AMD Radeon R9 290X CrossFire

[AlderaaN]

Thank you W1zzard, for this review (and the non-CF one).

It baffles me why AMD puts its cooling solution's noise output at the 'Absolutely Not A Priority' category yet again.

Same case was with its CrossFired HD 7990 card, even though its cooling solution features a triple fan configuration, resembling that of several AIBs.


Regards,

 

[1d10t]

W1zz there's a couple thing a wanna ask you:

1. This cards show 315W maximum on other thread.It's fair assumption that two of these could take 630W?
2. Are these cards require Display Port connected to 3rd monitor to run Eyefinity properly like previous generations?
3. About Crossfire Profiles,did AMD support PLP (Portrait Landscape Portrait) Eyefinity mode which lack in the previous generation?

Many thanks in advance

 

[Supercrit]

I agree but only a great AMD driver can fix the issue.. Still Im glad to keep what I got.. Nice try AMD but not from this guy.

I don't know if you understand what I meant.

Titan is 30% slower than dual 290x.
Dual 290x is 42.8% faster than Titan.

70 x 1.428 =100
100-(100 x 30%) = 70

 

[draecko]

Where is the Titan SLI in this review? 780 SLI? Hello?

 

[haswrong]

I think you need a new thumbnail now. This just doesn't seem appropriate anymore since the cards no longer need crossfire bridges:

http://tpucdn.com/reviews/AMD/R9_290X_CrossFire/images/small.gif

cross-water bridge

Where is the Titan SLI in this review? 780 SLI? Hello?

hmm, and wheres the evga 780 classy review?

 

[Elmo]

alot of people want 4k benches but alot of people dont have 4k

 

[HD64G]

Fix it Wiz. 42.8% better than Titan is much better than 30% that you wrote. It absolutely changes the truth about the performance margin from any other GPU. And why don't you make the chart for Eyefinity? You have the numbers.

 

[NeoXF]

Okay 2 things that are deeply deeply wrong with this review, okay 3.

1. Are you seriously benching 1600x900 for this setup? Even 1920x1080 is a joke, hitting CPU bottlenecks and seeing most of the cards do ~200fps begs one to scratch their heads... You could've at least excluded the tests where it's clearly CPU-bound.

2. Z87 w/o a PLX chip? Really? I hope you realize how much 8x/8x can limit multi-GPU setups right? Especially now that Crossfire needs it most with the removal of the bridge and changing the multi-GPU game up.

Here's an pertinent example (there's more...):

3. No frame-time measurements and such. Really TPU... get with the times...

 

[W1zzard]

W1zz there's a couple thing a wanna ask you:

1. This cards show 315W maximum on other thread.It's fair assumption that two of these could take 630W?
2. Are these cards require Display Port connected to 3rd monitor to run Eyefinity properly like previous generations?
3. About Crossfire Profiles,did AMD support PLP (Portrait Landscape Portrait) Eyefinity mode which lack in the previous generation?

Many thanks in advance

1) yes, that might be possible. more realistic is probably slightly above 600 W because CF doesn't scale 100%
2) well yes, because there is no 3rd place to put it. but you don't need an active adapter anymore, the cheapest passive one will do (they now added a 3rd DVI/HDMI clock generator)
3) did not test

 

[AlderaaN]

2) well yes, because there is no 3rd place to put it. but you don't need an active adapter anymore, the cheapest passive one will do (they now added a 3rd DVI/HDMI clock generator)

That's actually sweet.

 

[Intel God]

Wizzard when does the TRI crossfire review come out?

 

[W1zzard]

Wizzard when does the TRI crossfire review come out?

no plans, neither have 3 cards, nor a platform that supports them.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

thank you w1zzard, for this review (and the non-cf one).

It baffles me why amd puts its cooling solution's noise output at the 'absolutely not a priority' category yet again.

Same case was with its crossfired hd 7990 card, even though its cooling solution features a triple fan configuration, resembling that of several aibs.


Regards,

+1

 

[refillable]

I remember they promised 'almost 100%' increase, we didn't see it now... We saw about 50% on uber.

Just thinked to myself, this review has many major flaws. You didn't include Titan and 780 SLI, which will be helpful when you see them dropping in terms of pricing. Second, two of these is completely a total beast (by today standards), let alone 3 or 4. 1920x1200 will definetely not cut it, let alone 1680x1050. Bottlenecks will definetely occur. So before testing eyefinity 5760x1080 and perhaps QuadFullHD 3840x2160 you are not getting the potential of the cards. In conclusion, the increase shown on this review could be somewhat misleading.

Oh yes, next time, would you also test frame time variance for us? This is critical on crossfire or SLI because it is the only way you can tell if a card 'micro-stutters' or not.

Just some constructive critics guys, ya need to work harder on the next review (Perhaps 780 Ti, a dumb card, or is it?)!

