AMD Radeon R9 290X Reviews

game4it70

http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/gpu_displays/amd_r9_290x_review/1
http://www.legitreviews.com/amd-rade...-review_126806
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/R9_290X/
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7457/t...r9-290x-review
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...view,3650.html
http://www.techspot.com/review/727-radeon-r9-290x/


Ocuk prices and review
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=25170770&postcount=1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lZ3Z6Niir4

Headshot

its a pity about the temp

game4it70

Headshot wrote: »

its a pity about the temp

Yeah especially when the likes of afterburner get updated to allow for more voltage/higher clocks.

I'd still like one but to close to santa time to be paying out that much for a new toy.:(

MajesticDonkey

I'm not all that impressed with it - except for the price.

Jonny7

I presume that aftermarket coolers from diff companies will reduce heat/noise

At 550 dollars it's gonna fly off the shelves

Serephucus

So it's a louder, hotter, more power-hungry 780? If that price cut NVIDIA has planned for the 780 happens quickly, I don't see a reason to recommend the 290X at all.*

*Quick skim of reviews, also doesn't include Mantle.

game4it70

I dont think the aftermarket 290x's are out for a couple of weeks but they should help alot with heat and noise.

I've been following benches done by the staff at ocuk and he has an asus 290x running at 1200mhz easily beating a 780 at 1300mhz.Although there only benches it should give a good indication of how they will do in games.
I would expect some improvement maybe with newer drivers too.As for mantle thats not being used until December in BF4 afaik.

Crossfire 290's might be great for price/performance too.There out next week.

MajesticDonkey

game4it70 wrote: »

Crossfire 290's might be great for price/performance too.There out next week.

The stock card doesn't have Crossfire support. See the Linus video I posted above.

game4it70

MajesticDonkey wrote: »

The stock card doesn't have Crossfire support. See the Linus video I posted above.

Do you mean the tabs on the card (290x) are no longer used? As crossfire is handled by the mobo through the pci-e lanes now.

MajesticDonkey

game4it70 wrote: »

Do you mean the tabs on the card (290x) are no longer used? As crossfire is handled by the mobo through the pci-e lanes now.

Watch the video I don't understand it too well, so there isn't much point trying to explain it.

game4it70

MajesticDonkey wrote: »

Watch the video I don't understand it too well, so there isn't much point trying to explain it.

Yeah all he is saying is the crossfire connectors are gone.You dont need a crossfire bridge now to run multiple cards.:D

Gumbi

CF scaling seems great. Needs aftermarket cooling and/or water.

Apparently it scales really well with voltage core clocking. Smashes nVidia at higher reses with the 512 bit mem bandwidth.

Power/heat whore though.

btkm8unsl0w5r4

Seems that if your after an out of the box solution the 290x is a no brainer, half the price of a titan with the same performance and a good amount of memory.

If you are an overclocker you need to be on water or wait for the non reference factory overclocked cards to come out.

The 780 ti is the one to watch at the moment, interesting where that will come in.

The 290x is the best card out there for gaming at the moment, and the price is sweet.

NTMK

game4it70 wrote: »

I dont think the aftermarket 290x's are out for a couple of weeks but they should help alot with heat and noise.

Heat will be an issue unless the cooler is godly. 95C is a big task for a die to cope with given transistor sizes now regardless of AMD saying its able to run hot without risk

And for €550 youd expect them to at least put a bit of effort into the cooler. nvidias 780/titan cooler costs nvidia about $70 each would it be too much to as for a better reference cooler

Im delighted AMD are competing again though and this card will push down nvidia prices but damn it AMD work on the small details

Gumbi

NTMK wrote: »

Heat will be an issue unless the cooler is godly. 95C is a big task for a die to cope with given transistor sizes now regardless of AMD saying its able to run hot without risk

And for €550 youd expect them to at least put a bit of effort into the cooler. nvidias 780/titan cooler costs nvidia about $70 each would it be too much to as for a better reference cooler

Im delighted AMD are competing again though and this card will push down nvidia prices but damn it AMD work on the small details

More tactical than anything less. Probably more important for them to keep the price than than spend more on the cooling.

You're right though, even custom solutions will only cut 20 degrees of this. Water will probably be the way to go for heavy overclockers. I am really considering incorporating a 290 into a custom loop.

NTMK

Gumbi wrote: »

More tactical than anything less. Probably more important for them to keep the price than than spend more on the cooling.

You're right though, even custom solutions will only cut 20 degrees of this. Water will probably be the way to go for heavy overclockers. I am really considering incorporating a 290 into a custom loop.

