AMD Radeon R9 290X 4 GB

[LAN_deRf_HA]

It's funny technically speaking Nvidia already has the answer for this on the market. They can match the performance and beat AMD in heat, power, noise, and overclocking, but there's one little thing preventing them from doing it. Hubris. They could drop the Titan to $550 today and utterly crash AMD's party. It would be the smart move. They just won't do it though. Another card with less shaders than the Titan priced a $100 above the 290X? That's a pretty arrogant response. I want to call it stupid too, but we won't know that until we see how it sells since they have more brand exposure.

 

[HumanSmoke]

and slashing the price will put a frown on people who have already got it. That will show how much profits nvia was screwing out of people.

I think most enthusiasts are well aware that the higher up the product stack you go, and the more you pay, the more you lose as it depreciates. Prime examples off the top of my head...the HD 7990 seems apropos.

bet the people at nvidia are going crazy and bald now XD

Jen Hsun's been crazy for a while, and the hairline is at the low tide mark already

It's all swings and roundabouts in the GPU game. I'm sure Nvidia made a few bucks from the GTX 780 -both in sales and reflected glory for the lesser cards. My guess is that 780 sales stalled out once we got close to Hawaii's announcement (I know I put off my purchases). Somehow I don't think the loss of a few high end $650 sales will impact the company too severely. Nvidia would be more worried if AMD had launched a mobile GPU jihad.

 

[bim27142]

THAT power consumption... even if someone will give this one out to me for free, I'll accept it still but I surely will sell it for something else...

 

[The Von Matrices]

Whatever NVidia does with pricing someone is going to complain. NVidia made the mistake of touting Titan as a high end gaming card when they really shouldn't have. If they drop the price of Titan (I don't think they should) then they will have complaints from current owners. If they don't drop the price, then the enthusiast community will continue to complain about it. Titan is a niche card.

My predictions:

NVidia will drop the GTX 780 to around $579, $30 over the R9 290X and the same price as the R9 290X BF4 bundle. The GTX 780's better power consumption, better thermals and noise, and game bundle make up for the performance difference.

Titan will stay where it is because it's a compute card, not a gaming card. For the people complaining about the price, it's like complaining that Quadros or FirePros are too expensive; gaming performance is not it's primary purpose.

The GTX 780 Ti will be faster than the R9 290X for the same or less power and noise and will be priced around $700.

 

[PopcornMachine]

Looking forward to 290. Should still be quite powerful, less juice needed, less heat, and even less money.

 

[Bansaku]

Great price, excellent performance yet I am still not impressed. It's one thing to beat out nVidia and their $1000 behemoth, but at the cost of 94'C and 100% fan speed?!? No thanks. What impresses me are my HIS IceQ x2 7950HD Boost in CFX, OC'd to 1100MHz/1300MHz; the temps on both GPUs never exceed 60'C and my Noctua 1200rpm 140mm I added to my PSU can be heard over BOTH cards at full load.

For those either needing to upgrade, or those who simply want to have the latest and greatest, I suggest waiting for the 3rd parties to release their non-reference coolers 290X, even if it means paying the extra $50 or so. 94'C, 100% fan, and the card throttling down by upwards of 30%? WTF AMD. Bundle their 290X with an FX-9590 and who needs to have the furnace on this upcoming winter!

 

[15th Warlock]

I'm just happy to see AMD pricing this card right, and for the first time in years I'm excited about an Ati card (yes, to me they never stopped being Ati) they are poised to make a come back big time, I long for the good old 9700Pro days.

Nvidia produces awesome cards too, but lately they have been pricing them way too high, yes, this coming from a dual Titan owner, don't take me wrong, I've thoroughly enjoyed these cards (and will continue doing so for the foreseeable future) but I sincerely hope this release starts a new era of price wars that will favor all of us as costumers, I for one would love to see Titan priced at $549 or lower, but I don't see it happening soon, we'll see what happens with the 780Ti.

For now lets allow AMD/Ati to bask in the limelight, they truly deserve it

 

[Frizz]

As I was looking at the benchmarks I was like... "meh I'll stick to my 7970s".

Then I saw the price and was like Do want.

 

[esrever]

Great price, excellent performance yet I am still not impressed. It's one thing to beat out nVidia and their $1000 behemoth, but at the cost of 94'C and 100% fan speed?!? No thanks. What impresses me are my HIS IceQ x2 7950HD Boost in CFX, OC'd to 1100MHz/1300MHz; the temps on both GPUs never exceed 60'C and my Noctua 1200rpm 140mm I added to my PSU can be heard over BOTH cards at full load.

