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

[OCGuy]

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.

Got any data on this? Steam survey says .28% with your stated resolution.

Seeing as how 780/290x/Titan make up less than 1% of graphics cards, I am interested in where your information is coming from.

 

[ddarko]

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

I've seen that and it doesn't say what you said. Tech Report's article says the 290x is scarce right now - undeniably true. However, you said not only was it scarce, but it hadn't sold that many units:

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

Not the same thing. We know it scarce but it doesn't follow that the scarcity was due to low supply. Maybe, maybe not, none of us know, including the fine folks at Tech Report!

BTW, educated guess that the "one major North American etailer" mentioned in the article that is having trouble getting stock of the 290x is Tiger Direct. There's quite a number of forum members on HardOCP reporting they received order confirmations and their credit cards were charged by Tiger Direct, only to discover their order status was changed to backordered. Sounds like you and anyone looking to buy the 290x should take extra care if ordering from them.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

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.'

Notice how the card uses less power in uber mode. A better cooler will reduce temps and allow the card to maintain higher clocks while using less power. As IC's heat up they use more power.

You still haven't commented on how the gtx780 uses the same or more power than the 290x when OC'ed to match/beat it.

 

[toyota]

http://tpucdn.com/reviews/AMD/R9_290X/images/power_average.gif

Notice how the card uses less power in uber mode. A better cooler will reduce temps and allow the card to maintain higher clocks while using less power. As IC's heat up they use more power.

You still haven't commented on how the gtx780 uses the same or more power than the 290x when OC'ed to match/beat it.

well how about some simple math? the 290x uses 50-60 watts more already in Crysis 2 according to TPU and even higher in some other reviews. the 290x uses over 200 more additional watts when oced. so do you think 780 uses 250 more watts than the 290x when both are oced? of course not as you can look at reviews on hardocp to see that a highly oced 780 even is using about 100 watts more max than a stock 780. so YES an oced 780 thats matching or beating an oced 290x at 2560 or below is using LESS power at the same time.

 

[krumme]

It's most likely deliberate.

Think about it. AMD has used the same design cooler for how many generations now? It's adequate, cost effective and gets the job done. But it isn't as capable as the aftermarket designs that will eventually follow. AMD can design a 6.2 billion transistor GPU that is the fastest in the world, but their engineers are incapable of coming up with a HSF design to equal or beat aftermarket coolers? I don't buy it.

What I've suspected for awhile now is that AMD deliberately sticks with their blower design because it isn't as good as aftermarket designs. This allows AIBs to come out with their own cooling designs to differentiate themselves. After awhile, the reference cards won't even be available anymore and all you will see in the market will be custom designs.

Remember, AMD doesn't sell cards themselves anymore. They supply the GPUs/reference cards and allow the AIBs to redesign the cooling, the PCBs and the components to suit themselves.

Personally, I think it's all part of their marketing plan.

Yes it is. And it doesnt work. They will sell their cards but will not attract nv loyalists on the long run because they give them another excuse for ignoring it.
Its not like amd have a brand awareness and value like nv. There is two buying behaviors; the ones who are brand agnostic and choses what is fastest for their money and the second group is nv loyalist that tend to buy nv even when they are 25% more expensive as the nv cards tend to be especially outside usa.
Thats what the brand does for nv and thats why the cards is more expensive.
If amd wants to build a brand loyality they need to stop releasing cards with eg insuficient coolers and clock them higher on release day where perception of the card is made.
This time they certainly got the price sharp. Brilliant move because now they wont have to alter it for another year.
But imagine if this card was released with a low noise non blower design on 1.1ghz for the oem straight away?
The usual huge crowd of nv loyalist would have to look for excuses other places and eg this thread would be full of g synch and driver bs but still the brand loyality would be challenged. And at the same time its building brand loyality instead of this agnostic user platform amd have now.

 

[rtsurfer]

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.'

well how about some simple math? the 290x uses 50-60 watts more already in Crysis 2 according to TPU and even higher in some other reviews. the 290x uses over 200 more additional watts when oced. so do you think 780 uses 250 more watts than the 290x when both are oced? of course not as you can look at reviews on hardocp to see that a highly oced 780 even is using about 100 watts more max than a stock 780. so YES an oced 780 thats matching or beating an oced 290x at 2560 or below is using LESS power at the same time.

You miss the point where 290X doesn't need to be OC to to beat your 780.

And yes I believe that your Nvidia 780 is so much better...!!!

Now why don't you show yourself out of this thread and leave us be. Instead of whining about how 290X is a flawed product.

