Spin Off: AT's Testing Methods & Uber Mode

[KCfromNC]

If you're running compute on a Titan, you're always going to have it in DP mode. On a 290X, you'll only run it in uber mode if you can stand the acoustics irregardless of usage.

Nope, for Titan you'd only run it in faster DP mode if the gain in DP performance outweighs the slowdown from clock throttling :

"The penalty for enabling full speed FP64 mode is that NVIDIA has to reduce clockspeeds to keep everything within spec. For our sample card this manifests itself as GPU Boost being disabled, forcing our card to run at 837MHz (or lower) at all times. And while we haven't seen it first-hand, NVIDIA tells us that in particularly TDP constrained situations Titan can drop below the base clock to as low as 725MHz."

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6760/nvidias-geforce-gtx-titan-part-1/4

Seems pretty much the same as the AMD Uber mode - you're trading off variables to get the most acceptable situation for your needs. And it would be useful to understand these tradeoffs as part of the buying decision, which is why it makes sense to cover them in a review.

 

[wand3r3r]

Re-Read the thread title.

Spin Off: AT's Testing Methods & Uber Mode

@blackened I agree the cooler sucks, however the purpose of this thread is how AT should conduct reviews in the future.

There are about 5 posts in the past pages on topic...

 

[HurleyBird]

Seems pretty much the same as the AMD Uber mode - you're trading off variables to get the most acceptable situation for your needs.

I should have phrased that as "If you're running DP compute on Titan" but the point still stands that the increase in DP rate is going to more than offset the small loss in clock speed for DP code. If that's the kind of work you're doing on Titan, you're always going to have the DP switch on. Otherwise you will have it off. You aren't making any kind of tradeoff like you are with Uber mode. You're pushing the DP toggle because the fundamental way you are using the card is changing.

You can liken it to having to change your windows resolution to play a game that doesn't let you change resolution in game, but has rendering issues at higher resolutions. It's a bit of an inconvenience to switch back and forth, but you aren't making a tradeoff like performance vs. noise or performance vs. image quality. Ideally Titan would automatically switch modes when it detected DP activity. You can't make a statement like "ideally the 290 X would switch into uber mode when it detects heavy load" as that would defeat the purpose.

 

[TerryMathews]

Lets say you have 1 card with 100 modes.

One of them will be the lowest performance and one of them will be the highest performance.

Everything else will be in between.

Took me 1 second to realize this.

So obviously you test the lowest performance mode and the highest performance mode and claim that there is to time to review all the other modes.

Of course this is all looking at straws.

What is the point of different SKUs if one has a card with wildly variable modes?

Cards being release with 4 bios?
Yeah, right.

And what is this silly talk of aligning vectors?
We buy cards to play games - the vectors that matter are ability to play games, IQ, performance and price.
All the other are minor points that we take in account after the first big 4.

In reviews you align ability to play games (fortunately these days cards generally work fine), IQ and then get performance.

Exactly.

If you're willing to test two modes, should be the fastest and the slowest. If you're only willing to test one, should be the fastest.

The problem with arguing that you shouldn't alter the "default configuration" out of the box is that you aren't overclocking, you're failing to properly configure with the modern equivalent of a DIP switch.

Back in the day, it wouldn't have been appropriate to leave the FSB jumpers on 100MHz if you were testing a 133MHz P3. This is no different.

Lay out some testing guidelines, then follow the manufacturers directions to configure the card to match your guidelines. You're still honoring the spirit of your "default configuration" testing and you're getting results that make sense and are useful.

 

[Mistwalker]

So obviously you test the lowest performance mode and the highest performance mode and claim that there is to time to review all the other modes.

Of course this is all looking at straws.

What is the point of different SKUs if one has a card with wildly variable modes?

Aside from the "claim you don't have time to review all the various modes" of a card, I agree with the basic ideas GaiaHunter mentioned: if a card has multiple modes of operation, test the top and bottom and let people extrapolate based on those.

Done and done. This is assuming we ever have cards with more than 2 modes in any case, or that this duo-BIOS trend continues.

When in doubt, more information is ALWAYS better.

