R9 290X - A Card AIBs Will Love?

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brandonmatic

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Jul 13, 2013
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Based on reviews so far the R9 290X definitely runs hot and is power hungry. But it also seems to have impressive performance scaling -- if the heat can be kept under control and enough power can be supplied.

Makes me think that the 290X - more than any other GPU - will have huge variability in performance based on the quality of the cooler and power circuitry used by different AIBs. I think this will lead to all kinds of cool custom designs and models and I think AIBs will appreciate the chance to differentiate their products (for a premium, of course). I'm really excited to see what they come up with in the next few months.

voltagetuning.jpg


AMD's Radeon R9 290X shows fantastic clock scaling with GPU voltage, better than any GPU I've previously reviewed. The clocks do not show any signs of diminishing returns, which leads me to believe that the GPU could clock even higher with more voltage and cooling.
Click to expand...
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/R9_290X/31.html
 
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24601

Golden Member
Jun 10, 2007
1,683
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brandonmatic said:
Based on reviews so far the R9 290X definitely runs hot and is power hungry. But it also seems to have impressive performance scaling -- if the heat can be kept under control and enough power can be supplied.

Makes me think that the 290X - more than any other GPU - will have huge variability in performance based on the quality of the cooler and power circuitry used by different AIBs. I think this will lead to all kinds of cool custom designs and models and I think AIBs will appreciate the chance to differentiate their products (for a premium, of course). I'm really excited to see what they come up with in the next few months.

voltagetuning.jpg


http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/R9_290X/31.html
Click to expand...

INB4 XFX Nuclear Meltdown card that stays at 450 mhz from worse than stock cooling.
 
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atticus14

Member
Apr 11, 2010
174
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watercooling is already available so hopefully some of the users will speak up once they get it all working that should give a good idea of where we stand, the only thing left is to see any non reference power changes. Elric from tech of tomorrow said he's getting a non reference card in "a week or so" @ :25s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLLZ9oAGdto
 
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BallaTheFeared

Diamond Member
Nov 15, 2010
8,115
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I don't know exactly how much cooling capacity non reference cards have, but I think the mid tier chips won't have much left after taming the beast at 1GHz before they themselves get loud.

The quick increase in consumption to voltage/clock ratio is going to make aftermarket cards squeal I think. Best bet will be water of course, more so than previously.

Remember this is already a 250w or greater chip, and that's with it throttling from what I've been told. So it is going to consume even more power if it can sustain 1GHz... We're talking 300w capacity coolers out of the gate I would imagine, with some benefit from lower operating temps.

It's hard to say for sure, but I imagine the difference in clocks between a decent fan speed aftermarket cooler and similar water will actually be more substantial than we've seen previously.
 
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24601

Golden Member
Jun 10, 2007
1,683
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BallaTheFeared said:
I don't know exactly how much cooling capacity non reference cards have, but I think the mid tier chips won't have much left after taming the beast at 1GHz before they themselves get loud.

The quick increase in consumption to voltage/clock ratio is going to make aftermarket cards squeal I think. Best bet will be water of course, more so than previously.

Remember this is already a 250w or greater chip, and that's with it throttling from what I've been told. So it is going to consume even more power if it can sustain 1GHz... We're talking 300w capacity coolers out of the gate I would imagine, with some benefit from lower operating temps.

It's hard to say for sure, but I imagine the difference in clocks between a decent fan speed aftermarket cooler and similar water will actually be more substantial than we've seen previously.
Click to expand...

The main limit to open air gfx card cooling is case heat dissipation.

A card that dissipates it's 300-350w TDP properly to the case will then be wallowing in that as the case is simply not very good at rotating that heat outside.

This is why we see open air coolers suffer the "slowly rising temperatures" problem when they are in cases.

The AIB need to man up and do 3 slot blowers with double sided opening intakes with 3 slot (2 effective slot) exhausts.
 
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DSey

Member
Nov 28, 2007
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I'm looking forward to a shootout between the MSI Twin Frozr (maybe they'll design a Triplet Frozr now!), Gigabyte Windforce, Asus Matrix and Sapphire Toxic editions of the card.
 
blastingcap

blastingcap

Diamond Member
Sep 16, 2010
6,654
5
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You did not cite what the reviewer wrote beneath that chart:

"AMD's stock cooler is completely overwhelmed with the heat output of the card during voltage tweaking, though. Even at 100%, it could barely keep the card from overheating and was noisier than any cooler I've ever experienced. My neighbors actually complained, asking why I used power tools that late at night.