Its a fair point point but it isnt the first time they've launched witth a crap cooler the first batch of 7970's had problems where the plastic had flash marks on the sides from the injection moulding. Its just youd expect them to put a bit more thought into the cooler since its the flagship card, the card everyone will see and use to compare to nvidia. it can be plastic for all i care but when you look at the progress Nvidia did from the 580 to the 780 regarding noise and heat

i feel even a custom loop (esp. for crossfire) may need a lot of cooling to avoid loss if that die is hitting 95°C under air cooling will that cause issues for small loops regarding liquid loss

Gumbi

NTMK wrote: »

Its a fair point point but it isnt the first time they've launched witth a crap cooler the first batch of 7970's had problems where the plastic had flash marks on the sides from the injection moulding. Its just youd expect them to put a bit more thought into the cooler since its the flagship card, the card everyone will see and use to compare to nvidia. it can be plastic for all i care but when you look at the progress Nvidia did from the 580 to the 780 regarding noise and heat

i feel even a custom loop (esp. for crossfire) may need a lot of cooling to avoid loss if that die is hitting 95°C under air cooling will that cause issues for small loops regarding liquid loss

Well it's not going to hit 95 under water, that's for sure. Early numbers indicating 1200 plus under water.

ShadowHearth

I think we will see the resl 290 when third party coolers pop up.

sink

I'm definitely buying one of these. I only have to decide between the stock cooler or go for custom wc, or wait for the non reference coolers.

I currently have 2 6950's with reference coolers and they make an awful racket, so i'm inclined to avoid the reference cooler. Problem is my case isn't well suited to water cooling so I will need to upgrade it if I go down that route, and of course it's big money. The least hassle would be to wait for non-reference coolers to come out, but I would rather not have to wait months, how long to you guys reckon it will take for them to hit the market?

NTMK

sink wrote: »

I'm definitely buying one of these. I only have to decide between the stock cooler or go for custom wc, or wait for the non reference coolers.

I currently have 2 6950's with reference coolers and they make an awful racket, so i'm inclined to avoid the reference cooler. Problem is my case isn't well suited to water cooling so I will need to upgrade it if I go down that route, and of course it's big money. The least hassle would be to wait for non-reference coolers to come out, but I would rather not have to wait months, how long to you guys reckon it will take for them to hit the market?

couple of weeks maybe new year AFAIK All cards are being produce by amd atm no chip only units available to manufacturers yet

sink

Also i'm still running on a P67 chipset which only has PCIe 2.0, will there much performance gain if I upgrade my mobo to PCIe 3.0?

NTMK

sink wrote: »

Also i'm still running on a P67 chipset which only has PCIe 2.0, will there much performance gain if I upgrade my mobo to PCIe 3.0?

id go look at 780/titan Pci-e comparisons to see but iirc its about 3-5% on a single card

MajesticDonkey

I might be wrong in saying this, but from the little research I've done, it seems you'll get better performance if you use two 280Xs in Crossfire, rather than one 290X, and it'll only cost €50-60 more (for the ASUS DirectCU version at least).

Anyone have more on this?

NTMK

MajesticDonkey wrote: »

I might be wrong in saying this, but from the little research I've done, it seems you'll get better performance if you use two 280Xs in Crossfire, rather than one 290X, and it'll only cost €50-60 more (for the ASUS DirectCU version at least).

Anyone have more on this?

i havent seen enough benchmarks to really comment in detail but based on history probably. you pay a premium on having a singlecard solution and for the e-peen along with no crossfire issues

ShadowHearth

We do have very early drivers guys. Keep in mind Titan/780 got very mature drivers at this stage. I bet give it few months to work on drivers, third party cooler and you will have a very yummy GPU.

NTMK

ShadowHearth wrote: »

We do have very early drivers guys. Keep in mind Titan/780 got very mature drivers at this stage. I bet give it few months to work on drivers, third party cooler and you will have a very yummy GPU.

I really dont know how much gain they can get from drivers this time. AMD very clearly held back the 7series to catch out Nvidia and it worked this time nvidia were first to release and are about 6months away from Maxwell being released so AMD could have pushed this card hard and at 95°C the card is on the limit.

It'll get 5-10% imo but nothing like the 15%-20% we saw on the 7 series

Gumbi

AMD will have a 20nm card too you know.

NTMK

Gumbi wrote: »

AMD will have a 20nm card too you know.

ofc it will probably my upgrade if nvidias talk of maxwell turns out to be bollox (Which is probable given that its nvidia)

but i cant see them releasing in the next 12 months really and only brought up maxwell since its (potentially) the next gpu launch after the R9 and is 6months away so AMD dont really know what Nvidia is up to compared to the last round that were 2 months apart iirc.

BloodBath

Good god amd. Why do you not have the same cooler you had on the 7990 on this?

Amd have a history of ****e stock coolers. My poor 4870x2 had to get by with a similar cooler.

Gumbi

I think they just threw tonnes of cores onto this card, the most brutish way of increasing performance, and accepted the fact that they'd have to deal with insanely high temps. The performance is great but the heat is ridiculous.

