Is it a good time to buy R9 290 NOW ?

[Temuka]

]Not really at that price.
Hmm Tri-X Sapphire though..
I'd do it.

290x for 299$ isn't good price?! + 20$ rebate

 

[Subyman]

I think it is a good price. Recent GPU launches haven't substantially increased price/performance during their launch except for the 970. The price cuts in the months after end up adjusting the price/performance ladder. There won't be much better for the price all year even with the new launches unless there is a serious shake up. Buy it and have fun!

FWIW, I'm tired of waiting too and ended up picking up a used 970 to get me through the next few months, but I would have chosen a 290X if the price was right. Playing in the sub-300 range tends to be good for your resale. You could sell the 290X at a $60 loss in 5-6 months if you really are itching to move up to one of the new cards. $60 to game for half a year isn't bad at all.

 

[Leyawiin]

FWIW, I'm tired of waiting too and ended up picking up a used 970 to get me through the next few months...

You know its going to be a strong, viable choice for a lot longer than a few months. But yeah, you buy a GPU when you need it for whatever reason (new games, new build, etc...). Impending or rumored launches shouldn't be as big a deciding factor as that.

 

[tential]

I think the R9 290 is at an amazing price/performance ratio right now so yes. I don't think there is another card with a better price/performance ratio worth getting actually. The performance increase of the GTX 970 (new) over the R9 290 is just poor. Super poor for the price you pay.
My picks are:
R9 290
R9 290 CF
GTX 970 (Day 1 gamers and Gameworks Gamers)

I think that R9 290 CF with utilization of VSR is the true sweet spot though. I don't think the GTX 980 is even worth it with the R9 290 CF so cheap. But again, it's dependent on WHEN you play games. If you're a person that plays the latest game on day 1, you need to have a GTX 970 to get the best performance possible. I just don't think it's worth it to pay to beta test games for these companies who are consistently releasing unfinished games.

 

[Subyman]

You know its going to be a strong, viable choice for a lot longer than a few months. But yeah, you buy a GPU when you need it for whatever reason (new games, new build, etc...). Impending or rumored launches shouldn't be as big a deciding factor as that.

I hardly ever buy GPUs based on need

 

[railven]

With new cards right around the corner I can't justify buying a new card now (especially a minor upgrade).

But if I find a decent price on two 290s I'll jump on it. I keep looking at local used sales and missed 290 CF sale for ~$300 by a few hours. Twas pissed!

EDIT: above specific to me, since I got a well OC'ed GTX 780. OP coming from a GTX 560 should definitely jump on a 290. I hear the XFX are having a good record of unlocking to full 290X. But that MSI @250 after rebate, hrnggggggggggggggggg!!

 

[MongGrel]

There are probably a lot of former Bit-Coin miners on the market these days.

It was bound to happen, haven't even followed that one lately.

 

[Temuka]

Ok,ok I will wait Since my be quiet case will arrive in about 1 month,I can still wait... There won't be any 3xx cards until september??

 

[RussianSensation]

There won't be any 3xx cards until september??

I would think AMD will launch something by Q3 2015. They said they will talk about their next gen GPU products this quarters. I presume they'll have a presentation around early June/Computex and products will launch in July/August. Who knows though. If there are a lot of games you really want to play now, no point in waiting as R9 290/290X/970 all hit the sweet spot. As others and myself mentioned, you can always sell the card and lose $50-75 in the process but have gaming over the next 6 months.

 

[Temuka]

I would think AMD will launch something by Q3 2015. They said they will talk about their next gen GPU products this quarters. I presume they'll have a presentation around early June/Computex and products will launch in July/August. Who knows though. If there are a lot of games you really want to play now, no point in waiting as R9 290/290X/970 all hit the sweet spot. As others and myself mentioned, you can always sell the card and lose $50-75 in the process but have gaming over the next 6 months.

I'm not in a hurry,cause I can't even put it in my current case. Argh! I was waiting for 3xx to launch in May/June...

 

[tential]

I'm not in a hurry,cause I can't even put it in my current case. Argh! I was waiting for 3xx to launch in May/June...

I think at this point, AMD probably also feels that if you're waiting for the R9 300/GTX 980Ti series, you'll wait a little longer. If you really wanted a card, you probably have a GTX 980/970 by now. Otherwise, you're waiting for a card that's faster than that and that'll be the R9 300 series. I think if you aren't looking for a premium card, the R9 290 is where it's at.

 

[StinkyPinky]

I don't regret getting my 290x. They're reasonably cheap and you get excellent performance. I doubt the 300 series cards will offer better value (they may be faster but you'll pay more...)

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

I'm considering ordering a combo with a 290 and an XL2730z.

I was considering waiting for 390x, but I'm wondering if it might not be better to just spend 290 money now and upgrade later in 390x's cycle.

However, I do have the money to spend on the ~$700 a 390X would likely cost, so I guess the question before a final choice is - will the 290 handle 1440p well enough? Will Freesync make 50-60 fps work better than if Freesync wasn't involved?

Figure that I'm talking current releases like Shadow of Mordor and such.

Also, just to be sure; is an 850W, 70amp on 12v Thermaltake SMART sufficient for R9 290 through R9 290X 8GB?

 

[Elfear]

Also, just to be sure; is an 850W, 70amp on 12v Thermaltake SMART sufficient for R9 290 through R9 290X 8GB?

Plenty of PSU. Even if you wanted a pair of 290(X) cards with a mild OC, you'd be just fine as long as the Thermaltake has good build quality.

Edit: Looks like the OEM for your Thermaltake is CWT and the overall build quality is fairly decent.

 

[maniacalpha1-1]

Plenty of PSU. Even if you wanted a pair of 290(X) cards with a mild OC, you'd be just fine as long as the Thermaltake has good build quality.