 

[3DVagabond]

It's only a few percent on a cold run. What happens on a "warm" run? Well let's see here, the GTX cards throttle by 1 bin in a warmed up run while the 290 throttles by 200mhz+. See this chart? Dipping to 757mhz.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7481/the-amd-radeon-r9-290-review/15

FUD? :whiste:





Essentially, the 290 series of cards is going to require new benchmarking philosophy because the performance lowers over time as the card gets hotter. And make no mistake, they do get hotter with that crap shroud that AMD uses. So benchmark sites that are doing a single run may get OKAY results from quiet mode, but more sites should be doing 15-20 minute "warmed up" runs with a 22-25% loss in performance for real world data.

I'll be more than happy to show you more evidence of 20% loss in performance from quiet mode from "warmed up" runs. There is a clear difference between "first benchmark run" and subsequent benchmark runs due to lowering performance over time. DRASTICALLY lower performance over time due to the faulty cooler on the 290 series of cards. Again, i'll be happy to provide that data if you'd like. This cooling situation is not acceptable because any quiet fan profile reduces performance over time - when you're using a high GPU load for 15+ minutes, the performance is okay for the first couple of minutes and then tanks from excessive throttling.

From a consumer point of view this is not acceptable. The 7970 series of cards could overclock ridiculously high and did not ever, ever require compromises for quiet custom fan profiles. The fact that 290(X) performance tanks as a "quiet" trade-off is a design decision that AMD should regret and fix with a "B" revision card.

You must really think people are stupid.

To get down to the 34%-38% fan speed range, the 290 has to shed an average of 22% of its performance, peaking under a few titles at 25%. To be sure this makes the card much quieter – though not as quiet as a GTX 780 – but it also sacrifices much of the 290’s performance advantage in the process. At this point we’ve essentially reduced it to a 280X.

1, That's the 290 which doesn't even have uber or quiet mode.
2, They reduced the fan speeds below the 47% reference speed and that's what happened. They do actually show that at the 47% reference setting the 290 didn't throttle at all. It has zero relevance nor does it prove/show the 290X throttling 20%, 25%, 30% in quiet mode.
3, Where did you get that chart from. It has nothing to do with the page you linked to the 290 (non X) review.

FWIW the charts I posted from Hardware.fr are with the cards warmed until their temps stabilize. I showed 14 actual games. Not one random chart with no reference to what's being benched, test conditions, or anything else, and a one line quote from an article that isn't even about the subject of the 290X throttling in quiet mode.

Edit: I won't post again on this as it is OT and the OP is getting rightfully annoyed. Sorry, OP.

 

[HurleyBird]

When in doubt, more information is ALWAYS better.

Not always, but usually. Including 640x480 tests for example would be detrimental to any high end video card review by confusing the reader with irrelevant data.

 

[Mistwalker]

Not always, but usually. Including 640x480 tests for example would be detrimental to any high end video card review by confusing the reader with irrelevant data.

Fair point. Amend to: "More information is always better--within reason, given the performance and target market of the tested card."

 

[railven]

This thread is no longer on topic, should just close it. It's going no where.

However, thanks to Anand taking the time to respond.

 

[krumme]

Dear Anand and staff

Testing the cards will take even longer time in the future if its going to be done properly.

If there is extremely short time, and especially if there is changes like with the 290, it stresses the reviewer and you get worse decisions, feeling is going to play a larger part, and prior relations will tend to blurr rationality and perspective. That seemed to happen for the last two gpu reviews. They were not the standard we hope for and the tone was imho off.

Nobody should be happy about that situation - and that especially goes for the reviewer.

The work conditions for reviewers need to change for the reviews to be better. And that means more time.

There is no other way around it. The working conditions the reviewer gets is counterproductive and not reasonable.

Anandtech is one of the big players. Instead of sending messages about your personal favors to the vendors - we want less noise - let us users do it after the results is presented.

Use you position to say stop to these idiotic working conditions from amd/nv. Its about time this race stops. We can all wait a week more.

Send an open letter.

If you need our support to voice up and complain to amd/nv let us know. We are very experienced at doing that

 

[Janooo]

Anand,
Thank you for joining the discussion! Thank you for listening and valuing our feed back and the following lines are just that, a feed back to your site.

First, hat's off to your hard work! You've built a great website that has a reputation. You've built a name/trademark. That's your biggest asset/value. It's in your own interest to protect that.

A quick recap what happened.
1. 290 review - Ryan introduced "Noise Equalization" - that is not default out of the box!
2. 780 Ti review just a few days later - Uber mode is thrown out because it's not out of the box!
3. Ryan's post in this thread that it's your policy to test out of the box.

Conclusion: It's a hypocrisy at its best!

