I'm assuming it is on page 1 since this is the review thread.....sitting at Buffalo Wild Wings on my cell phone so its a pain to jump around. Now back to my 2nd Crown....yum.
@above: Oh, AMD investigated and cleared it? LOL.
I'm assuming it is on page 1 since this is the review thread.....sitting at Buffalo Wild Wings on my cell phone so its a pain to jump around. Now back to my 2nd Crown....yum.
@above: Oh, AMD investigated and cleared it? LOL.
Vesku
Diamond Member
- Aug 25, 2005
- 3,743
- 28
- 86
What do you mean by "cleared it"? AMD told Tomshardware they think the retail 290X he bought is defective in some way. Tomshardware doesn't say if they tried reseating the cooler or RMAing the card.
chimaxi83
Diamond Member
- May 18, 2003
- 5,457
- 63
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Lol @ "scandal". Nice baiting. I'm an actual owner, and my card (when it was air cooled) wouldn't throttle with a custom fan profile. It was able to maintain 1000MHz all day, albeit at a loud 60-65% fan.
If the behavior of Toms retail card was anywhere near normal, you'd be reading about it. Use your head dude.
If the behavior of Toms retail card was anywhere near normal, you'd be reading about it. Use your head dude.
Don't obfuscate the issue. The issue has nothing to do with 60-65% [> uber loud] custom fan settings. The issue is that, at stock settings, the retail R9 290X from Newegg is up to 20% SLOWER than the R9 290X cards sent to reviewers using the exact same drivers. That is a huge difference.
My guess is that AMD's partners actually shipped R9 290X with a less loud (ie. slower spinning) fan profile than what reviewers had (note that at GTX 780 noise levels, R9 290 cards lose 20% in performance!) , but that is purely speculation on my part. Hopefully websites will investigate more.
On a side note, you should send back the 290X and get a 290 instead if you want an R9 series card and can deal with the noise/heat in my opinion.
Stuka87
Diamond Member
- Dec 10, 2010
- 6,240
- 2,559
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Or it could be as AMD stated, and there may be an issue with the cooler. Too much thermal compound, or not enough, or a heatsink with a mounting surface that is not in spec.
AMD did change the spec on the 290 fan speeds, which will differ from cards that were already shipped. Those cards will require a firmware flash.
Nope. I bet it was actually Nvidia whose drivers contain malware that makes AMD devices perform differently, so it appears AMD is sending cherry picked silicon to reviewers!
I am pretty sure the saying goes: "Look for the most complicated solution that has the most coverups and nefariousness that aligns with your bias, and you've found the most likely solution."
Remember that we are talking about R9 290X here. Fans speeds are supposed to be identical between review and retail units.
Anyway, considering AMD's lack of transparency with clock speeds on R9 290/290X cards, nothing would really surprise me.
Well, Sweclockers has apparently debunked the issue that TH mentioned by purchasing multiple cards from amazon:
http://www.sweclockers.com/artikel/...der-for-golden-samples-sweclockers-undersoker
After suspicions that AMD sent out golden samples for media loading SweClockers test benches again with a PowerColor Radeon R9 290X directly from Amazon Marketplace at Sveavägen in Stockholm.
http://www.sweclockers.com/artikel/...der-for-golden-samples-sweclockers-undersoker
After suspicions that AMD sent out golden samples for media loading SweClockers test benches again with a PowerColor Radeon R9 290X directly from Amazon Marketplace at Sveavägen in Stockholm.
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chimaxi83
Diamond Member
- May 18, 2003
- 5,457
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I got Batman AO on launch day. I got AC:BF whatever the day was that the Nvidia bundle went live (still locked). Both are Steam codes.
That's not what Tom's Hardware Guide tested. Tom's tested in "Quiet" mode, not "Uber" mode. The question is: is the default fan profile in "Quiet" mode different between retail units (specifically, whatever Newegg is carrying) compared to reviewer samples? For AMD's sake, I hope the answer is no.
Keep in mind that performance on R9 cards is severely reduced when moving to quieter settings with mid-30% fan speeds.
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Atreidin
Senior member
- Mar 31, 2011
- 464
- 27
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Wow, I'm impressed. Instead of copy-paste of rumors and scandals and pointless rumor-mongering, good money was invested to do some actual investigative reporting, and graphics cards don't look very cheap in Sweden.
Sweclockers tested everything in quiet mode too and found that the variances were nothing to note. 1-2% at best, although my translation is pretty rough.
Put simply, It sounds like TH did get a defective card and it is nothing more than that. I know that some would really like for it to be something more than that , but it really doesn't appear to be. Don't get me wrong - I do think the cooling situation sucks on the 290X. If you want to bad mouth the reference cooler on the 290 and 290X i'm right there with you, because that was just a bone headed decision on AMD's part. As far as this TH story, though? This doesn't appear to be some type of grand conspiracy; in any case, TH claims to be investigating so if there's a story to be had here i'm sure it will come out at some point - but i'm inclined to think it's nothing more than a defective card. It happens.
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Stuka87
Diamond Member
- Dec 10, 2010
- 6,240
- 2,559
- 136
Anandtech has the base clocks in their review. Did you read it?
Code:
R9 290X R9 290
Core Clock 727MHz 662MHz
Boost Clock 1000MHz 947MHz
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Did you read the article? There was a 1 fps difference in quiet mode.
There clearly was something wrong with the Tom's Hardware card.
I RMA coil whine on my cards.. I'm pretty sure if you got a crap card that performed 20% worse due to overheating issues (heatsink not on correctly), you can RMA that too.
