), but another reason is due to how we design the Twin Frozr coolers. You may not know this, but unlike many of our competitors who simply use the same cooler for every batch of cards, we engineer our coolers differently per each graphics card to ensure each cooler we place onto each GPU can handle the thermals produced from that very GPU since every GPU is different (silicone lottery).
We are very sorry if you have been affected by this issue. We hold our hands up, however we did have good intentions. Please RMA the Graphics Card back to us for a swift replacement.
I saw while I had my order in at Amazon ($499.99) Newegg has the Vapor X for $449.00 (3 Games) at times and back to 499.00 and the Tri X for $429.00. The prices seem to be dropping lately and wonder how much farther they will go. So I cancelled my order (don't laugh) at Amazon. But at the same time I keep changing my mind on what to do. I was thinking Vapor 290 X and a 27 '1440p or 30" 1600p monitor but I don't like the FPS hit from 1080p going to 1440 or 1660p imo. I think my oc GTX 770 is working nice with my 1080P per FPS in BF4. I just can't decide which way to go.
Right now its $449.00 OSS.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...ED&Pagesize=20
The Tri-x for 429 is the way to go. Vapor X is clearly better, but margianly so, both cards are already hitting the sweet spot of clockability/temps/noise on the 290.