AMD Radeon R9 290 4 GB

[NeoXF]

Sorry, may have been wrong, does the card actually throttle W1zz?

No, why would it, lower power usage/same cooler as R9 290X & a 47% fan speed profile that was supposedly one of the "improvements" that Catalyst 13.11 beta v8 brought.

Edit: Well, to be fair, it might in some extreme cases, remember seeing a graph where it showed fluctuations between 935 to 948MHz, where as R9 290X Uber mode was 1000MHz constant. Well, I suppose it all depends on ambient.

 

[Frick]

I don't think the new Thief is a very attractive game to offer in a bundle. So far that game has been heavily criticised, and even the devs have removed stuff from the game because all their feedback was a colossal failure. I expect those Mantle-adopting companies to see their games drop in the bundle, Oxide engine games and such.

Waitwaitwaitwait and hold on here. Exactly what have they cut? Are you telling me they're making a proper Thief game and not a stupid Thief-lookalike-light which it did look like?

 

[newtekie1]

Sorry, may have been wrong, does the card actually throttle W1zz?

According to his conclusion the card does still throttle.

In our testing, the card barely throttled and ran above 925 MHz almost all the time.

 

[AsRock]

This is the issue I harped on about before. BF4 is NOT FREE with 290X cards, at least not in UK. It's not bundled. You pay £427-485 ish for a plain boxed R9 290X or you pay £505-515 ish for the BF4 edition. The card is the same - no frills. That's a premium of £78 worst case or £30 if you're silly enough to pay maximum dosh for either variable. That's not free.

Jeeeeez.

http://img.techpowerup.org/131105/Untitled.png

When is some thingg FREE ?, one way or another you pay for it and like to know were it says it's free to begin with.

 

[TheThirdRace]

Concerning the VGA "minus" point...

The summary of our argument is:

• People still buy/use cheap 21.5-inch 1080p monitors that only feature VGA input
• Those people use DVI to D-Sub adapters
• Those adapters work on every other high-end graphics card (launched in the past 2 years)
• Those adapters will not work on R9 290/290X
• That warrants a demerit

Your logic is sound when talking about a 150$ card, but we're talking about a 400$ card... Furthermore, virtually every monitor in the last 5 years has either DVI and/or HDMI. Add to that you'd be a fool to shell 400$ on a video card and not have a monitor that can actually keep up.

I've no problem with a missing VGA being a minus, but not for that kind of card. It's like saying your new 4k TV should get a "minus" because it doesn't have a analog input... You'd be crazy to use that combination in the first place.

 

[btarunr]

Concerning the VGA "minus" point...



Your logic is sound when talking about a 150$ card, but we're talking about a 400$ card...

People upgrade graphics cards, they rarely upgrade monitors. Besides, the lure of a 21.5-inch 1080p LCD display around the $100 point can be very strong for noobs, who would want to transfer cost-savings from monitor to graphics card. Such displays often only feature D-Sub inputs. Then they try to stick in an aftermarket adapter to find out that not only does it not work, but it won't even stick into the DVI connectors (they're -D, lack analog guide pins).

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

People upgrade graphics cards, they rarely upgrade monitors. Besides, the lure of a 21.5-inch 1080p LCD display around the $100 point can be very strong for noobs, who would want to transfer cost-savings from monitor to graphics card. Such displays often only feature D-Sub inputs.

I get what you're saying but he was right only an uneducated newbie would team an R 9 up with a monitor that is so old it hasn't got dvi or hdmi and someone trying to save money by buying a cheap shit old monitor is unlikely to buy a high end gpu but I suppose like every release the opposing teams fambois will jump on any little feature drop like its major.
Foolish though because I cheaped out on a 70 quid 22" hanns g and guess what its got dvi so the issue of cheap monitor on dear card isn't much of an issue imho.

 

[newtekie1]

I get what you're saying but he was right only an uneducated newbie would team an R 9 up with a monitor that is so old it hasn't got dvi or hdmi and someone trying to save money by buying a cheap shit old monitor is unlikely to buy a high end gpu but I suppose like every release the opposing teams fambois will jump on any little feature drop like its major.
Foolish though because I cheaped out on a 70 quid 22" hanns g and guess what its got dvi so the issue of cheap monitor on dear card isn't much of an issue imho.

You forget that there are still people, like me, who use more than one monitor and have a secondary monitor that only has VGA.

 

[RCoon]

Waitwaitwaitwait and hold on here. Exactly what have they cut? Are you telling me they're making a proper Thief game and not a stupid Thief-lookalike-light which it did look like?