For those either needing to upgrade, or those who simply want to have the latest and greatest, I suggest waiting for the 3rd parties to release their non-reference coolers 290X, even if it means paying the extra $50 or so. 94'C, 100% fan, and the card throttling down by upwards of 30%? WTF AMD. Bundle their 290X with an FX-9590 and who needs to have the furnace on this upcoming winter!

the fan speed is locked at 40% or 55%, the temps are mostly due to the stock heatsink.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

Pretty good price, performance and right where I was expecting. Right in between 780 and Titan and sometimes above both, or losing to both. Time for Nvidia price drops and 780ti to shake it up a bit.

 

[hardcore_gamer]

It's funny technically speaking Nvidia already has the answer for this on the market. They can match the performance and beat AMD in heat, power, noise, and overclocking, but there's one little thing preventing them from doing it. Hubris. They could drop the Titan to $550 today and utterly crash AMD's party. It would be the smart move. They just won't do it though. Another card with less shaders than the Titan priced a $100 above the 290X? That's a pretty arrogant response. I want to call it stupid too, but we won't know that until we see how it sells since they have more brand exposure.

Then AMD can price it lower again because the 290x die is smaller than titan.

 

[Sempron Guy]

This review also shows how good of a value the 7970/280x are.

 

[hardcore_gamer]

Titan is a niche card.

It no longer is...

 

[chinmi]

THAT power consumption... even if someone will give this one out to me for free, I'll accept it still but I surely will sell it for something else...

when u can buy a $549 video card u surely can pay an extra $30 per year for the extra electricity bill...

 

[HumanSmoke]

It no longer is...

Really? What other card has CUDA support, a large framebuffer for graphics visualization, and doesn't have handicapped double precision that doesn't cost $2.5K +

I'd still call the Titan niche unless you can provide an alternative.

 

[HalfAHertz]

Good price for the awesome performance but considering the fact that you'd need to spend 100$ for a water cooling solution to match 780's noise and temps, I don't think we'll see any serious price drops from Nvidia any time soon. My expectation is that the 780ti will slot in at 650$ and the 780 will drop to 599.

 

[Xzibit]

$30 more for the BF4 bundled version.

Why haven't you asked for the Driver yet. 13.11 Beta 5

 

[Mathragh]

Lol :"My neighbors actually complained, asking why I used power tools that late at night."
Is this really a true story?

Also, great to see more competition once again. The decision of AMD going with this cooler is a bit, weird though. It would seem to me like they could've had a win on multiple fronts if they gave just a bit more attention to the cooler. Firstly Ofc the noise could be lessened, but also the card could've performed better if they simply slapped on a better cooler.
They're kinda shooting themselves in the foot here, and I'm sure they could've made a cooler that was at least able to keep the card from overheating at stock clocks, while also not directly competing with 3rd party cooler makers.

 

[hardcore_gamer]

Really? What other card has CUDA support, a large framebuffer for graphics visualization, and doesn't have handicapped double precision that doesn't cost $2.5K +

I'd still call the Titan niche unless you can provide an alternative.

These things doesn't matter for gaming. Geforce GTX Titan is a gaming card after all. This review thread is for gaming cards. As far as gaming is concerned Geforce GTX Titan is no longer a niche card.

Nvidia can keep it as a niche card at $1000. But in this case, it will be a pointless niche card for gamers.

 

[fullinfusion]

About Efn time!! Thanks for the great review W1zz!! Cancelled my order for two of these!

Mabey next time AMD.... kinda the same shit but different pile.. I mean the 5.0 ghz amd proc for a grand..

Give me a $380 price mark for each and Im in but if not GFU AND... not interested...

 

[Nirutbs]

good luck to u all but the price is very high here. nice review almost perfect card.

 

[RCoon]

Those temperatures are literally retarded. How could they honestly put a cooler that bad on their flagship card knowing full well its going to reach almost 100 degrees -_-
Nice card and all, but they done goof with their cooler

 

[dj-electric]

Put a waterblock on this motherf$%ker and you'll violently vomit rainbows

 

[silapakorn]

I wonder how they would name the dual GPU version. R9 299X maybe?

 

[Sihastru]

With the exception of noise, power consumption and heat, this is one killer card.

But I do have one little reservation. Looking at the GPU clock/temperature graphs. It seems to me that even if the card is sold as a 1000MHz GPU card, after a few minutes, it throttles heavily. I mean, it even gets to go even under 650MHz. A HUGE drop.

So, with that in mind, I have to wonder. If the card is used to test/benchmark a game with a time-limited sequence (a few minutes) of gameplay or a built-in benchmark sequence (also, a few minutes)... wouldn't the card run that few minutes sequence at a higher clockspeed than it would tipically run during a gaming session?

So wouldn't the results that the card gets in the reviews be a lot higher (1000MHz and slightly down) then the actual results you get while you're actually gaming for a few hours (650MHz and up) and not just a few minutes?

Because it seems to me that this is actually a 650MHz core card that turbos to 850MHz when you're actually gaming...

Maybe I need to re-read the review a few times...