AMD Radeon R9 290X 4 GB

[BiggieShady]

Temperatures and dynamic clocks on this thing are hilarious. It runs at over 1 GHz for couple of minutes then it settles at 650 MHz at whopping 94 C.
Meanwhile, competing products keep their max clocks indefinitely with a temperature headroom - often more than 10 C below throttling temperature of 80 C.
No wonder price is so attractive.
I had my experiences with both overly hot and overly noisy cards, never again :shadedshu

 

[adulaamin]

Thanks for the review Wizz! I'm gonna wait for a non-ref cooler if there will ever be one. I can't see myself using this reference design unless I go water.

 

[the54thvoid]

Another interesting read up on the architecture, quite detailed.

I used to enjoy S|A but it all got too much with CD's bile for Nvidia. He's also very hit and miss with info - sometimes spot on and sometimes very wrong indeed. Remember in the days he said there'd never be a working Fermi chip (after GTX 480's issues) and Nvidia brought out the GTX 580 with all cores enabled. Also said Kepler was going to win this one (turned out 680 versus 7970) on all metrics but arguably, the 7970 was equal to the 680, if not faster clock for clock.

 

[Mathragh]

I used to enjoy S|A but it all got too much with CD's bile for Nvidia. He's also very hit and miss with info - sometimes spot on and sometimes very wrong indeed. Remember in the days he said there'd never be a working Fermi chip (after GTX 480's issues) and Nvidia brought out the GTX 580 with all cores enabled. Also said Kepler was going to win this one (turned out 680 versus 7970) on all metrics but arguably, the 7970 was equal to the 680, if not faster clock for clock.

I agree with you about that he's been hit/miss on a couple occasions.
I can see that he was at least partially right about Fermi, since they indeed did not bring out a fully enabled part without a respin. Furthermore, AMD did need to put out a GHz edition for the 7970 to be on par. Hes however also definitely been wrong about other things, and atleast in the past(seems to be slackened off a bit recently) hes always the first to crack down on Nvidia(also not always without reason).

All those points are a bit moot when it comes to what I linked though imho, since he's just doing an article on facts that are out there. The only thing he adds to these facts are explanations that let less tech-savvy users also understand what's going on. Granted there is also a bit of speculation going on, but its mainly just explaining what this new architecture is about. For that I cannot really fault him, and for myself at least, it was quite an enjoyable article to read. This was without noticing any real bias in what he was talking about as well.

 

[birdie]

It's the first time I'm truly disappointed with a TPU review - was it really necessary to test 290X at resolutions below 2560x1600?

This card is meant for 4K or dual monitors resolution, and it's a monster at them.

Its results would have been so much batter if tested properly.

Wizzard, it's time to update your setup and rewrite this review.

 

[LiveOrDie]

HAHA i love two for one deals buy a GPU and get a free heater or leaf blower.

 

[amschip]

I rarely post but this really made my day W1zzard

Windows 8.1, are incredibly unpopular with PC gamers (at least our forum members) due to the idiotic user-interface that insults our intelligence.

Great review btw

 

[the54thvoid]

It's the first time I'm truly disappointed with a TPU review - was it really necessary to test 290X at resolutions below 2560x1600?

This card is meant for 4K or dual monitors resolution, and it's a monster at them.

Its results would have been so much batter if tested properly.

Wizzard, it's time to update your setup and rewrite this review.

Conduct a poll and see what resolution monitor people use most predominantly. Also, some people like to game quite competitively and using a 1080 screen with super fast frame rates is very useful to them.

He does test eyefinity (triple screen set ups) so I really don't know what the crap you're complaining about.

How many people will own a 4K res monitor in the next 2 years? He tests 1600p and triple screen gaming. That's sufficient.

 

[W1zzard]

You are free to send me a 4k monitor so I can start testing, I'll even add a thank you note with your name/company name on the test setup page.

If you expect me to buy the monitor with my own $$, you'll have to wait until HDMI 2.0 is available in monitors and they've come down a bit more in pricing. I'm quite positive next year we'll add 4k testing.

 

[Tatty_Two]

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.

I have not considered the price of watercooling, those enthusiasts that watercool GPU's watercool NVidia products also, so not really any different, people watercool 780's, they DON'T have to watercool either card. From what I read in the review, it competed with the reference cooler.

Now to be fair, I agree, I don't like loud cooler noise, I don't like excessive temps, i always buy non reference design cards for the better cooling options, if I bought one of these I would do the same, therefore in my simple view, for me things are not substantially different enough to put me off the card, yes it may take longer to get non reference designs but for these reasons I am personally judging the GPU and not specifically the PCB and/or cooler etc. For those that only buy reference designs..... they may be put off and therefore I cannot disagree.

 

[Aquinus]

A single-slot water cooled variant of the R9 290X might be enough to sell me on going under water and to replace my 6870s. I love the numbers and cost, I dislike the temps and noise.

 

[ChristTheGreat]

High temperature, it was written in the sky. I am sure this chip was done for 20nm, but they have done it on 28nm..

Anyway, good GPU, good price, I will be waiting other than reference card as I am not doing any watercooling.

