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

[Silverforce11]

Brilliant plan. Sell almost NONE of their reference cards due to the HSF "just" being good enough instead of excellence. It may have been deliberate, or just cutting costs where it's easiest to do so.

You think nobody would want to buy the ref card, but in fact its sold out almost everywhere here in Australia. I guess a lot of enthusiasts who folk out big $ for high end stuff are going with water anyway, and reference AMD models are great for that.

 

[HurleyBird]

You think nobody would want to buy the ref card, but in fact its sold out almost everywhere here in Australia. I guess a lot of enthusiasts who folk out big $ for high end stuff are going with water anyway, and reference AMD models are great for that.

I know of two guys that I regularly game with who have bought it already. One of them machined his own waterblock (awesome) while the other intends to run it stock.

 

[OCGuy]

You think nobody would want to buy the ref card, but in fact its sold out almost everywhere here in Australia. I guess a lot of enthusiasts who folk out big $ for high end stuff are going with water anyway, and reference AMD models are great for that.

Well if the supply is anything like the US, there havent been many available yet.

 

[ddarko]

Well if the supply is anything like the US, there havent been many available yet.

Come on, you know the second half doesn't necessarily follow from the first. Scarcity could be due to low supply or it could be from big demand outstripping a healthy supply. Unless you work at AMD or a big retailer or wholesale distributor like Ingram, no one is in a position to know which is which. Let's refrain from treating speculation like it's fact.

 

[Whelm]

I saw someone who floated a theory that because Hawaii runs hot AMD didn't hand out carte blanche to AIBs to churn out their cooler designs at will and is perhaps wanting to vet them before allowing them to be used.

It makes some sense because some aftermarket coolers are actually atrocious and perform worse than reference. Some of the truly bad ones ignore proper VRM cooling which could be an RMA disaster waiting to happen with the hot running 290x.

We know there is a DCU2 coming as there is a SKU up on newegg already, a well known competent cooler, but have seen nothing else yet.

That would be on the AIB maker to honor warranty wise to fix.

They would soon realize their mistake if a ton of cards started to come in fried.

 

[chimaxi83]

Yeah, none of the reference cards are being sold, which is why they're all sold out. Sounds legit.

Got my jet turbine, blowtorch hot, nuclear reactor powered 290X 😎

 

[hyrule4927]

Got my jet turbine, blowtorch hot, nuclear reactor powered 290X 😎

Nice! Time to break some of the records in our benchmark threads. :biggrin:

 

[chimaxi83]

Nice! Time to break some of the records in our benchmark threads. :biggrin:

Haha, thanks! Not until next week when my waterblock comes in. Oh, and after modifying my health insurance to cover hearing loss 🙄

 

[Firestorm007]

Yeah, none of the reference cards are being sold, which is why they're all sold out. Sounds legit.

Got my jet turbine, blowtorch hot, nuclear reactor powered 290X 😎

😛....It's kind of hilarious some of the responses here. It's sad and funny at the same time. AMD has hit a home run with this card. It kicks butt and the price is right. It won't stop the same repeat offenders from throwing their same tired BS though...Whatever....Well done AMD!

 

[OCGuy]

Come on, you know the second half doesn't necessarily follow from the first. Scarcity could be due to low supply or it could be from big demand outstripping a healthy supply. Unless you work at AMD or a big retailer or wholesale distributor like Ingram, no one is in a position to know which is which. Let's refrain from treating speculation like it's fact.

Actually I usually have something to back up my statements...you obviously haven't been trying to get one.

Just ask next time. 😉


http://techreport.com/news/25561/radeon-r9-290x-scarce-online

 

[Creig]

Brilliant plan. Sell almost NONE of their reference cards due to the HSF "just" being good enough instead of excellence. It may have been deliberate, or just cutting costs where it's easiest to do so.

Oh, I don't know. They seem to be selling pretty well. 🙂

And I happen to like the reference cooler. It's not necessarily as quiet as some of the other designs that come out, but I know it will work as intended.

 

[Will Robinson]

Yeah, none of the reference cards are being sold, which is why they're all sold out. Sounds legit.

Got my jet turbine, blowtorch hot, nuclear reactor powered 290X 😎

Hey congrats dude!:awe:
Please let us know what you think of its gaming performance.
I would be very interested in seeing your comments regarding noise and heat at stock speeds.(which is how I run my video cards).
Comments on perceived "smoothness" would also be appreciated.

