I'm sure AMD does the same thing in terms of marketing. Absolutely sure - every tech company of note these days does this type of thing, in fact - Samsung was fined for hiring students in asia to badmouth HTC on internet forums.
As for the topic, I'm reserving judgement until we get more data. We all know the cards run hot, and if that is causing throttling that is a problem. Sounds like AMD is pushing the chip to it's limit. I would never buy the crappy reference cooler anyways...
You know very well (at least I hope you do) that is not even close to what Groove is saying. It is very clear that certain members here have a pattern of behaviour not exactly conducive to civil discussions, and jump on any bandwagons that paint their beloved company in a good light and show the competition in a bad one.
Yet again another concerted effort to derail, and its the same people every time. I would say the mods should deal with it but it not going to happen. This whole forum is a cesspool and the mods allowed it to get that way. I have complained to the mods about this in the past but we aren't getting anywhere that way. Its a waste of time talking to the mods.
So unless AMD decided to undercut themselves and render the 290x obsolete weeks after its launch, something is fishy. Thus, I’m hesitant to publish the results I have just in case this variance between press and retail cards turns out to be true. And the only way to confirm that is by purchasing a retail 290x from NewEgg and conducting my own tests on both versions.
The findings will be crucial, because although the 780 Ti is the undisputed victor in terms of performance, there’s a $300 difference in price between Nvidia’s latest offering and AMD’s R9 290; $150 divides the 780 Ti and 290x. Determining the true gap in performance between these two cards is vital to rendering an ultimate recommendation, and I’m not comfortable doing that until I have all the facts in front of me."
AMD just released a new driver that they say fixes the fan speed variation. I wonder if Tom's will retest now to see if that was the cause like some think of if there is a hardware issue. My personal results with my 290 show it performing right inline with what I see in reviews using the older beta driver.
How is the noise on the R290 from your view? interested!
AMD just released a new driver that they say fixes the fan speed variation. I wonder if Tom's will retest now to see if that was the cause like some think of if there is a hardware issue. My personal results with my 290 show it performing right inline with what I see in reviews using the older beta driver.
Unlike most reviewers, I use a case that sits ~4' away so the noise isn't nearly as bad as some portray. That's not to say it's silent, but to me it sounds no worse than my reference 5870 that I still use in a backup system. I haven't gotten a chance to play with fan speeds and overclocking, but since i game with headphones I doubt it'll be an issue.
Edit: I do have to say that AMD did a good job with the fan curve. It ramps up and fairly slowly so you don't those sudden changes in intensity and tone that plague older AMD coolers.
Ah thanks. Wait so does the R290 have a quiet mode where the maximum fanspeed is actually at 40%? Im thinking that you can set the maximum.. where as at stock its 47%? Is this correct?
Not sure how erratic the gpu clocks would be though if one decides to sacrifice some performance over noise mainly because I want to use the ref. cooler (open air coolers don't quite work well with my case - sig below).
So the press cards are still quite a bit faster. The cheat goes on.
So the press cards are still quite a bit faster. The cheat goes on.
As a computer architect, AMD's strategy of fixed thermal/acoustic, variable clockspeed strikes me as very elegant (especially their high 95C thermal target. Why can't everyone see the advantages there? It's the opposite of bad engineering in a high performance part!), but as a consumer the 290(x) kind of scare me because there's such a huge difference between the max boost clock and the base clocks, so AMD can't really make any guarantees that you'll have a good experience when you buy one of these cards.
This isn't the new Powertune.
This is the new state of affairs. CPUs and GPUs will run up to a maximum speed they can achieve within manufacturer (or AIB) defined constraints.
AMD has just taken it to a different level by having it so the max speed is one which often isn't achieved, rather than Intel and NV who have a max speed which often is achieved.
The problem is that it means your own performance will depend too much on your conditions. For me, in winter, it would be fine since my room is probably 10~15c cooler than the room of someone in Australia in the summer, and that's where you start to have a problem.