AMD cope a lot of flak for the 7970 series as well, their reference cooler is "barely" enough and noisy. The answer has always been: 1) Deal with it and game with headphones, awesome perf for price, noise is the trade-off 2) Water cool and OC further! 3) Don't buy reference cards DUH! So many custom varieties end up from all the AIBs. 4) Buy NV.
Our complaints about the crap reference HSF falls on deaf ears ever since the 4800 series. The 4890 was horribly loud.
AMD cope a lot of flak for the 7970 series as well, their reference cooler is "barely" enough and noisy. The answer has always been: 1) Deal with it and game with headphones, awesome perf for price, noise is the trade-off 2) Water cool and OC further! 3) Don't buy reference cards DUH! So many custom varieties end up from all the AIBs. 4) Buy NV.
Our complaints about the crap reference HSF falls on deaf ears ever since the 4800 series. The 4890 was horribly loud.
- May 16, 2008
- 3,180
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There goes that conspiracy theory down the drain.
It appears to likely be a publicity attempt by toms. You'd think they could troubleshoot e.g. TIM etc.
RussianSensation
Elite Member
- Sep 5, 2003
- 19,458
- 765
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Update: Based on your feedback, I took the IceQ X2 cooler off the HIS Radeon R9 280X and stuck it on our R9 290 sample. Cooling was dramatically improved. The FurMark stress test maxed out at 76 degrees while the card never exceeded 63 degrees in Crysis 3 and Battlefield 4. So it seems as expected the board partners will be able to solve the heat issues of the reference card.
Along with looking great against AMD's own lineup, the R9 290 holds strong against Nvidia, which is now charging $330 for the GTX 770 and $500 for the GTX 780. The R9 290 is 21% pricier and 29% faster than the former as well as 20% cheaper and 8% quicker than the latter, offering the best value of any $300 to $500+ graphics card available right now -- and enough performance to play Battlefield 4 on ultra quality at 2560x1600."
Source: TechSpot Score 95/100.
TL,DR: There is a temperature drop from 95*C to 63*C with a HIS IceQ cooler after a basic swap.
Once after-market R9 290s come out and NV's game bundle runs out, 780 will need a $100 price cut. With Mantle API hitting BF4, Thief and Star Citizen, NV's cards will only become more disadvantaged.
R9 290's Battlefield 4 performance is already above Titan without Mantle.
NV will likely counter with a 780 Ghz edition at $499 knowing how much they hate dropping prices and they'll try to justify it with TXAA, PhysX, 3D Vision, G-Sync, etc.
770 4GB also needs an $80 price drop from $389.
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Now we're talking.
What a beast card, R9 290x is already dead, it brings nothing over R9 290. Kinda puzzles me why amd released two cards with same perfs.
Also, Anandtech should really do something about their power consumption bench, R9 290 consumes 35W less than R9 290x on tomshardware.
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Thats what I am waiting for.. was thinking going water cooling, but looks too expensive to justify the cost, when a good custom air design from Powercolor, MSI, His or Sapphire does the job.
Debunked... Multiple cards? Where
They barely managed to get one from local retailer:
SweClockers want to say a big thank you to the Webhallen,
which against all odds managed to shake up a PowerColor Radeon R9 290X OC for this article.
Grooveriding
Diamond Member
- Dec 25, 2008
- 9,147
- 1,329
- 126
Update: Based on your feedback, I took the IceQ X2 cooler off the HIS Radeon R9 280X and stuck it on our R9 290 sample. Cooling was dramatically improved. The FurMark stress test maxed out at 76 degrees while the card never exceeded 63 degrees in Crysis 3 and Battlefield 4. So it seems as expected the board partners will be able to solve the heat issues of the reference card.
Along with looking great against AMD's own lineup, the R9 290 holds strong against Nvidia, which is now charging $330 for the GTX 770 and $500 for the GTX 780. The R9 290 is 21% pricier and 29% faster than the former as well as 20% cheaper and 8% quicker than the latter, offering the best value of any $300 to $500+ graphics card available right now -- and enough performance to play Battlefield 4 on ultra quality at 2560x1600."
Source: TechSpot
TLR: There is a temperature drop from 95*C to 63*C with a HIS IceQ cooler after a basic swap.
Once after-market R9 290s come out and NV's game bundle runs out, 780 will need a $100 price cut. With Mantle API hitting BF4, Thief and Star Citizen, NV's cards will only become disadvantaged more. NV will likely counter with a 780 Ghz edition at $499 knowing how much they hate dropping prices.
I'm sort of expecting to see 780ti come out cheaper than announced, maybe $600-$650. Plain 780 maybe go down to $400-$450 before year's end. Nvidia can generally charge a modest premium when they have that extra 10% edge over AMD, but the 780 is on par and slower at times than the 290, so the $500 price is not going to hold up.
The 780 looked terrible when 290X came out, then looked great when the price went down to $500 and now it looks terrible again with the 290 coming out.
the more i think about it, the more it seems like amd's competitiveness sort of ruined this card. They really wanted performance on par with the gtx 780 for some reason, but if they set a more reasonable goal with less aggressive clock speeds, they would have had good tdp and could have used a normal fan profile. And they could have probably made the card even cheaper then. It looks like they just got greedy and pushed the 290 too hard.
Saylick
Diamond Member
- Sep 10, 2012
- 3,923
- 9,142
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:thumbsup:
76C in Furmark isn't bad at all and neither is 63C in games, which shows that the chip isn't the cause of the high temps; it's all due to the crappy reference cooler. I can't wait to see aftermarket reviews, especially to see if the lower temperatures produce lower power draw as well. Again, just more proof that aftermarket cards need to drop ASAP if AMD wants to cement in their bang/buck advantage.
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