 

[toyota]

people will buy nearly any pos that comes out. 480 and 470 sold like crazy and this card probably will too. there are already idiots talking about selling their 780 to get one of these. i guess they miss the part where if you oc both then the 780 is faster plus cooler and quieter and uses way less power.

I have also see people talk about getting these for crossfire. i guess comments like " Yet it's tough to recommend R9 290X CrossFire because it's anything but quiet. No matter whether you use the "Quiet" or "Uber" BIOS, they're both unbearably loud when properly loaded and not recommendable for setups in which you rely on speakers, no matter how punchy they are " from TPU wont even stop some people.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Hey congrats dude!:awe:
Please let us know what you think of its gaming performance.
I would be very interested in seeing your comments regarding noise and heat at stock speeds.(which is how I run my video cards).
Comments on perceived "smoothness" would also be appreciated.

Do you need to do that in every post?

In case you missed it, he wasn't braving the on air experience and instead waiting for a water block he ordered to come in. At least that was how I read it since he wasn't going to post any benchmarks with the card as it was.

 

[blackened23]

people will buy nearly any pos that comes out. 480 and 470 sold like crazy and this card probably will too. there are already idiots talking about selling their 780 to get one of these. i guess they miss the part where if you oc both then the 780 is faster plus cooler and quieter and uses way less power.

I'm not so sure that's a certainly. Legitreviews tested the 290X against an overclocked EVGA SC ACX 780 (base clock 967, generally boosts past 1100 out of box) and the 290X with the uber BIOS still won most of the tests. Not all, but most of them - and the 290X wasn't overclocked. Of course the uber bios isn't an overclock for the 290X. I'm not saying the 290X is perfect or anything, clearly it isn't. But the uber mode 290X was still winning the majority against the factory OC'ed 780 in those tests, about half of them anyway. From what i've read the 290X can gain about 100mhz or so with an overclock with about 8-10% of scaling. LR was able to get an overclock of 1115mhz with about 10-13% scaling - that much scaling from a mere 115mhz increase is outstanding, obviously power consumption comes into play, however. How much I don't know but It probably wouldn't be pretty.

The other option as far as GTX 780 OC cards are the over-volted varieties which cost 700$-770$ for the classified and lightning cards, respectively - once you over-volt, the 780 uses a ton of juice (more than a stock 290X) but they should still have a lot of OC headroom at stock as well. Of course, at 700$ the value proposition is less than the other cards which are around 650$. The EVGA SC ACX (non overvolted) costs 659$ which is only 10 bucks more than reference, and performs awesome to boot.

The main point here is that "GTX 780 OC beats 290X OC" - that isn't necessarily the case. The LR tests show the 290X stock with Uber BIOS still doing very well and winning about half the time even at stock settings. ::shrug:: That said, I definitely don't like the noise situation with the 290X and probably wouldn't get it if I were on the market unless aftermarket varities were available. It's not a perfect card by any means but for 550$? It's definitely a flawed card , but a lot of people will overlook this because of the great performance per dollar - the performance you get for 550$ at high resolutions is excellent, period. It is unfortunate that the reference cooler really didn't change from the 7970 at all, I was hoping it would.

 

[OCGuy]

Oh, I don't know. They seem to be selling pretty well. 🙂

And I happen to like the reference cooler. It's not necessarily as quiet as some of the other designs that come out, but I know it will work as intended.

Well when your benchmark for "intended" is a new one ( up to 1ghz ) ? ?


I hope you can hit it. 😉

 

[blastingcap]

I've read a few more reviews and it seems that 290X actually noticeably edges TITAN at 4K resolutions.

One thing I've noticed and appreciated is that AMD cards of the last 2 generations have been better than NV counterparts as resolutions increased. Although I have no plans to go 4K anytime soon, if GPU makers engineer their stuff for 4K, it benefits EyeFinity users, even those at "3K" resolutions like mine (3 x 1080p).

That 4GB VRAM doesn't hurt, either, especially with PC gamers feeling uneasy about XBONE/PS4's RAM levels, especially the PS4's massive shared RAM. It gives some peace of mind that the 290X can handle console ports without choking due to RAM shortage.

 

[toyota]

all the 4k talk is getting silly. by the time even 1% of us are using that resolution, the 290x will be not even be a consideration.

 

[blackened23]

Yeah, I don't get that either. If anything I think 1440/1600p or even perhaps 5760x1080 should be the target for these cards as both of those resolutions are far more affordable and don't have the shortcoming that many 4k screens have (ie 30hz refresh).