Power draw also increases immensely, going from just above 400 W for the whole system to around 650 W! To conclude, I expect extreme overlclockers with access to liquid nitrogen to love this card. Everyone else will probably find voltage tuning beyond +0.05 V to be too hot and too noisy."

So basically you get ~9.2% more GPU clock in exchange for much higher power consumption and everything else that goes with it (heat, noise, higher electricity cost, shortens lifespan of card, heats up case and shortens lifespan of other components as well). Even if AIBs give better cooling, that power draw is going to be viciously higher... looks like 200 watts higher. There does not appear to be a very high oc headroom available. I would rather take stock speeds and not have the extra heat, noise, and electricity cost of that extra wattage. The GPU is already being pushed very hard.

And keep in mind this is just GPU headroom, right? So assuming you can also oc memory to keep pace, you will at most get 9.2% more performance with perfect scaling, and realistically less because perfect scaling never happens. In a best case scenario you will get, say, 55fps instead of 50fps, as an example... and probably less.

Now, if it were like HD7950 with its >20% overclocking headroom, that would be something to brag about.

brandonmatic said:
Based on reviews so far the R9 290X definitely runs hot and is power hungry. But it also seems to have impressive performance scaling -- if the heat can be kept under control and enough power can be supplied.

Makes me think that the 290X - more than any other GPU - will have huge variability in performance based on the quality of the cooler and power circuitry used by different AIBs. I think this will lead to all kinds of cool custom designs and models and I think AIBs will appreciate the chance to differentiate their products (for a premium, of course). I'm really excited to see what they come up with in the next few months.
Click to expand...
 
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OCGuy

Lifer
Jul 12, 2000
27,224
37
91
I'm not sure how much more heat/juice the AIBs will give a warranty on, no matter the cooling solution. More than a 75mhz boost on air would impress me.
 
Baasha

Baasha

Golden Member
Jan 4, 2010
1,989
20
81
lol..@ 95C under load, the stock cooler on the R9 290X is absolute dung..

Wish EVGA would do AMD.. haven't had an AMD card since X1900XTX.. was such a great card when FEAR first came out years ago.. aah.. the good 'ol days.. lol
 
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HurleyBird

Platinum Member
Apr 22, 2003
2,801
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Some of the people in this thread don't realize how detrimental 95 degree operating temperatures are to power consumption. Cool the chip properly and power consumption will naturally go down.
 
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OCGuy

Lifer
Jul 12, 2000
27,224
37
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HurleyBird said:
Some of the people in this thread don't realize how detrimental 95 degree operating temperatures are to power consumption. Cool the chip properly and power consumption will naturally go down.
Click to expand...

Operating temps are based off power consumption........95c is not overboard for a gpu using 350w
 
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amenx

Diamond Member
Dec 17, 2004
4,428
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blastingcap said:
You did not cite what the reviewer wrote beneath that chart:

"AMD's stock cooler is completely overwhelmed with the heat output of the card during voltage tweaking, though. Even at 100%, it could barely keep the card from overheating and was noisier than any cooler I've ever experienced. My neighbors actually complained, asking why I used power tools that late at night.
Click to expand...
:p

blastingcap said:
Power draw also increases immensely, going from just above 400 W for the whole system to around 650 W! To conclude, I expect extreme overlclockers with access to liquid nitrogen to love this card. Everyone else will probably find voltage tuning beyond +0.05 V to be too hot and too noisy."

So basically you get ~9.2% more GPU clock in exchange for much higher power consumption and everything else that goes with it (heat, noise, higher electricity cost, shortens lifespan of card, heats up case and shortens lifespan of other components as well). Even if AIBs give better cooling, that power draw is going to be viciously higher... looks like 200 watts higher. There does not appear to be a very high oc headroom available. I would rather take stock speeds and not have the extra heat, noise, and electricity cost of that extra wattage. The GPU is already being pushed very hard.

