AMD Radeon R9 290X 4 GB

[sweet]

All hail the new performance king
About the noise + heat, the card can simply be underclocked if quiet gaming is prefer. You can achieve the 780's performance + temp + noise with 550$, still a win
For the guys who wear headphone when gaming, tweak the fan limit to 90-100% and enjoy the Titan killer performance, again with 550$.

Oh wait, who still cares about 780/Titan anyway

 

[arterius2]

It's an enthusiasts card, many who buy will watercool, many will wait until non reference cooler designs are available, some of the others won't care, some will and will take up other options.

did you consider the price of a watercooling kit?(+100~200$!) add that on top of the card it runs alot more than gtx780.

and why do I have to buy a card and THEN watercool it to be even competitive with the other card?

its like selling me a brand new car with bad transmission, and then charging me a premium to fix it so I can drive it off the lot.

 

[arterius2]

All hail the new performance king
About the noise + heat, the card can simply be underclocked if quiet gaming is prefer. You can achieve the 780's performance + temp + noise with 550$, still a win
For the guys who wear headphone when gaming, tweak the fan limit to 90-100% and enjoy the Titan killer performance, again with 550$.

Oh wait, who still cares about 780/Titan anyway

the card draws ~25% more power for ~5% performance gain, under clocking the card will do nothing to even the odds, at best it will run at the same temp as gtx780 but lower performance.

 

[Xzibit]

For those who got there E-Penis cut off and complaining about clocks you might want to read how the card works...

[PCPER] AMD Radeon R9 290X Hawaii Review - Taking on the TITANs

AMD advertises the R-Series with "GPU Clock Speed - Up-To 1GHz"

 

[The Von Matrices]

For those who got there E-Penis cut off and complaining about clocks you might want to read how the card works...

[PCPER] AMD Radeon R9 290X Hawaii Review - Taking on the TITANs

http://www.pcper.com/files/imagecache/article_max_width/review/2013-10-23/clock-avg.png

AMD advertises the R-Series with "GPU Clock Speed - Up-To 1GHz"

That article makes a point I think is especially poignant

To quote the article:

All this means now is that we needed to "warm up" the GPU each time we were ready to benchmark it. I tended to sit in the game for at least 5 minutes before running our normal test run and I think that is plenty of time to get the GPU up to its 95C operating temperature and push clocks to realistic levels. Be wary of benchmarks results that DO NOT take that into account as they could be 10%+ faster than real-world results would indicate.

I would like to know if W1zzard took this into account in his review.

 

[Mathragh]

Benchies with apparently lower ambient temperatures here.

Seems to make quite a difference.

 

[Zen_]

I can understand the complaints about noise and high temps, but 50w of electricity? Please. I'm all for higher efficiency, but this is like complaining that a 600 HP Ferrari gets poor fuel economy. Even if you gamed 40 hours a week, that 50w loss is 2 kw of power. Where I live that is 24 cents, or $1 a month, or $12 a year.

 

[the54thvoid]

All hail the new performance king

All hail the 7990
Oh, you meant the single gpu king. Okay, it's only king when it's really loud and if you use the quiet BIOS it's not king.

About the noise + heat, the card can simply be underclocked if quiet gaming is prefer. You can achieve the 780's performance + temp + noise with 550$, still a win

It doesn't really even do quiet gaming. It's 4 dBA louder than a 780 in quiet mode. That's over twice the sound pressure. You'd need to downclock seriously to match 'quiet' gaming levels.

For the guys who wear headphone when gaming, tweak the fan limit to 90-100% and enjoy the Titan killer performance, again with 550$.

Yup, Think we've covered that. Kind of funny what people put up with to "win". I'm old, i like refinement. And about 3% isn't really killer.

Oh wait, who still cares about 780/Titan anyway

If you have a Titan already - I think a lot of people are going, oh well, I can hang on to my card for now. If you care about noise - 780 is better choice. If you like custom cooling - EKWB have blocks for sale for the card now

All in the card is an exceptional performer but it's let down by a shit cooler. I think it's plain to see who can see logically the flaws of the card and who can see it's merits. The linear voltage overclock scaling is absolutely fantastic. I can see it pounding 690's and 7990's to dust with proper cooling.

The chip is brilliant (but hot) the price is excellent considering Nvidia's levels and it restores AMD to what I would say is joint top - not king. But without proper modification, it loses when you start to try overclocking. I'd like to see a baseline overclocking comparison for 290X, 780 and Titan, using stock coolers. That would be quite useful.

 

[buggalugs]

Um, both my old 780's with reference coolers ran at 1200mhz core and stopped dead at 69 degrees... NVidia's reference cooler was viable for high end cards and for overclocking, with decent noise output. Feel free to check out my 780 overclocking guide in the forums.