It is a bad card and we are a bunch of idiots. Please leave us be and take your ENLIGHTENED self somewhere else. No need to hang amongst stupid fanboys....

 

[VulgarDisplay]

well how about some simple math? the 290x uses 50-60 watts more already in Crysis 2 according to TPU and even higher in some other reviews. the 290x uses over 200 more additional watts when oced. so do you think 780 uses 250 more watts than the 290x when both are oced? of course not as you can look at reviews on hardocp to see that a highly oced 780 even is using about 100 watts more max than a stock 780. so YES an oced 780 thats matching or beating an oced 290x at 2560 or below is using LESS power at the same time.

Show me the benchmarks of the scenario you just listed.

That 10w power reduction in uber mode is just from an increase in fan speed. A decent cooler will allow higher clocks, and lower power consumption. When the 290x isn't throttling because of the mind bogglingly bad reference cooler it's going to be ridiculously fast.

 

[toyota]

You miss the point where 290X doesn't need to be OC to to beat your 780.

And yes I believe that your Nvidia 780 is so much better...!!!

Now why don't you show yourself out of this thread and leave us be. Instead of trying whine about how 290X is a flawed product.

It is a bad card and we are a bunch of idiots. Please leave us be and take your ENLIGHTENED self somewhere else. No need to hang amongst stupid fanboys....

lol so we dont oc high end cards around here?

 

[BallaTheFeared]

290X 1250/1650 1.3v on water

First I've seen of end user water results, personally I expect more tbh.


(Although moderately hilarious if you've followed the thread, the temp reported by Valley isn't correct)

 

[rtsurfer]

lol so we dont oc high end cards around here?

780 needs to be OCed to catch up to 290X, not the other way around.

 

[blastingcap]

290X Quiet mode is roughly equal to GTX 780
290X Uber mode is roughly equal to TITAN

 

[toyota]

Show me the benchmarks of the scenario you just listed.

That 10w power reduction in uber mode is just from an increase in fan speed. A decent cooler will allow higher clocks, and lower power consumption. When the 290x isn't throttling because of the mind bogglingly bad reference cooler it's going to be ridiculously fast.

dont play dumb. you see the 200 watt plus power consumption increase in the TPU review for a 7% increase in performance. something like the EVGA ACX 780 is already faster than the Titan and has more oc headroom than the 290x. so AGAIN if the 780 and 290x are both oced than the 780 is as fast or faster while using less power. at least at 2560 and lower. when AMD finally gets some non reference coolers out then when can revisit this but for now just accept it. and no matter what cooler is used, the oced power consumption is still going to be very high.

 

[toyota]

780 needs to be OCed to catch up to 290X, not the other way around.

gee no kidding? I was talking about ocing BOTH cards.

 

[OCGuy]

I've seen that and it doesn't say what you said. Tech Report's article says the 290x is scarce right now - undeniably true. However, you said not only was it scarce, but it hadn't sold that many units:



Not the same thing. We know it scarce but it doesn't follow that the scarcity was due to low supply. Maybe, maybe not, none of us know, including the fine folks at Tech Report!

BTW, educated guess that the "one major North American etailer" mentioned in the article that is having trouble getting stock of the 290x is Tiger Direct. There's quite a number of forum members on HardOCP reporting they received order confirmations and their credit cards were charged by Tiger Direct, only to discover their order status was changed to backordered. Sounds like you and anyone looking to buy the 290x should take extra care if ordering from them.

Nobody has had them in abundance, and the backorders are 2 weeks out or so.

Amazon, TD, Newegg, NCIX....basically dry until Monday at the earliest.

 

[rtsurfer]

gee no kidding? I was talking about ocing BOTH cards.

And I am talking that we do not really need to OC 290 X.

The 290X at stock speed with some decent after market cooler like Asus, will be just as great as your OCed 780. Even if 290X looses, it will be in a couple of games and that too by 1~2%.

290X decent cooling,
Lower power than Oced 780,
Less heat and most probably similar performance.

If you OC the 290X, you are gonna do it to take on the Titan.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Lower power than Oced 780,
Less heat and most probably similar performance.

You just contradicted what the reviews show, which is the R290X needs 30% more power for 9% more performance.

 

[OCGuy]

And I am talking that we do not really need to OC 290 X.

The 290X at stock speed with some decent after market cooler like Asus, will be just as great as your OCed 780. Even if 290X looses, it will be in a couple of games and that too by 1~2%.

290X decent cooling,
Lower power than Oced 780,
Less heat and most probably similar performance.

If you OC the 290X, you are gonna do it to take on the Titan.

What is the stock speed of a 290x?