Solution: AT should apologize to its readers for this hiccup.
Testing the best turbo/boost performance settings of any products going against each other should not be a problem in the future.

I hope this makes sense.

Regards,
Jano

 

[Erenhardt]

So I've got some thoughts here, and perhaps we'll turn these into a post on the main site but I wanted to get in this thread as you guys are honestly the source/inspiration for any such post.

We are happy our feedback has reached its target. Thank you for taking time to respond to us, and providing us with in-depth take on the matter.

The close relationship between fan speed and performance sort of throws a wrench in all of this. When Intel first started introducing aggressive turbo modes back in Lynnfield I was worried that it would completely corrupt our ability to reliably test CPUs. It turns out that wasn't the case. With graphics however the situation is a bit different, and with the 290/290X we're beginning to get a feel for exactly why that is.

I see how it may end up as a very though situation for a reviewer.

I originally assumed the reason this was a problem now (and is going to be in the future) is because we're stuck on 28nm trying to get more performance without a good process tech solution until 14/16nm FinFET in 2015. Now I'm feeling like this is just going to be a part of the reality going forward, so we need a real solution.

I am impressed with the GPU performance race we see today aswell. The issue could be more or less solved with better reference cooler - no denying. But what we are looking at here is taking most performance out of the given cooling solution. Looking at advancements in the graphics cards coolers development that happened recently, one could ask how far can we go? We went from cooler dissipating 100W to beasts having to work with 200-300 Watts of heat. We may soon hit a hard ceiling as to how much heat a cooler can dissipate. AMD tech is doing its best withing variable (ambient temp, PWM fan control issue) heat dissipation.

AMD's Uber mode in my eyes isn't the same as a factory overclocked card. At the same time, it's not the same as what we've done in the past - which is test a totally stock configuration (reference clocks and fan speed). I personally believe in the whole living document philosophy when it comes to things like constitutions or review policies, but here's where we can get into trouble. In the case of the 290X, AMD has two modes and you can make a good argument for why you should test both. Let's now take it one step further: what happens if NVIDIA shows up next round with 3 modes? Do we test all 3? Which modes do we then compare against AMD modes, particularly if they only line up along one vector (e.g. performance or acoustics, not both). What if AMD responds the next round with 4 modes, etc... It can quickly get out of hand.

As mentioned before, testing two modes (most north and most south mode) is enough to make a conclusion the interpolate all in-between those two. I see how that is double work compared to a situation where only one mode was available. Testing 8 cards, each two times results in 16 tests across multiple games, with every game tested with number of resultions/setting opnions.

What I'd like to do here is define a good policy for what to do if this turns into a fan speed arms race. Dealing with the 290X is simple: Ryan tested both quiet and uber modes, and I can totally appreciate the argument for including analysis based on both. What Ryan is concerned about is the future. This isn't a matter of him being lazy (me being the person he reports to, I can tell you that's definitely not the case - he's kept up an insane work schedule over these past several weeks in order to get everything done as best as possible. The launches aren't done yet for the year, add in short NDA windows, issues with cards/drivers and of course any travel and the pace you have to keep in order to put out these reviews is insane). The precedent we set here today will directly impact what manufacturers attempt to do with their reviews programs in the future. The safe bet is to stick with testing in default configurations. I am (and assuming Ryan is too) more than willing to expand/change/redefine that, but the question is how? Let's look beyond the present 290X situation and think about what happens next. If acoustics and performance become even more tightly coupled in future GPU designs, and multiple optimization points exist for each card (with 1 default setting obviously) how should we deal with that going forward? If things get crazy, we could be in a situation where there would even have to be a tradeoff in terms of review depth vs. card configuration combinations. E.g. would you be willing to give up a resolution setting across all games tested in order to get another operating mode included? What does this do to the complexity of graphs?

I addressed the workload need to review 2 mode graphics cards already. We appreciate the effort that was put in the reviews. I can see how last weeks could be over-the-top busy, with all those releases.

I don't know that I've got the answer/a solution here, but this is the discussion I'd love to have.

As I see this:
Problem begins when we have all cards come with multiple operating modes. It doubles/triples/etc work that is needed to do a in-depth review. For now, it is only one card, but we don't know what will future bring. In case we will see more card with double mode, there needs to be some policy in place.