People are making excuses that we should expect the reference cooler to be bad and to throttle the card to kingdom come and not be a viable choice. But we shouldn't. Reference coolers should be(and a lot ARE) viable options for both noise and cooling potential. Especially in SLI/Crossfire circumstances.

EDIT: Not to mention this card DOES NOT maintain its advertised baseclock over extended periods of time. WHY ARENT PEOPLE ANGRY ABOUT THIS???

Well, it might have kept it to 69 degrees, but noise levels are still way too high for me looking at the benchmarks 48 dB is still loud. I will admit Nvidia's most recent 7 series coolers are OK compared to most blower coolers but still don't compare to decent aftermarket coolers. As I said I haven't bought a reference design for a few years because of that.

Sure this card is under equipped with the reference cooler but the card is cheap, either buy an aftermarket cooler or wait for non-reference, which I would do anyway.

With a decent aftermarket cooler , overclocking potential is awesome and should pull right away from Titan. Overall, I think the card is a winner because of that performance to price.

Have a look at current graphic cards at online stores now, most versions have aftermarket coolers maybe with the exception of Titan( and only because Nvidia wont allow it). Reference designs are just the base model, with a decent cooler it will be a game changer.

 

[sweet]

did you consider the price of a watercooling kit?(+100~200$!) add that on top of the card it runs alot more than gtx780.

and why do I have to buy a card and THEN watercool it to be even competitive with the other card?

its like selling me a brand new car with bad transmission, and then charging me a premium to fix it so I can drive it off the lot.

LOL, if this card is run under watercooling, it will blow both 780 and Titan away.

Base on the figure above, the reference solution really hold the card down. However, the watercool aproach will help the card operating at 1000 MHz, or even more if your PSU is capable, consistently. So, the whole bunch of 290x + watercool will cost around a custom 780, with superior performance.

 

[arterius2]

LOL, if this card is run under watercooling, it will blow both 780 and Titan away.

http://tpucdn.com/reviews/AMD/R9_290X/images/analysis_uber.gif

Base on the figure above, the reference solution really hold the card down. However, the watercool aproach will help the card operating at 1000 MHz, or even more if your PSU is capable, consistently. So, the whole bunch of 290x + watercool will cost around a custom 780, with superior performance.

why are you comparing watercooled card vs non-water cooled card? AMD fanboys never seem to show any sense of logic.
what's preventing anyone from water cooling a gtx780 and upping its clocks to meet the r9 290x while still running cooler and more quiet?

use some logic next time you post or you come off as a clown.

 

[the54thvoid]

why are you comparing a watercooled card vs non-water cooled card? AMD fanboys never seem to show any sense of logic

Let's not start using that bloody term please :shadedshu

 

[sweet]

why are you comparing a watercooled card vs non-water cooled card? AMD fanboys never seem to show any sense of logic

Because the price of the two systems are the same, mate. Do the math, 290X + water cool = 650-750$ = high end custom 780.
If you don't prefer the wc solution, just wait for a custom version. Around 600$ for a world beater.

 

[buggalugs]

LOL, if this card is run under watercooling, it will blow both 780 and Titan away.

Base on the figure above, the reference solution really hold the card down. However, the watercool aproach will help the card operating at 1000 MHz, or even more if your PSU is capable, consistently. So, the whole bunch of 290x + watercool will cost around a custom 780, with superior performance.

I agree but not even water cooling, a decent non-reference cooler like on MSI's lightning or Asus DCUII will be all that's needed.

Who knows, Asus and MSI etc might have a newer generation coolers that will perform even better than we expect, but at the very least it will get rid of noise and high temps.

For the price, there are plenty of options.

 

[HumanSmoke]

Benchies with apparently lower ambient temperatures here.
Seems to make quite a difference.

Might be a case of wallpapering over the cracks. Unless you're dedicated to running AC or plan on only cranking the card up in the cooler months I'm not convinced that a lower ambient temp does that much to mitigate the issue. The other side of that particular coin is...what about people who live in warm climates? My country is just coming into spring and summer where ambient can get to 30+C and 90% humidity.
If cold weather users can get a performance boost what happens at the other end of the scale for us in the tropics?

BTW: Hardware France have thermographs of the card. Interesting comparison

 

[The Von Matrices]

Because the price of the two systems are the same, mate. Do the math, 290X + water cool = 650-750$ = high end custom 780.
If you don't prefer the wc solution, just wait for a custom version. Around 600$ for a world beater.

I agree but not even water cooling, a decent non-reference cooler like on MSI's lightning or Asus DCUII will be all that's needed.

Who knows, Asus and MSI etc might have a newer generation coolers that will perform even better than we expect, but at the very least it will get rid of noise and high temps.

For the price, there are plenty of options.

While I understand your desire to compare with the GTX 780 today, you are neglecting that the GTX 780 Ti will be here in three weeks, which is sooner than custom cooled R9 290X's will arrive.