Really? The specs I found said 750w minimum, 850 recommended for a single one.

Think I might consider going for the XFX 8GB one, then -

 

[JDG1980]

Really? The specs I found said 750w minimum, 850 recommended for a single one.

Those official figures are usually substantially overstated; they have to take into account the fact that some people buy very cheap PSUs that cannot actually sustain their ratings. Channel Well Technology (who makes that Thermaltake unit) isn't the world's best OEM (Seasonic, Super Flower, Delta, and Flextronics are superior), but they are nonetheless considered reputable and their PSUs can be assumed to reliably support the rated output.

To give a point of reference, Tom's Hardware tested two R9 295 X2 cards on a 1000W PSU, and it worked. Remember that the R9 295 X2 is basically two R9 290Xs on one card, so what they tested is going to have more than double the power usage of your R9 290 Crossfire setup. You should be OK at 850W, except perhaps if you're running Prime95 and FurMark at the same time 24/7.

 

[B-Riz]

http://techreport.com/news/27996/4gb-gtx-960s-trickle-into-retail-channels?post=893388#893388

"Power efficiency is an oft-used negative against the large-die Hawaii chips, but I've been playing with powertune settings and Furmark recently as an experiment to fit a "hot and noisy" AMD card into an SFF with limited cooling.

Actually, I stand by an earlier post I made that says I think AMD pushed Hawaii silicon too far.
With both GPU-Z and Furmark able to report power consumptions, I can see a 100W reduction in power consumption on 290X cards for as little as 5% performance loss.

If you have a Hawaii card, I urge you to crank power limits down in the overdrive tab of CCC and see what the resulting clockspeed is under full load. Even in a worst-case scenario, I'm seeing a typical clockspeed of 850MHz with the slider all the way to the left at -50%

That means that Hawaii (the two samples I personally own, at least) can run at 850+MHz on only 145W (half the 290W TDP). As mentioned, that's a worst-case scenario using a power-virus like Furmark. Under real gaming situations (I was messing around with Alien Isolation on 1440p ultra settings) the clocks averaged about 925MHz yet my PC was inaudible; Fans that normally hum along at 55% were barely spinning at 30% during my gameplay.

As Nvidia has proved, you can make a 28nm chip run efficiently. I think the design of Hawaii holds up very well under vastly reduced power constraints - AMD just pushed it outside its comfort zone in order to get the most out of it.

In saying that, the "underpowered" 290X is around the same performance as my GTX970 and also the same cost - significantly higher than a GTX960 4GB. I don't know if die-harvested 290 cards deal with power limit caps like the cherry-picked 290X cards."

The 290/X is more than likely over-volted to get max perf.

I turned my Overdrive all the way to the left, and played hours of BF4 just fine.

Have not hooked up the kill-a-watt yet to measure the CCC changes.

 

[guskline]

The Tri-X 290 (not 290X) at stock is 1000 core (reference 947) and 1300 memory (I think reference is 1250). Power draw is not bad, has an EXCELLENT air cooler and usually doesn't throttle at full load because it runs cooler.

I've playaround with OCing the core and memory ( I have my 2 R9 290s custom water cooled) and power usage really begins to jump as you up the power to achieve stable OCing.

Buy a single Sapphire Tri-X 290, keep it stock and call it a day. You'll be happy.

 

[Qwertilot]

Doubling power draw seems a bit implausible but you did get the vague impression they pushed rather more than strictly optimal with quite a bit of the 2xx series.

Which is one reason why having a new really fast top card might well help them quite a lot with the 3xx stuff as they'll be able to pitch things for saner power efficiency. We'll see.

 

[Temuka]

By the way guys,will my psu be good enough for tri-x 290 or 290x ?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341018

 

[lehtv]

By the way guys,will my psu be good enough for tri-x 290 or 290x ?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341018

Honestly... I would not use such an old PSU that was never very good to begin with. Specs wise it has enough wattage on the +12V rail (552W), but HardOCP's review of it back from 2008 isn't very flattering:

120V load testing

Test #4 is equal to approximately 100% of the rated capacity of the OCZ 700W ModXStream Pro at 45c. This makes Test #4 equal to 700w by loading the 12v rails to 46a, the 5v rail to 1a, the 3.3v rail to 1a, the +5vsb to 2a, and the -12v to 0.5a. Test #4 was a failure on both units tested as neither unit would complete the full load test.

[...]

Given that both verified units failed our testing we have to conclude that during the verification process for units that receive the test reports from PC Power & Cooling that they are not run at 45c ambient temperature. OCZ in fact informs us that it tests at 40c, 5c lower than our testing requires.

The temperature and wattage where things start to get shaky, as they did in the above test at 700W @ 45C, will become lower and lower as the unit and its capacitors age. If several years old, I wouldn't trust the unit with a 200W+ card.

 

[Temuka]

Honestly... I would not use such an old PSU that was never very good to begin with. Specs wise it has enough wattage on the +12V rail (552W), but HardOCP's review of it back from 2008 isn't very flattering:



The temperature and wattage where things start to get shaky, as they did in the above test at 700W @ 45C, will become lower and lower as the unit and its capacitors age. If several years old, I wouldn't trust the unit with a 200W+ card.

So what should I get ?

 

[Pneumothorax]

So what should I get ?

What's your budget? Do you need a fully modular/partially modular PSU?

Here's my pick as I like fully modular EVGA G2 750

Here's a Corsair that's also good.

 

[Temuka]

What's your budget? Do you need a fully modular/partially modular PSU?

Here's my pick as I like fully modular EVGA G2 750

Here's a Corsair that's also good.

It's not about budget... I just thought that my 700w ocz can handle 290/290x...

 

[aaksheytalwar]

Just get a solid 800-850 watts so it lasts 3+ years.