Wednesday, October 16th 2013

Radeon R9 290X Pitted Against GeForce GTX TITAN in Early Review
Here are results from the first formal review of the Radeon R9 290X, AMD's next-generation flagship single-GPU graphics card. Posted by Chinese publication PCOnline.com.cn, the it sees the R9 290X pitted against the GeForce GTX TITAN, and GeForce GTX 780. An out-of-place fourth member of the comparison is the $299 Radeon R9 280X. The tests present some extremely interesting results. Overall, the Radeon R9 290X is faster than the GeForce GTX 780, and trades blows, or in some cases, surpasses the GeForce GTX TITAN. The R9 290X performs extremely well in 3DMark: FireStrike, and beats both NVIDIA cards at Metro: Last Light. In other tests, its half way between the GTX 780 and GTX TITAN, leaning closer to the latter in some tests. Power consumption, on the other hand, could either dampen the deal, or be a downright dealbreaker. We'll leave you with the results.More results follow.
Source:
PCOnline.com.cn
121 Comments on Radeon R9 290X Pitted Against GeForce GTX TITAN in Early Review
nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3135/
Dunno if it would have made much of a difference on a single card setup though, I can tell you this from personal experience, jumping from PCIe 3.0 in my Haswell rig to PCIe 2.0 on my SB-E setup didn't make that much of a difference, yes I'm comparing rendering a little over 6MP per frame on my setup vs over 10MP on a 4K monitor, but what I'm trying to say is even at such high resolutions, it doesn't seem like dual Titans are constrained by PCIe ver 2.0.
And yes, IB-E natively supports PCIe 3.0 on X79 :), dunno if hardware sites who published these benchmarks were using that or IB-E, not much information has been made public by them...
Well, sometimes full 16x per card in dual setup does wonders (I've just recently seen a R9 280X crossfire review w/ 8x and 16x results and... it's there). But I do agree that on single card setups, it means next to squat. And I also know that most people claiming it would make a difference are sore GTX 780 users...
BTW guys:
wccftech.com/amd-radeon-r9-290x-hawaii-xt-uber-mode-crossfirex-performance-leaked/
And:
Wadda ya think?
But on the bright side, I think AMD mentioned something about 6GB versions of R9 290X.
Which begs the question, have they "fixed" the uneven VRAM placement on their cards? Look at GTX 660 Ti, nVidia uses 2GB as default... and that doesn't exactly fit with a 192bit bus (there's also 3GB version). AMD never (/could do) did this before, it was either double or nothing.
He try'n to find the OC limit in 3DMark 11 it seams and those runs are fine.
It looks like the core will be similar to the OC of Tahiti on reference but then again if you look at the settings you want someone better at running benchmarks to release #'s and screenshot settings
source (higher resolution benches on there)
forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=35630412&postcount=13
It's looking very, very strong.
R9 290X Lightning, anyone?
Apart from saying I would have no interest in a 290X Lightning as MSI have been doing sub par on that front. 7970 with poor connectivity - read W1zz's review and the 780 Lightning with shit voltage locks to keep NV happy and no workaround. I think the Matrix cards are looking like better bets these days.
The LN2 bios I don't think he even tried to use and ships with the same power limit as the stock bios rendering it useless. When you use the 300% bios MSI released, there are power use problems that, when cranked to 300% show ~250% power use out of the gate (though power meters show same consumption). That said without a third part bios, its less useful than the Classified or HOF.
Here is our review on it. We are only one of two sites that actually mentioned the power use issue...(and the other one blamed it on MSI AB, not the bios) and quite frankly the only site that gave it the rating it deserved.
I have been working with MSI for almost 8 weeks now trying to get a proper bios out but nada. For that card, look for 3rd party bios for sure...
He's good at doing that, I'm using his 400%+ power limit bios for my GPUs.
The last one I tried with him had the 300% limit (= 640W) but the voltage only allowed it to go to 1.21v. Does he have newer ones out that allow you to use at least 1.25v (what you can sort of use from the factory)?
The actual drivers are the problem. The Afterburner soft mod bypasses the driver and reads from the NCP2046 magic box. It's the direct reading from there that allows the voltage change - that's why it doesn't work on EVGA's Precision X (apparently). Although Precision is based on AB it is not the same.
I don't think a BIOS can change it past 1.21 unless the drivers are modded too? But I could be totally wrong as I technically know nothing about electronics :roll:
Have you tried asking MSI the usual unlocked (non public) version of afterburner?
TBH a part of this big fail is to be given to nvidia and its useless limits, they should just stick to limit reference cards, annoying pricks they are.
www.overclock.net/t/1421221/gtx780-titan-any-ncp4206-card-vdroop-fix-solid-1-325v
(Er, if that was about 780 / Titan.)
But we're hijacking a thread here - sorry folks.
But ,here's hoping no such hijinks are required to get the best out of the 290X but my gut is saying that Uber mode means they have some TDP shit going down. They all seem to brag these days about being power efficient. Irrelevant for enthusiast cards tbh.
My goal is to get the 300% bios working with the +100mv that MSI gives you out of the gate. I don't care if it comes from MSI (though it damn well better!!!) or 3rd party, but I haven't seen anything over 1.21v myself from Skyn3t without adding those registry entries.
Its not the driver it seems. As I can, with the right bios and MSI AB, run WELL past 1.35v. +1 oops. :)