I think that a lot of people see Titan and think that since R9 290X is half the price you can accept its flaws. What I argue is that R9 290X is still a $550 card, which is a LOT of money. You shouldn't have to put up with this when you spend that much money. NVidia did AMD a favor, because if all that existed was the $650 GTX 780 and there was no comparison to the $1000 Titan, I think the conclusions would be much different.
+1, exactly. It should be damned near perfect at this price. One thing that really gets me, is why they still use that noisy impeller first used on the 2900 six years ago? FFS AMD, can't you make a better one? NVIDIA have done and it's a very cheap part too, so what gives?
On most NVIDIA cards, you can actually run the fan at 100% and while fairly loud, it's not overly objectionable. However, AMD cards are overly objectionable at much lower speeds, which is ridiculous. And to anyone who tells me to just buy an aftermarket cooler, that's a non-argument, because someone shouldn't be expected to spend more money, void their warranty, potentially break their card and be inconvenienced just because AMD won't put a proper cooler on their card ie compensating for AMD at the customers' own expense.
I disagree. No piece of computer hardware should ever get a 10. There will always be some sort of flaw.
Agreed. Perhaps 9.8 or 9.9 should be the maximum for hardware that does literally
everything superlatively. For example, imagine a graphics card that was three times faster than a Titan, used 2/3 the power, made very little noise even when totally maxed out, used only one slot, had perfect drivers (including "perfect" multicard scaling) and only cost $200. Something as extreme as that would be worth such a score. Alas, we can only dream, lol.
As a current AMD card owner, even I agree
Don't get me wrong, the 290x is fast and the price is good but it isn't the 780 killer that most people hyped it as (hence why people are comparing it to the Titan instead of the 780).
Stock vs stock and overclocked vs overclocked, its basically the same damn thing as the 780 while being $75 cheaper (NVidia is dropping the price of the 780 to $550-575 in the next few weeks to pretty much cancel things out all while releasing the 780 Ti for $650 that will take single GPU crown).
I'm not extremely disappointed with this card ($550 is a good price) its just a $550-575 780 and a $650 780 Ti will pretty much negate all the pros of the card (price cut 780 will make the 290x not really a better value of the money since it will be identical and a 780Ti will clearly take the single GPU crown while costing not that much more)
After reading this review im for damn sure waiting for the 20nm GPU"s next year (the GTX 870/pirate island equivalent should offer better performance than the 290x/780 for only $400).
Agreed. It's beginning to look like we're hitting the limits of what 28nm can do within a commercially viable power and heat envelope isn't it?
I'd love to see what an ungimped GK110 AND 290x could do when put into a special board that can supply all the juice the GPUs need, overclocked as high as possible, along with high powered cooling to prevent throttling even under the likes of Furmark. I'll bet you might see a 60-80% performance improvement, perhaps even 100% if you're really lucky. Of course, a card like that would be for demo purposes only and not be commercially viable, alas. It must be quite frustrating for a GPU designer to know what their chip can really do, but be forced to constrain them in order to sell them.
, Ironically most on here think imho im a Amd kinda guy but im just a skint member 
well not skint but like many i prioritise pc upgrades as a commodity and only buy what i Think i need then spend the spare on beer and women