They completely removed the level up system from the game at the intense backlash they received from testers. They changed a bunch of other things too but I dont remember off the top of my head. But no, it's not a real Thief game YET. Still Thief lookalike for now.

I just assume they'll offer Lichdom, Thief and that other game that features their weird audio thing in their game bundles. Seems like a good way for them to scratch each other backs right?

Even if he could (confirm it), why would I, or anyone, take his word for it, best scenario is to test it yourself.

Sir, are you trying to get me to buy one of these?

 

[FX-GMC]

You forget that there are still people, like me, who use more than one monitor and have a secondary monitor that only has VGA.

I also fit into this category. How noobish of me.

 

[TheThirdRace]

I get what you're saying but he was right only an uneducated newbie would team an R 9 up with a monitor that is so old it hasn't got dvi or hdmi and someone trying to save money by buying a cheap shit old monitor is unlikely to buy a high end gpu but I suppose like every release the opposing teams fambois will jump on any little feature drop like its major.
Foolish though because I cheaped out on a 70 quid 22" hanns g and guess what its got dvi so the issue of cheap monitor on dear card isn't much of an issue imho.

Exactly my point. You kinda have to work hard to get a VGA only monitor today...

Also, I wouldn't blame Ferrari if a buyer would decide to put 100$ tires under it and cause it to handle badly. That would be the buyer's fault, not Ferrari's.

 

[FX-GMC]

Exactly my point. You kinda have to work hard to get a VGA only monitor today...

Also, I wouldn't blame Ferrari if a buyer would decide to put 100$ tires under it and cause it to handle badly. That would be the buyer's fault, not Ferrari's.

Bad analogy. You can still put $100 tires on it if you wanted to.

Also, why are you assuming that someone is going to buy a VGA only monitor instead of already owning one?

 

[johnnyfiive]

Man... stuff just keeps getting better.

 

[technogiant]

Never mind all this quite and ubber mode or 47% fan on the 290 non -x version.....what do these things do with the blower pegged at 100%.....don't care about the noise..I wear headphones

 

[Brusfantomet]

Managed to get one of the last 290X here in Norway on sunday. and now the 290 comes with better availability (at the moment) and lower price, oh well, i am gona check if it throtels under water first (my xspc raystorm gpu block fits according to xspc).

otherwise i may have to use some European consumer rights and return it

 

[TheThirdRace]

Bad analogy. You can still put $100 tires on it if you wanted to.

Also, why are you assuming that someone is going to buy a VGA only monitor instead of already owning one?

Technically you can put 100$ tires on your Ferrari, but it's unusable. Most "luxury" cars prevent that by using some kind of special rims with the "right" balance. For example, you could use a normal rim to mount the tires of an Audi, but your car would wobble on the road. If a 30K Audi does that, I doubt a Ferrari would let you put whatever you want... especially from a company that does a research on you before they accept to put you on the waiting list to buy one.

So, yes my analogy wasn't perfect in every single details, but you're missing the point. A 400$ card has higher standards a low class card doesn't. You can't blame the company for not making their top of the line product for the bottom line users. You want top of the line, use top of the line. A better analogy would be blaming Ferrari because the engine doesn't use fuel with the lowest concentration of octane. If you can't afford the fuel, you can't afford the car, it's not the company's fault.

As for assuming the VGA monitor isn't already owned, I didn't. But eventually you have to realize technology moves on even if you don't. You can't expect every piece of hardware in the next century to support a technology that was already obsolete 10 years ago. Sorry, but it doesn't work that way. If you're willing to pay 400$ for a video card, it comes with the requirement of having a monitor that will give you what you paid for. VGA doesn't give you what you paid for your video card, simple as that.

And for the record, I'm no AMD fan boy. I'm a current happy owner of a 770 GTX and it would take a complete turn around to get me back in the AMD camp after suffering for years from the bad driver interface. I simply support the fact a 400$ card should require a monitor that wasn't built in the VHS era...

 

[The Von Matrices]

I agree. A sustained rip-off is way better than a short-term rip-off.

I argue that it is. With any luxury product the price is completely ridiculous and a rip-off if you consider the cost of materials. But luxury products also have prestige and because of that maintain a high resale value. There is a reason to pay more for a product initially if the depreciation is lower and you can recoup the extra cost at resale.

