R260/270/280/290/290x Review thread

[Gikaseixas]

Two different fans can have very particular noise properties, however since they share the same design principles the noise to the human ear will not differ that much.
AMD's 57dbA cannot differ too much from Nvidia's 57dbA

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

AMDs fan and housing isn't as good as Nvidia's, even at equal RPM AMDs fan will have more noise feedback than Nvidia's because you will hear wobbling and other issues from the AMD fan that aren't present with the Nvidia fan.

I'll live with a little more noise and an extra $100 in my pocket. Yeah and before you bring up power draw I'll put an extra 10 cents into my bank account to cover the extra costs this month.

 

[Sweepr]

Any reasonably decent aftermarket R290 with a non-reference cooler will probably give you a lot more tolerable thermals/noise levels. If that (poor?) reference cooler allows a 15-20% core clock OC I cant wait to see what non-reference cards will be able to do out of the box and OCed.
I can understand the value proposition of those 3 games NVIDIA is offering, but I am not really interested if I can have similar performance for $100 less ($200+ less if you go multi GPU)... and nothing stops AMD from offering a new Never Settle Bundle for R2xx cards soon.

Thank god NVIDIA recently dropped GTX770's price, cause it would look really bad right now at $400.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

I'll live with a little more noise and an extra $100 in my pocket. Yeah and before you bring up power draw I'll put an extra 10 cents into my bank account to cover the extra costs this month.

I'd rather get the aftermarket 780, sell black flag, black list, and batman for 70-90 dollars and get more performance out of the box with a better noise profile than a silent mode 290X for basically the same price while enjoying the benefit of Nvidia's proprietary ecosystem.

To each their own though :thumbsup:

 

[wand3r3r]

Any reasonably decent aftermarket R290 with a non-reference cooler will probably give you a lot more tolerable thermals/noise levels. If that (poor?) reference cooler allows a 15-20% core clock OC I cant wait to see what non-reference cards will be able to do.
I can understand the value proposition of those 3 games NVIDIA is offering, but I am not really interested if I can have similar performance for $100 less ($200+ less if you go multi GPU)... and nothing stops AMD from offering a new Never Settle Bundle for R2xx cards soon.

Thank god NVIDIA recently dropped GTX770's price, cause it would loke really bad right now at $400.

The 4GB 770 is an absurd $380+.
(the only one worth looking at in the end of 2013)

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

I'd rather get the aftermarket 780, sell black flag, black list, and batman for 70-90 dollars and get more performance out of the box with a better noise profile than a silent mode 290X.

To each their own though :thumbsup:

lol no. Good luck selling the bundle for $50 and netting $45 after paypal fees if anyone even wants it. I'll take the for sure $100 in my pocket and better performance today thank you.
Oh yeah also I get 4gb ram vs 3.

 

[rtsurfer]

There is nothing future proof about the 290, it will be slower than next gen mid range products that sell for half as much unless TSMC 20nm is nothing short of garbage.

Same can ve said about any video card money can buy right now.
So, moot point.

Plus 20nm cards are still atleast 6 months away.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

lol no. Good luck selling the bundle for $50 and netting $45 after paypal fees if anyone even wants it. I'll take the for sure $100 in my pocket and better performance today thank you.

I did fine with my 7950 bundles, 780 aftermarket is faster than R290X out of the box... So you'd have worse performance today.

Same can ve said about any video card money can buy right now.
So, moot point.

Agreed, moot point indeed none of these cards are anything close to "future proof".

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

Same can ve said about any video card money can buy right now.
So, moot point.

Plus 20nm cards are still atleast 6 months away.

So a whole new gen in 6 months? I'm thinking a minimum of a year. In gpu terms that's a lifetime.

 

[Leadbox]

Have 47% running, then turn on the 780, cycle between the two using mute...

Quite the difference imo.

Interesting, what's the minimum fan setting to stop the ref 780 from thermal throttling?
47% does it for the 290 and it sounds more tolerable to me than a 780 at 80%

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

I did fine with my 7950 bundles, 780 aftermarket is faster than R290X out of the box... So you'd have worse performance today.



Agreed, moot point indeed none of these cards are anything close to "future proof".

I'd definitely consider the 290 more future proof as it comes with 4gb for less money. And being an enthusiast forum out of the box performance really doesn't mean much at all. You have to admit having close to titan performance for $400 is an insane deal. If you overclock a little you get better than titan.

 

[horza]

..

 

[BallaTheFeared]

I'd definitely consider the 290 more future proof as it comes with 4gb for less money. And being an enthusiast forum out of the box performance really doesn't mean much at all. You have to admit having close to titan performance for $400 is an insane deal. If you overclock a little you get better than titan.

It applies equally to the 780 at $500 for aftermarket cards with 3 top triple A titles.

Which subsequently come out of the box faster than Titan.