This will drop price for sure. It is 45% fore powerful than a stock HD7950, in quiet mode. So I guess overclocked, if I can grab a cheap 7950, let'S say 150$, this could worth it xD

 

[birdie]

You are free to send me a 4k monitor so I can start testing, I'll even add a thank you note with your name/company name on the test setup page.

If you expect me to buy the monitor with my own $$, you'll have to wait until HDMI 2.0 is available in monitors and they've come down a bit more in pricing. I'm quite positive next year we'll add 4k testing.

Point taken, but I believed the TPU website earns some money, not to mention that many companies know you personally and they are probably willing to lend you or to give you that 4K Asus for testing. P.S. I didn't mean to insult or anything.

 

[Doc41]

Damn it, and i was seriously considering getting this card....
Its price looks good but I know I’ll never be able to afford a custom loop after buying it,
IMO those temps and power consumption ruined it for me and are not worth it over those of the 780 including the "not so much fps over, mine is a 1080p anyway.

C'moon let’s see them price drops

 

[1d10t]

Definitively this is not my card.My current PSU could handle two 7970 (non GE),but as i overlooked maximum power draw i believe two of these will choke my PSU before entering any game
As power,heat and noise...history repeated itself....this card was just like Fermi in old days,but not anything close.Old Fermi uses blower type cooler and massive chunk of heatsink with 5 heatpipes,

yet,still touch a 96'C mark

compare to nVidia,AMD still doing a bit good with their cheap@$$ cooling
As for me,i'm definitely waiting next Wizz's review over R 290 (non X)

-= edited=-

nearly forgot...waiting these people shared their picture

Id crap if the 290X was $550.... Perhaps the 290, but not the X...

You'd crap? i'll vomit rainbows.

And I will burp unicorns...

 

[Deleted member 24505]

People who can afford to buy this card probably already have a water loop, so won't care about the cost of the block. If you can buy a $600 card you are not going to be bothered about an extra 100 for a water block for it surely.

 

[LiveOrDie]

People who can afford to buy this card probably already have a water loop, so won't care about the cost of the block. If you can buy a $600 card you are not going to be bothered about an extra 100 for a water block for it surely.

Not really a lot of people dont like water cooling its fine if you dont move your PC around a lot but i rather air cooling for my lan rig.

 

[Domokun]

Thanks for the review, W1zzard. On the second page of the review, you mentioned the following:

"Hawaii" takes advantage of the PCI-Express Gen 3.0 x16 bus interface.

Is there actually an advantage to using PCIE3 (as opposed to PCIE2) with an AMD R9 290X? Or is it a similar situation to every video card before it (i.e. minimal improvement)?

 

[GSG-9]

Thanks for the review, W1zzard. On the second page of the review, you mentioned the following:


Is there actually an advantage to using PCIE3 (as opposed to PCIE2) with an AMD R9 290X? Or is it a similar situation to every video card before it (i.e. minimal improvement)?

I would also like to know this, in my head I am guestimating its a 9 fps difference (similar to running sli in dual pci-e 8x vs dual 16x back in the day) but I would like real data on the card running PCIE2.

 

[Tatty_Two]

Thanks for the review, W1zzard. On the second page of the review, you mentioned the following:


Is there actually an advantage to using PCIE3 (as opposed to PCIE2) with an AMD R9 290X? Or is it a similar situation to every video card before it (i.e. minimal improvement)?

I can only guess that he means that the max ceiling on PCI-E 2.0 x16 can potentially be exceeded by this card, of course PCI-E 3.0 x16 gives more.... that to date has not really been exploited, it may be though that those with multi GPU setups who's PCI-E slots revert to 8 x 8 or 16 x 4 see more of the benefit @ PCI-E 3.0 than previously.

 

[msamelis]

Temperatures and dynamic clocks on this thing are hilarious. It runs at over 1 GHz for couple of minutes then it settles at 650 MHz at whopping 94 C.
Meanwhile, competing products keep their max clocks indefinitely with a temperature headroom - often more than 10 C below throttling temperature of 80 C.
No wonder price is so attractive.
I had my experiences with both overly hot and overly noisy cards, never again :shadedshu

Very well said, I feel the same way. It also looks very ugly, it should have a much better quality look at that kind of money. Unless we see some non stock coolers - which AMD won't allow until perhaps even 2014 - I don't see the point of getting this.

 

[swirl09]

This is AMD's version of Fermi/GF100.

I thought the very same, altho fermi1 was imo to a higher degree, the cards were going to 100+ and nVidia kept saying thats fine (^_^)

Nice card, nice price (hope that part doesnt do a kepler on us in a fortnight). NEEDS a seriously good custom cooler.

 

[Solaris17]

I just died

 

[Prima.Vera]

I will wait for a custom cooler, something like VaporX or similar. This cooler must be the worst and cheapest from ATI's history.

 

[BarbaricSoul]

Well it looks like I'm finally going full water-cooling if non-reference isn't released by Christmas. I love the performance numbers, not concerned about the energy usage, but the temperatures and noise levels are definitely a problem.