Do I think that Titan and the original 780 were priced too high? Yes. But at least they held their resale value for a long time. There are a lot of happy Titan and 780 owners who bought their product on launch day and don't regret their purchase because prices remained stable for 6-9 months. I don't expect any technology product to be in investment but it's ridiculous that the 290X could only justify its price for all of two weeks.

I don't emphasize with the people who bought a 780 directly before the 290X launch because that was just a dumb idea knowing that its competitor's launch was imminent. But I do emphasize with the people who bought a 290X at launch and could have gotten the same performance for $150 less just for waiting two weeks. The 290 was just completely unforeseeable and AMD screwed 290X launch purchasers by releasing it in its revised version.

Managed to get one of the last 290X here in Norway on sunday. and now the 290 comes with better availability (at the moment) and lower price, oh well, i am gona check if it throtels under water first (my xspc raystorm gpu block fits according to xspc).

otherwise i may have to use some European consumer rights and return it

I emphasize with you. I doubt you're the only one who feels this way.

 

[PopcornMachine]

Don't understand all the talk about VGA output. Who would buy a $400+ video card to run VGA? Talk about stretching a point just to find a negative.

The real issues are the heat and power usage, and bang for buck.

Was hoping for better on the first two, but more than satisfied with the value.

Going to put a water block on my next card regardless, and real interested in seeing what this one does with proper cooling.

 

[The Von Matrices]

I think the VGA output argument is pretty clear:

If you use VGA for your primary monitor then you're out of luck with the R9 290; however if you really want VGA you can buy a $25 DisplayPort to VGA adapter. But for the naysayers, remember that the 290 has two true dual link DVI ports in exchange for the lack of a VGA port. I'd say that for the number of people using VGA as their primary monitor compared to the number of 2560x1440 monitor users that's a good tradeoff.

If you use a VGA monitor as a second, non-gaming monitor, then you don't need to plug it into the R9 290. Almost every modern processor has integrated graphics. Just plug it into the VGA port of integrated graphics and you have the VGA port for your second monitor.

 

[newtekie1]

As for assuming the VGA monitor isn't already owned, I didn't. But eventually you have to realize technology moves on even if you don't. You can't expect every piece of hardware in the next century to support a technology that was already obsolete 10 years ago. Sorry, but it doesn't work that way. If you're willing to pay 400$ for a video card, it comes with the requirement of having a monitor that will give you what you paid for. VGA doesn't give you what you paid for your video card, simple as that.

You are still assuming the VGA monitor is used as the primary. I've got a very nice 27" 2560x1440 monitor as my primary monitor, but I use a very nice 1680x1050 monitor as a secondary that only has VGA.

I think the VGA output argument is pretty clear:

If you use VGA for your primary monitor then you're out of luck with the R9 290; however if you really want VGA you can buy a $25 DisplayPort to VGA adapter. But for the naysayers, remember that the 290 has two true dual link DVI ports in exchange for the lack of a VGA port. I'd say that for the number of people using VGA as their primary monitor compared to the number of 2560x1440 monitor users that's a good tradeoff.

If you use a VGA monitor as a second, non-gaming monitor, then you don't need to plug it into the R9 290. Almost every modern processor has integrated graphics. Just plug it into the VGA port of integrated graphics and you have the VGA port for your second monitor.

Both of those still lead to not having native VGA as being a negative. Not something that weighs heavily on the final score, I'm sure, but a negative that is worth mentioning. Now if they included the Displayport adapter with the card, that would make the negative go away.

 

[Steevo]

With any luxury product the price is completely ridiculous and a rip-off if you consider the cost of materials. But luxury products also have prestige.

Thanks for the quote.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/prestige

I don't think computer hardware qualifies as prestige, unless you mean prestige = penile compensation.

Good for Titan owners on having a large epeen that says "I have enough money to be the same as everyone else who has enough money to waste, I'm pretentious!"

Edit, autocorrect.

 

[TRWOV]

400? oh boy, oh boy

 

[theonedub]

More Nvidia price cuts on the way?

 

[newtekie1]

More Nvidia price cuts on the way?

I hope!

 

[The Von Matrices]

Thanks for the quote.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/prestige

I don't think computer hardware qualifies as prestige, unless you mean prestige = penile compensation.

Good for Titan owners on having a large epeen that says "I have enough money to be the same as everyone else who has enough money to waste, I'm pretentious!"

Edit, autocorrect.

So you only read the first three sentences of my argument and made a silly comment based on it? If you're going to do that then my time is wasted on you. My argument was not about buying a product for prestige but how prestigious products hold resale value.