Solution:
If in the future graphics card come with multiple modes, I think the necessary step has to be taken:
As you mentioned earlier, uber mode is not exactly the same as overclocked card. Solution would be to treat it as what it is. It is not a default, but nor is it overclocking. Make additional part in the reviews: single game/benchmark that shows performance of cards in their second mode. That way you don't need to test all games across all resolutions with both modes. Noise, temperature, and power consumption should be tested in both modes.

This is my quick solution to the problem that may occur in the future, and is not here yet

 

[crisium]

Yeah, sorry Blackened, but in that last post you went too far. You are now deliberately lying and misleading us to make your point.

 

[Imouto]

Yeah, sorry Blackened, but in that last post you went too far. You are now deliberately lying and misleading us to make your point.

Well, this thread is a train wreck already.

And yet he dares to continuously say how annoying fanboys are when he sounds like a broken record attacking these cards. There are a lot of loyalists out there that at least don't pretend to be objective like he's claiming to be.

So much hate and lies can't be explained in any other terms.

 

[blackened23]

I misled nobody. The fact of the matter is, like my post indicates, attaining quiet performance with a 290 or 290X card requires significant compromises in both performance in terms of throttling - the card can and will throttle by nearly 300mhz for "quiet" operation and will lose 20% performance at that point. THIS IS NOT AN ACCEPTABLE COMPROMISE. This is a fact and if you would like me to post 10 detailed reviews showing proof of this, just ask.

Like I said I really enjoyed AMD's past 3 generations of cards, I really liked the 7970. None of these cards required me to sacrifice performance for reasonably quiet operation. Whatever though. You guys keep insisting that AMD can do no wrong when they clearly made the wrong decisions, as every single web review has pointed out. You guys just want to shut me up when all I want is a better product as a consumer - it's too much to ask for apparently? AMD can do no wrong right? Whatever you say man. I'm talking to a brick wall here. Tell you what, you guys just keep on thinking that AMD can do no wrong while more websites hammer AMD on this throttling versus noise issue. Most tech users don't bother with forums like this but they will see the headlines soon enough if they haven't ALREADY, and maybe then AMD will realize that the compromises made with the 290 series are not acceptable. For every one person that buys a 290 on value, two people will see the headlines and steer clear. Could AMD have prevented this? Yes. Did they? No.

As much as you guys would love for this problem and controversy to disappear, it just won't. AMD made bad design decisions, make your bed and lie in it and all that sort of thing I guess. I'm done chatting with the brick wall here and being stifled. AMD can do no wrong. And yes. I'm a "fanboy". Thank you, i'm a fanboy after having given AMD my money on GPUs for their past 3 generations of cards. Oddly enough none of those cards left performance on the table at quiet 40% fan speeds. Whatever, though. Whatever you guys say.

 

[AnandThenMan]

blackened for the love of gawd make a new thread, are you incapable of reading a thread title and staying on topic even slightly? Making the same point 20 times doesn't convince people anymore than the first 5 times. We are fully aware of your opinion on the matter.

Show some class and JUST STOP.

 

[tg2708]

blackened for the love of gawd make a new thread, are you incapable of reading a thread title and staying on topic even slightly? Making the same point 20 times doesn't convince people anymore than the first 5 times. We are fully aware of your opinion on the matter.

Show some class and JUST STOP.

Yea the incessant ranting about the same issue over and over won't get us anywhere. Everyone here is not debating the noise and performance throttling but having equal bias towards both nvidia and amd cards (well this is just one of my interpretations). Its has to make anyone look dumb, whether they are smart or not to keeping repeating themselves over and over.

 

[Anand Lal Shimpi]

Thanks for your responses A few thoughts:

1) Recommendation to just test 2 modes (slowest and fastest), this makes sense until one manufacturer decides to make their fastest mode something ridiculous. For the folks who suggested this, do you believe it's still a good option if the high performance mode is something like twice the noise of the next lowest setting as well as the high performance mode on a competing card?

This may sound like a contrived scenario but you would be really surprised at the sort of stuff we have to try and defeat before it ever gets proposed as a part of the reviews process. I feel like that's the major concern here, that a willingness to test more than the default setting (and especially a commitment to test the highest performing setting) will almost certainly result in a manufacturer creating a ridiculous highest performance setting to game reviews. The beauty of making it a point to only test default settings is that it encourages manufacturers to optimize for the primary use case of their customers rather than being able to go off and optimize for how the cards would be benchmarked instead. No manufacturer would ship a card in an obnoxious/unusable/insane default configuration for obvious reasons (returns, poor customer experience, etc...).