The GTX 780Ti will force down the price of the GTX 780 near R9 290X levels, making your arguments that custom cooled R9 290's are cheaper than the GTX 780 invalid.

 

[Frick]

Check out Anand's made up scores lol. They're not even close to these.

When will people learn?

In all those benchmarks the 290x consistently beats Titan. The FPS numbers might differ, but it still shows the 290x as being the better card, and he concludes that the 780 is a hard sell now except on acoustic grounds, which seems to be very true.

So what are you on about exactly?

 

[Xaser04]

LOL, if this card is run under watercooling, it will blow both 780 and Titan away.


Base on the figure above, the reference solution really hold the card down. However, the watercool aproach will help the card operating at 1000 MHz, or even more if your PSU is capable, consistently. So, the whole bunch of 290x + watercool will cost around a custom 780, with superior performance.

And if you watercool a 780/Titan they will also perform faster.... (after all its boost clock is linked to the temperature).

The temperature & throttling seen makes me wonder how these cards will perform in game in a "normal" case scenario. What performance would we see in say Crysis 3 after 2 hours of 99% load?

The 290x does appear to perform well (in a benchmark scenario at least) and is priced aggressively, but for me the noise & temperature are unnacceptable (especially compared to the excellent Titan / 780 blower).

 

[LTUGamer]

Blower fan is crap... Why amd bans normal cooling solutions!?

 

[sweet]

And if you watercool a 780/Titan they will also perform faster.... (after all its boost clock is linked to the temperature).

The temperature & throttling seen makes me wonder how these cards will perform in game in a "normal" case scenario. What performance would we see in say Crysis 3 after 2 hours of 99% load?

The 290x does appear to perform well (in a benchmark scenario at least) and is priced aggressively, but for me the noise & temperature are unnacceptable (especially compared to the excellent Titan / 780 blower).

If you can't see my point about the price, I think we can stop talking about wc now.

From the quiet mode results, the card still offers impressive performance even when throttling. You can see the answer for your question in the below picture, 290X quiet mode spend most of time in the 650-850 region, and still outperform 780.

Another note for you: The blower on Titan/780 actually benefits more from the testbench scenario. They use aluminum cover, which helps transfer the heat better than the plastic cover use on 290X, especially on testbench setup when you don't have to worry about the heat in your close case.

 

[Mathragh]

Looks like we have a new LN2 winner aswell!

with 1,435/1,650MHz clocks I suppose there is a lot of headroom left for high end air and water set-ups aswell.

 

[TheMailMan78]

As all GPUs nowadays it seems over priced for what you can get for half the price. Over all its a nice card but it seems late to the party as usual for ATI. Curious to see how the 780ti stacks up in price and performance. I love a good price war......even in its more than I can afford lol.

 

[Frick]

As all GPUs nowadays it seems over priced for what you can get for half the price.

There. This has always been the case.

 

[HammerON]

Looks like we have a new LN2 winner aswell!

with 1,435/1,650MHz clocks I suppose there is a lot of headroom left for high end air and water set-ups aswell.

Wow - I am liking these GPU's

 

[Mathragh]

Another interesting read up on the architecture, quite detailed.


One of the things explained is the new crossfire circuitry
Apparently the crossfire engine is vastly improved, which should result in way better frame synchronisation, timing and displaying.
Also, the limit of "just four cards" is gone, atleast theoretically.

I don't really see any CPU sufficiently feeding a quad dual-gpu set-up though

Edit: a fragment about crossfire :

Enter XDMA, exit connectors, all needed data is now pulled over the PCIe bus via DMA. A requesting card can reach out to the required target and essentially grab, or at least ask nicely, for what it needs. This also allows for an unlimited number of cards in Crossfire but we forgot to ask how many. In any case eight cards should be doable if something else doesn’t bottleneck things first.

What is the XDMA engine? It is really just a display controller connected to the display engine so it can be timing aware but unlike the older way it isn’t timing dependent. This is a subtle but key difference. The card with the monitor connected is now able to prefetch the data it needs long before it needs it. The old Crossfire basically requested when it was needed, not before, and if anything burped things got ugly. The new XDMA version has much more flexible algorithms to both predict and fetch what it needs long before it needs the data. Storage is also larger and more flexible, again based on algorithmic control rather than fixed.

In short as soon as a render surface is enabled on the displaying card the data can be requested from the source. The storage space is also guaranteed to be adequate as well and nothing is just in time delivery so minor bumps in the night don’t turn in to missed frames. This should not only allow more scaling for card count, display counts, and screen sizes, but also higher reliability too. It will be interesting to see if this opens up multi-card, multi-monitor Crossfire solutions, with a bit of clever software hacks, multiple cards each with connected monitors is at least theoretically possible. Hmmm, Pi.