 

[rtsurfer]

You just contradicted what the reviews show, which is the R290X needs 30% more power for 9% more performance.

Agreed.
But I specifically compared the 290X power to an OCed 780. All the reviews made it clear that the card is just as power hungry as AMD desktop processors.

But 30% more power than an OCed 780..?? If true(I am not sure), then that will be a bit surprising...

 

[3DVagabond]

IMHO, a reference card should not routinely thermal throttle. Sure, when the aftermarket gets a hold of it there will be some interesting developments. For AMD though this looks like smoke and mirrors.:thumbsdown:

Throttling happens with the reference 780 and Titan too. I don't know how everyone could have forgotten that. Maybe because we didn't have the insistent harping on these forums by certain posters like we are with the 290X? Or possibly because except for Hardware.fr no sites thought it was very important? Mind you this is with the OMFGBBQ Titan reference cooler. Gee I wonder why AMD didn't decide to add to the cost of the 290X with a similar effort? Maybe because it's not worth the cost if it's not really going to do the job, and will just let the AIB's sort it. Which is exactly what ended up happening to the 780 as custom cards passed even the Titan up. Again, why bother?

From: Hardware.fr via Google translate.

As stated repeatedly, the GeForce GTX 780 and GTX Titan are able to reach their maximum turbo frequency as their GPU does not reach 80 ° C. It reaches this temperature in all games we tested on a test bench, with and without additional cooling (2x Noctua NF-P12) around the map.

If we measure the performance of a traditional way, we would get higher scores and unrepresentative playing conditions in all our tests. We had to take the time to observe in detail the behavior of these cards in each game to make sure we do performance measures in representative conditions.

Here are two examples to recall measured during the initial test of the Titan GTX with Anno 2070 and Battlefield 3 with a rapid test, a temperature-stabilized and the same test as the latter but with two 120mm fans positioned around the map:

Anno 2070: 75 fps -> 63 fps -> 68 fps
Battlefield 3: 115 fps -> 107 fps -> 114 fps

The drop in performance once the temperature reaches cruising can be considerable. An efficient cooling may partially offset this decline, but are there not a contradiction and have to add noise to compensate for a graphics card is trying to remain discreet at all costs? Temperature of 80 ° C covered by Nvidia is relatively low for a GPU and it might have been wise to opt for example 85 ° C and calibrate the fan accordingly.

Here the average frequency we observed in practice for two selected scenarios:

Note how without any additional cooling the performance in Anno 2070 dropped from 75fps to 63fps. That's an additional 19% performance before the card warms up and throttles. With BF3 it goes from 115fps to 107fps, or 12% faster before it warms up. Notice that the more demanding the settings, the worse it gets.

Get used to these kinds of results folks when a node gets old like 28nm is, and when companies push to larger chip dimensions.

 

[rtsurfer]

What is the stock speed of a 290x?

I would say a 900Mhz.

I know i know, that is the boost speed, but that is around the average speed Anandtech got in benchmarking the cards.

With a decent cooler, we should be able to sustain 900 Mhz (althought I think 1000Mhz might be possible).

All these people here are hoping to OC the card with watercooling and all that, but I believe that by using any aftermarket cooling, if we are able to sustain 1000Mhz constant, then that will give us better REAL- Life performance, instead of some benchmark touting numbers at higher clocks like 1200 MHZ that will be there for ~5 minutes and then throttle back to a crawl.

 

[3DVagabond]

Says 55C at 1.4v 1200mhz core?!?!? Probably dims the lights in the house under load.

If clockspeeds scale like Tahiti wouldn't that make this thing like 25% faster than Titan if they are about even when the 290x seems to average around 950mhz right now?

It is a 4 slot cooler apparently. Absolutely huge.

It's also a bit of overkill. We don't need 55°C. The DCII, WF3, and Toxic cooling solutions should tame Hawaii's thermals.

 

[Zanovar]

What is the stock speed of a 290x?

Does it have one?

 

[Leadbox]

Does it have one?

Anandtech have it at 727Mhz

Now there is one exception to this that’s worth pointing out. The above is applicable to the 290X’s boost states, which is where it should be spending all of its time under load. However if for whatever reason the card has to drop out of the boost states and revert to the base clockspeed state of 727MHz, then the relationship between fan speed and temperature becomes reversed, and the card will outright violate fan speed throttles in order to maintain the target temperature while also staying at the base clockspeed.

 

[imaheadcase]

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.

Not even close, highly doubt its even %1. Look st Steam hardware screen sizes.

 

[Zanovar]

Anandtech have it at 727Mhz

Interesting,cheers for that:thumbsup:i have some more reading to do i think.