2) On the issue of whether or not the AMD reference cooler could be better. Feel free to read into this statement as much as possible:

"We've already made the case to AMD for better reference cooling designs and it sounds like everyone is on the same page there. " - http://www.anandtech.com/show/7501/amd-changes-290-series-fan-algorithms

3) As far as the offer to help us get manufacturers to lengthen review times - I appreciate the offer, but it won't work. This is a battle I've fought on and off for the past 17 years, and where we're at in the PC space today is (generally speaking) as good as it's going to get. For the most part, no manufacturer is going to sample so early as to not have final drivers ready. They are also not going to delay the sale date of a product in order to coordinate reviews. If they do nothing to impact the sale date, then you'll just see a bunch of leaked reviews as cards will be everywhere. It's on the mobile side that I'm still trying to fix things where we're given 0 - 72 hours to get a review up in many cases.

Thanks again for the support and the respectful discourse here.

Take care,
Anand

 

[AnandThenMan]

The issue here is so simple. Ryan has stated that uber mode won't be used anymore in testing, and the reason given is because "out of the box" testing is apparently extremely important. Yet this site (and Ryan) did NOT stick to this policy, and in fact made changes that deviate from default, or out of the box. So we are understandably wanting an explanation for this. The most puzzling thing to me is Ryan appears to be chastising the 290x for its noise profile based on uber mode, something he says is basically not a valid setting and it won't be used in the future anyway.

I've read 6-7 other 290x reviews and none of them had any issue with flipping a switch. And in fact none of them expressed the level of vitriol towards the cooling solution either, especially to the point of saying the card simply cannot be recommended for purchase.

On another note, I personally am not a fan (sorry) of these turbo/boost technologies. I want a CPU or GPU to go to a specific frequency and stay there, not bounce around, throttle, cut back. I realize we are bumping up against the limits of transistor counts/power draw, but it doesn't make me like the tech any better.

 

[SiliconWars]

In that case Anand, cross those bridges as you come to them. As it is, right now is jumping the gun and simply harming the perceived performance of the 290X. The timing is...well yeah lets just say "unfortunate" with Nvidia releasing a new card at the same time.

One of Ryan's points in the 290X review was that AMD was trying to get the best of both worlds with the different modes. That may be true, however given that they then changed the fan speed in drivers for the 290 in order to get more performance, it seems clear that given the chance they would opt for the extra performance over quiet performance for the 290X.

It's not really logical to assume otherwise, going with the lesser performance for their top end card, or a few dB more? That's not a difficult decision. So the card is set to quiet mode as default, but if AMD had any inkling at all that this would happen - that their top performance numbers would be thrown out - there is no way they would have opted for the quiet mode as default.

This just smacks of an excuse to show the lowest numbers. If you must choose one and one only, contact AMD and ask them if they would rather it was the performance or quiet mode number.

 

[stahlhart]

Thread reopened.
-- stahlhart

 

[3DVagabond]

Seems that if we choose what settings to review the cards at by the way they come out of the box, all AMD has to do is start shipping them with the switch in the uber position. Of course it will be the exact same card, with exactly the same performance, but it won't look that way on the review charts.

Probably the worse thing about this is that the AT bench results will show the 290X as being ~7% slower than what they are truly capable of for the next however many months because of this decision.

I don't think we can have the decision be decided by something as arbitrary as that.

 

[Keysplayr]

Seems that if we choose what settings to review the cards at by the way they come out of the box, all AMD has to do is start shipping them with the switch in the uber position. Of course it will be the exact same card, with exactly the same performance, but it won't look that way on the review charts.

Probably the worse thing about this is that the AT bench results will show the 290X as being ~7% slower than what they are truly capable of for the next however many months because of this decision.

I don't think we can have the decision be decided by something as arbitrary as that.

I'm sure any enthusiast knows to look for the reviews that ran under UBER mode for the 290x. That's what I'd do.

 

[Meekers]

So I've got some thoughts here, and perhaps we'll turn these into a post on the main site but I wanted to get in this thread as you guys are honestly the source/inspiration for any such post.

Let's start with why we want to define a clear framework for how general performance/power/sound testing goes. Not only does it allow for fair comparisons between products, it also helps us deal with the inevitable situation where a manufacturer submits a ringer for review (e.g. factory overclocked card). I don't think there's much argument against this point - we all want a level playing field.