 

[HurleyBird]

all the 4k talk is getting silly. by the time even 1% of us are using that resolution, the 290x will be not even be a consideration.

A lot more than 1% of us are using resolutions like 5760x1200 though, and in the absence of proper surround testing 4K is the next best thing for us to look at. If you aren't going multimonitor (or 4K) both the Titan and 290X are overkill.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

I wouldn't say "a lot", it isn't that popular because of the bars.

I used 3x1080p for awhile, outside of racing sims and maybe some fps it wasn't that great. Most of the time you're spending all that extra money to look at walls.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

people will buy nearly any pos that comes out. 480 and 470 sold like crazy and this card probably will too. there are already idiots talking about selling their 780 to get one of these. i guess they miss the part where if you oc both then the 780 is faster plus cooler and quieter and uses way less power.

The gtx780 is not capable of all three things you just posted at the same time. It's also questionable that it can actually be outright faster than the 290x even when OC'ed. It may be cooler at least.

I've seen OC' gtx780 reviews where it can get 50-70 watts more through an overclock which puts it on par or using more power than the r9 290x. Check your facts.


As for resolutions. I think 1920x1080 is like 1280x720 a few years back. It's getting to be a useless number in benchmarks on the PC but it hasn't been dropped from reviews yet.

 

[raghu78]

people will buy nearly any pos that comes out. 480 and 470 sold like crazy and this card probably will too. there are already idiots talking about selling their 780 to get one of these. i guess they miss the part where if you oc both then the 780 is faster plus cooler and quieter and uses way less power.

the GTX 780 requires around 150 - 200 mhz higher clocks to match a R9 290X, leave alone beat it. :whiste:

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...ws/63200-msi-gtx-780-lightning-review-10.html

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...s/63742-amd-radeon-r9-290x-4gb-review-10.html

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...ws/63742-amd-radeon-r9-290x-4gb-review-5.html

" Now, before every run, cards are left to “heat up” for 10 minutes under in-game load which will ensure more realistic benchmark numbers."

In crysis 3 which is a game which runs well on Nvidia cards you can see the R9 290X uber is only slower than EVGA ACX and EVGA classified both of which are clocking 1123 mhz and above while the R9 290X is throttled even in uber mode

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...61729-evga-geforce-gtx-780-acx-sc-review.html

the real game changer is the price. at USD 550 you can put a custom cooler like prolimatech mk-26 and two 120 mm silent PWM fans and still stay below USD 650. then its game over for GTX 780 custom cards like HOF and Lightning. a custom cooler 1.2 Ghz R9 290X wrecks a 1.3 Ghz GTX 780 with lower temps and fan noise. :biggrin:

 

[toyota]

lol whatever you need to tell yourself. have fun using another 200 watts when you oc the 290x. I dont care how much you defend it, its a damn joke of a card when it comes to power consumption. if I had a 780 then i would not be the least bit hurt as again when oced its faster than the 290x even when its oced according to Linus at least. maybe not at 4k but lets be real as 99% of people will not be playing at that res anyway. MOST people will be at 2560 or 1920.


have fun with all that additional racket and heat when you oc the 290x too. sure non reference coolers will fix 2 of those issues but not power consumption. and who knows when those are coming out so you either get the pos cooler now or you wait.'

 

[blastingcap]

A lot more than 1% of us are using resolutions like 5760x1200 though, and in the absence of proper surround testing 4K is the next best thing for us to look at. If you aren't going multimonitor (or 4K) both the Titan and 290X are overkill.

I agree, and furthermore, those who want to have their fps glued to 120Hz at 1080p or higher will also benefit, especially those who also want 3D. Or alternatively those who want Surround and 3D.

If you add up all the Eyefinity/Surround users at 5040x1050 or higher, all the 120Hz 1080p people, all the Surround 3D people, and all the 4K people, in the next 18 months, that is more than 1%.

The 290X is not aimed at people with 1080p and lower monitors anyway. If you are happily gaming away on your 1080p with a HD5850 or GTX560 or whatever, good for you, but you are not the target market for this card.

In any case, I'm glad that GCN seems to take less of a hit as you scale up, relative to Kepler. That's a good sign for longevity. Remember that PC gamers get tons of console ports, and consoles are based on GCN. The longer the legs of GCN, the less watered-down stuff PC gamers have to put up with.

P.S. If my math is right, 1920x1200 x 3 is 83.3% the pixels of 4K. Good call on that.