BloodBath

It's a premium card and they have a good reference cooler design in the 7990. I don't see why they didn't use it.

Gumbi

BloodBath wrote: »

It's a premium card and they have a good reference cooler design in the 7990. I don't see why they didn't use it.

Moniez. They must have really wanted to hit 500 euro/550 doll hairs pricepoint... But I hadn't Actualy considered the 7990 cooler before this. I dunno. That dissipates more heat than the 290x generates and keeps temps below 80so a cut down version of it would have been sufficient. Hmmm. Money is all I can think of.

BloodBath

It's a sweet card though. I'd wait for 3rd party coolers and some competition on pricing if anyones thinking about getting one.

You really don't want to get stuck with one of those coolers when they are hitting high temps in a clean system with a clean new card. Add a few months/years of dust build up to that and it's going to be even hotter.

Gumbi

BloodBath wrote: »

It's a sweet card though. I'd wait for 3rd party coolers and some competition on pricing if anyones thinking about getting one.

You really don't want to get stuck with one of those coolers when they are hitting high temps in a clean system with a clean new card. Add a few months/years of dust build up to that and it's going to be even hotter.

Agreed. A card that demands reapplication of thermal paste upon arrival to buy any bit of degrees you can is one you don't to buy in the first place :P

I'm seriously thinking of putting a 290/290x under water if I can get a full custom loop going second hand. With so much power draw, though, especially under voltage adjustment, 650watt PSU is pushing it. And I'll need at least a 240 rad for the GPU alone.

Gumbi

BloodBath wrote: »

It's a sweet card though. I'd wait for 3rd party coolers and some competition on pricing if anyones thinking about getting one.

You really don't want to get stuck with one of those coolers when they are hitting high temps in a clean system with a clean new card. Add a few months/years of dust build up to that and it's going to be even hotter.

Agreed. A card that demands reapplication of thermal paste upon arrival to buy any bit of degrees you can is one you don't to buy in the first place :P

I'm seriously thinking of putting a 290/290x under water if I can get a full custom loop going second hand. With so much power draw, though, especially under voltage adjustment, 650watt PSU is pushing it. And I'd need at least a 240 rad for the GPU alone.

Genghiz Cohen

Oh come meow, People are delidding their CPUs to gain a few degrees here and there but it seem's normal and expected.

Gumbi

Genghiz Cohen wrote: »

Oh come meow, People are delidding their CPUs to gain a few degrees here and there but it seem's normal and expected.

No, I'm talking about the 290x, which reaches throttling point under normal usage. In such a situation, it seems to me almost necessary to reapply some MX4 paste or some other paste.

game4it70

Ocuk have put this cooler on a 290x.Its not cheap but shows you what to expect from the aftermarket revisions of the cards.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HS-023-PL

Results.

Stock clocks and fan speeds
85'C in heaven on Stock cooler
55'C in heaven on MK-26 cooler with random case fans we found in the office.

Overclocked at 1200 Core + 1.4V
Stock cooler at 85'c with 100% fan speed.
MK-26 cooler at 72'C with silent fans.

Gumbi

Wow. Stock cooler sucks. Thought it was mainly just the power draw, but it seems it's both the power draw AND a hilariously bad cooler.

Quite a lot of voltage for that core speed though. Can't wait to see custom coolers mounted on custom boards with voltage control, Hynix memory, SORTED.

Genghiz Cohen

Gumbi wrote: »

No, I'm talking about the 290x, which reaches throttling point under normal usage. In such a situation, it seems to me almost necessary to reapply some MX4 paste or some other paste.

I know, I'm pointing out that Haswell CPUs need tweaking out of the box to get good performance.

What is the throttling temp for the 290x?

Gumbi

Genghiz Cohen wrote: »

I know, I'm pointing out that Haswell CPUs need tweaking out of the box to get good performance.

What is the throttling temp for the 290x?

95 degrees. And they do reach this temp under normal usage, minimising the amount of time spent at max boost clock (1000mhz).

btkm8unsl0w5r4

Seems they get to 95 all the time under load....wait for the aftermarket coolers, or the 780ti?

TerrorFirmer

bladesofglory might have a hard time shifting those 3 Titans now...

game4it70

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

bladesofglory might have a hard time shifting those 3 Titans now...

Lol that had crossed my mind...:D

Morf

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

bladesofglory might have a hard time shifting those 3 Titans now...

The chap is resourceful if nothing else.

Serephucus

Morf wrote: »

The chap is resourceful if nothing else.

That's one word. Not the one that first comes to mind though.

Gumbi

Serephucus wrote: »

That's one word. Not the one that first comes to mind though.

ROFL.

Morf

Serephucus wrote: »

That's one word. Not the one that first comes to mind though.

Well with the amount of high-spec hardware he claims to have he must have some kind of "resources".