Similarly, it should be obvious why we'd want to include in such a framework the idea of testing a card at default settings. Having a strict policy there prevents a situation where AMD/Intel/NVIDIA show up and say hey we're selling the card in configuration x because of yields/experience/someothervalidreason, but it's really quite awesome and can run in configuration x+50% and that's how you should test it and btw we rule the world if you test it like that. This makes a lot of sense particularly when talking about encouraging factory overclocked comparisons.

The close relationship between fan speed and performance sort of throws a wrench in all of this. When Intel first started introducing aggressive turbo modes back in Lynnfield I was worried that it would completely corrupt our ability to reliably test CPUs. It turns out that wasn't the case. With graphics however the situation is a bit different, and with the 290/290X we're beginning to get a feel for exactly why that is.

I originally assumed the reason this was a problem now (and is going to be in the future) is because we're stuck on 28nm trying to get more performance without a good process tech solution until 14/16nm FinFET in 2015. Now I'm feeling like this is just going to be a part of the reality going forward, so we need a real solution.

AMD's Uber mode in my eyes isn't the same as a factory overclocked card. At the same time, it's not the same as what we've done in the past - which is test a totally stock configuration (reference clocks and fan speed). I personally believe in the whole living document philosophy when it comes to things like constitutions or review policies, but here's where we can get into trouble. In the case of the 290X, AMD has two modes and you can make a good argument for why you should test both. Let's now take it one step further: what happens if NVIDIA shows up next round with 3 modes? Do we test all 3? Which modes do we then compare against AMD modes, particularly if they only line up along one vector (e.g. performance or acoustics, not both). What if AMD responds the next round with 4 modes, etc... It can quickly get out of hand.

What I'd like to do here is define a good policy for what to do if this turns into a fan speed arms race. Dealing with the 290X is simple: Ryan tested both quiet and uber modes, and I can totally appreciate the argument for including analysis based on both. What Ryan is concerned about is the future. This isn't a matter of him being lazy (me being the person he reports to, I can tell you that's definitely not the case - he's kept up an insane work schedule over these past several weeks in order to get everything done as best as possible. The launches aren't done yet for the year, add in short NDA windows, issues with cards/drivers and of course any travel and the pace you have to keep in order to put out these reviews is insane). The precedent we set here today will directly impact what manufacturers attempt to do with their reviews programs in the future. The safe bet is to stick with testing in default configurations. I am (and assuming Ryan is too) more than willing to expand/change/redefine that, but the question is how? Let's look beyond the present 290X situation and think about what happens next. If acoustics and performance become even more tightly coupled in future GPU designs, and multiple optimization points exist for each card (with 1 default setting obviously) how should we deal with that going forward? If things get crazy, we could be in a situation where there would even have to be a tradeoff in terms of review depth vs. card configuration combinations. E.g. would you be willing to give up a resolution setting across all games tested in order to get another operating mode included? What does this do to the complexity of graphs?

I don't know that I've got the answer/a solution here, but this is the discussion I'd love to have.

As I mentioned earlier, this is a discussion that we might take to the main site at some point. We felt like we owed it to you guys to start it here given the time/effort you guys have put into it already. We're here to listen and will obviously take your input into account (e.g. the 290 fan noise update was a direct result of your feedback). All that I'd ask is please be respectful of Ryan in your discussions of his work. He really puts a ton of time and effort into this stuff and takes all of your feedback very seriously. Obviously you're free to post/say whatever (as long as it doesn't violate our ToS), but I've always been a fan of the golden rule

Thank you all for reading the site and for caring enough to engage in hundreds of comments on the forums and on the site itself. I'm off to bed for now but I'll check back tomorrow.

Take care,
Anand

To me it boils down to if you are going to be testing a companies most expensive highest performing part you should be testing in the highest performance mode. I do not have a problem with only testing 1 mode of the 290x, I have a huge problem with that mode being quiet mode. Someone interested in buying this type of card is almost always interesting in finding the maximum performance they can possibly get.

The 290x and future flagship cards should be tested it in Uber mode. If the sound is too loud, call AMD out on it. Ryan sure had no problem doing that in the 290 review.

 

[3DVagabond]

I'm sure any enthusiast knows to look for the reviews that ran under UBER mode for the 290x. That's what I'd do.

And when they do they are going to see results for quiet mode in the comparisons.