And keep in mind this is just GPU headroom, right? So assuming you can also oc memory to keep pace, you will at most get 9.2% more performance with perfect scaling, and realistically less because perfect scaling never happens. In a best case scenario you will get, say, 55fps instead of 50fps, as an example... and probably less.

Now, if it were like HD7950 with its >20% overclocking headroom, that would be something to brag about.
Click to expand...
Its becoming clear what AMD did with the 290x. They upped the clocks and volts more than they normally would do with newly released cards... just to beat the 780 and get into Titan territory. If they applied the same overhead room as with the 7950/7970, it would've been a rather underwhelming card.
 
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canadiantrex

Member
Apr 19, 2013
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Just had a scary thought...

8 core piledriver overclocked to 4.5 GHz or higher in the same PC as crossfired and OC'd 290X's.

Dat power consumption. :hmm:
 
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itsmydamnation

Diamond Member
Feb 6, 2011
3,055
3,862
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Ieat said:
Baseless? That's a 4 slot solution that bends the card into a 5th slot. lol No AIB is going to sell and warranty something like that.
Click to expand...


I said high end air, this isn't with high RPM fans. Also this solution is tall(wide?) because it is generic, you could easily make this a 3 slot solution if design for a specific card. But this solution also allows for much better cooling of memory/vrms then most coolers . Also you would likely get multiple GPU's of life from it, look at the compatibility list:

http://www.prolimatech.com/en/products/detail.asp?id=1672&subid=1675#showtab

What do you mean by bend into 5th slot? its weight is 600grams, its nowhere near as heavy as water cooling.

the issue with water..... well it requires a full water setup.
 
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blastingcap

blastingcap

Diamond Member
Sep 16, 2010
6,654
5
76
amenx said:
:p


Its becoming clear what AMD did with the 290x. They upped the clocks and volts more than they normally would do with newly released cards... just to beat the 780 and get into Titan territory. If they applied the same overhead room as with the 7950/7970, it would've been a rather underwhelming card.
Click to expand...

Yes, I think this is par for course which is why if one company goes first and the other has time to tweak, the second company's card somehow always winds up matching or slightly noticeably beating the other company's rival card, like HD 5850 being 7% faster than GTX 285 was no accident. Nor was GTX 470 edging out HD 5850 an accident.

NVidia apparently gritted their teeth and jacked up GTX 480 to surprisingly high temperatures just to beat HD 5870. In this case, AMD apparently targeted GTX 780 with Quiet Mode and GTX TITAN with Uber mode. Just look at the first chart on this page to see how closely 290X Quiet and Uber modes line up to GTX 780 and TITAN, respectively:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/R9_290X/27.html

perfrel.gif


Oh, I also just noticed that W1z said the power delta was actually closer to 250W than 200W. I know with better cooling you can save a little wattage, say 25-50W, but even so, 200W for less than 9% performance gain seems silly to me. I am not saying it is a bad card at all, just that the GPU is already being pushed so hard, so I don't see what AIBs will love about it based on OP's charts.

However, AIBs may indeed love 290X for a completely different reason: price/performance. Since the card is soundly beating comparable NV cards' price/perf, maybe AIBs will "love" how they have plenty of room between $549 and $999 to work with... there will doubtlessly be some people who buy non-reference 290X's priced somewhere between $549 and $999. But AIBs "loving" the 290X just because it ekes out a little more performance for 200-250 more watts? Nah.
 
GaiaHunter

GaiaHunter

Diamond Member
Jul 13, 2008
3,697
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With the "Uber" BIOS, we saw 1125 MHz GPU clock (13% overclocking) and 1575 MHz memory (26% overclock).
(...)
When using the "Uber" BIOS, we see a 7.2% performance improvement.
Click to expand...

This was with default voltage.

I'm not sure why people are focusing on OC with overvolting with a card that has a cooler completely incapable of dealing with that amount of heat.
 
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OCGuy

Lifer
Jul 12, 2000
27,224
37
91
GaiaHunter said:
This was with default voltage.

I'm not sure why people are focusing on OC with overvolting with a card that has a cooler completely incapable of dealing with that amount of heat.
Click to expand...

Do we know when AMD will allow the overvolting?

If they don't warrant a voltage bump, it would be wise to let other people be the canary.
 
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