Problem with talking OC on the AMD reference card is the noise is already higher than I'd like to have to listen to in the first place, so overclocking is only going to make that worse.

The 1300-1400 780s didn't just magically vanish, they're just a lot cheaper now.

 

[Imouto]

780 aftermarket is faster than R290X out of the box... So you'd have worse performance today.

Do you realize how dated is this statement?

 

[Sweepr]

I'd definitely consider the 290 more future proof as it comes with 4gb for less money. And being an enthusiast forum out of the box performance really doesn't mean much at all. You have to admit having close to titan performance for $400 is an insane deal. If you overclock a little you get better than titan.

Exactly. And these out of the box OCed +$100 more expensive GTX780s will surely not look so impressive when non-reference R290s hit the market (hopefully very soon).

 

[rtsurfer]

Agreed, moot point indeed none of these cards are anything close to "future proof".

Okay.
So , which card according to your expert opinion is future proof to buy right now..???

So a whole new gen in 6 months? I'm thinking a minimum of a year. In gpu terms that's a lifetime.

Being optimistic.
I don't think it will be here in 6 months.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Okay.
So , which card according to your expert opinion is future proof to buy right now..???

None?

 

[selni]

I build my own dipole speaker, dac and amp, so i know all that. The numbers for db is often useless anyway even under same condition for varies reasons.

The card performs faster - yes faster than 780 - and certainly will when bf4 and all the new mantle titles hits. This 1080p testning with old games is a little off imho. The minority that buys non ref cards often use water. All this noise is blown out of proportions no matter the context.

- people can wait for non ref cards and get low noise titan+ perf for 399.
- people can buy now, use headphones, and get titan+ perf for 399.
- people that are not noise sensitive, like Brent, can do what they want and get titan+ perf for 399

And then all this crying. How evil this world is.

When was the last time we got steller and more futureproof performance like this for so little?

I didn't say anything about the 290 being a bad card/value/whatever. The reference cooler obviously isn't up to it, but that should change with aftermarket cards.

Even if someone had no intention of ever buying an AMD card it's still a very good release because it's actually forcing NVIDIA to price somewhat competitively - which they haven't even pretended to have to do up to this point on this node (exhibit 1: titan).

 

[Silverforce11]

If you guys care for "future proofing" wait til the Mantle results come in BF4. That will be key due to the next 8 years of consoles dominated by AMD. IF Mantle works as advertise, it certainly helps with future proofing.

If not, then no GPU is future proof, 2 to 3 years later, single GPUs will perform like crap, and only SLI/CFX will still be playable.

 

[parvadomus]

hahaha Nvidia got buttkicked.. AGAIN. And the usual trolls are mad

Warning issued for thread crapping.
-- stahlhart

 

[Sweepr]

Toms Hardware replaced the stock cooler with an Arctic Accelero Xtreme III:

Let’s take a look at the benchmark results of the overclocked Radeon R9 290, which turn out to be a big surprise. There’s a 20 percent difference between the original card and the overclocked one. The updated last-minute driver reduces this difference to a still-massive almost-13 percent. Keep in mind that we’re not just talking about a frequency increase, but also more usable performance and less noise. The Arctic Accelero Xtreme III demonstrates nicely what can be achieved with AMD's Radeon R9 290.

www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-r9-290-review-benchmark,3659-19.html

Cant wait for non-reference R290s

 

[rtsurfer]

None?

Exactly.

But people building new rigs right now still new a GPU to play games.

So, future proof or not, they need to get one.
And these are the current available choices.

 

[Will Robinson]

Excellent performance and $400.
Bravo AMD!:thumbsup:
Some of those game wins are just epic.

Judging by some of the comments here I expect NVDA's marketshare and quarterly profit charts to be appearing momentarily...

 

[mak360]

hahaha Nvidia got buttkicked.. AGAIN. And the usual trolls are mad

The only reason I read the forums lol

Most will decide if they buy now and live with a little extra noise, or wait and get the after-market ones - eitherway Nvidia is out of the question in the entire stack, be it future proof, price or performance = AMD has it all.

These cards (290) are excellent for water cooling as the 290`s have a far better/robust PCP vs most of the after market 780`s. There is a reason Nvidia goes the extra mile to lock people out.

 

[Triglet]

Great performance, can't deny that. I personally couldn't deal with 480 levels of heat/noise though -- did that once, and I won't be repeating that mistake ever again. Worst graphics card purchase of my life and I even game on cans. I found AT's normalized charts pretty telling though -- NVidia could steal a lot of thunder by raising temp/fan profiles. Some of you are avoiding/missing that little nugget.

I'm feeling good about scoring a 780 Classy for $525 shipped via another forum member's Amazon credit. I do see the draw the 290 has though, can't fault anyone for buying one -- good to see AMD putting pressure on Big Green.