 

[1d10t]

1) yes, that might be possible. more realistic is probably slightly above 600 W because CF doesn't scale 100%
2) well yes, because there is no 3rd place to put it. but you don't need an active adapter anymore, the cheapest passive one will do (they now added a 3rd DVI/HDMI clock generator)
3) did not test

1.Crap...this card obviously limited by my old P760
2.HDMI in the middle?Curious how AMD now handling eyefinity with HDMI enabled.But if they required passive one...that a good news
3.So did AMD,they still not respond my last emaill about that

But thanks anyway

I remember they promised 'almost 100%' increase, we didn't see it now... We saw about 50% on uber.

Yeah definityly not all of it...

Battlefield 3
94.6 fps - 47 fps = 48.6 fps or 101% more

Call of Juarez
174.7fps - 127.3 fps = 47.4fps or 37% more

Crysis 3
34.5fps - 18.2fps = 16.3 fps or 89% more

FarCry3
41.5 fps - 19.5fps = 22 fps or 112% more

please do some research

 

[Raghar]

Is heatsink and water plumbing included? They were lucky with release date, winter begins on Northen hemisphere. They can try crossfire, then sell one card before summer appears.

 

[Blín D'ñero]

Picture not showing up on Bioshock page. The HTML shows up in stead, you can see the problem is a missing bracket at the end.

 

[Blín D'ñero]

W1zzard, thank you for this:

DirectX 11.2 is not supported on Windows 7 and requires Windows 8.1, yet Windows 8 and its successor, Windows 8.1, are incredibly unpopular with PC gamers (at least our forum members) due to the idiotic user-interface that insults our intelligence.

Well-said.

And a question: what is your Crysis 3 testing method? I can't find it in the review. I get the same or slightly higher performance ingame with my HD7970 CF @ 2560x1600, DX11 Very High 2x AA -- though it fluctuates throughout the game (between 40 ~ 80).
I suppose you used some benchmark?

I didn't expect one R9 290X to match/beat HD7970 CF in Crysis 3, but it seems in crossfire they perform equally (in Crysis 3 @ 2560x1600).

 

[Solaris17]

missing an ending bracket on this page 4th picture


http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/R9_290X_CrossFire/5.html

 

[Blín D'ñero]

Hello!

 

[buggalugs]

so far, everybody who I talked to, said that AMD doesn't allowed custom designs for 290X. This will probably change soon, maybe AMD just wants to sell more of their ref boards asap

I've heard that too, at least for the initial release. I don't think it will be too long before we see them.

 

[Aerpoweron]

First hi @ all, nice forum here as well as very good reviews

I still like the reference cooler design, since it does not just circle around the hot air. In the recent years there are no aftermarket coolers which do that. It is a great advantage in Crossfire/SLI setup, because the sandwiched cooler does not overheat the card. But still a shame that the cooler is so noisy.

The card seems nice so far, the only problem is that the Double Precision power is cut down. I do distributed computing on a double precision project, and i run near the Furmark power draw because of that.
I had to send in my Dual Fan cards twice, because the fans bearing just gave up. (twin frozer II design) in SLI.

4k tests would have been nice, but given the prices for these Displays (Not Televisions) is it just not practical yet. I really love to see a Displyport only Monitor. HDMI is just crappy for a Computer Display, since it often does some scaling up or down.

Again, great review Wizzard.

Edit:

It is about time, that VGA is phasing out. I can remember Intel wanted to do that in 2013, but they pushed it further into the future.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

First hi @ all, nice forum here as well as very good reviews

I still like the reference cooler design, since it does not just circle around the hot air. In the recent years there are no aftermarket coolers which do that. It is a great advantage in Crossfire/SLI setup, because the sandwiched cooler does not overheat the card. But still a shame that the cooler is so noisy.

The card seems nice so far, the only problem is that the Double Precision power is cut down. I do distributed computing on a double precision project, and i run near the Furmark power draw because of that.
I had to send in my Dual Fan cards twice, because the fans bearing just gave up. (twin frozer II design) in SLI.

4k tests would have been nice, but given the prices for these Displays (Not Televisions) is it just not practical yet. I really love to see a Displyport only Monitor. HDMI is just crappy for a Computer Display, since it often does some scaling up or down.

Again, great review Wizzard.



Edit:

It is about time, that VGA is phasing out. I can remember Intel wanted to do that in 2013, but they pushed it further into the future.

its the standard blower design that has been done on reference cards from both amd and nvidia for years. There is also a vendor for nvidia thst does after market blower designs. Evga on their classified cards.

Most non reference cards dont have the blower design be ause it doesnt work as well for cooling and its typically a lot louder. If you have a case with good airflow the heat thats released into the case from such designs is not much of a problem.

 

[Aerpoweron]

Most non reference cards dont have the blower design be ause it doesnt work as well for cooling and its typically a lot louder. If you have a case with good airflow the heat thats released into the case from such designs is not much of a problem.

I have to agree, but only for a none Crossfire or SLI design. The card with the fan or fans beween the cards always gets hotter. What is also an issue for me, the none blower cards exhaust heat goes upwards inside the case and heats up the cpu-cooler as well, before the heat gets blown out. Not a problem for gaming, but if you run GPU and CPU at full speed, you can hear the difference

By the way, did the question ever got answered, if you need 1 or 2 crossfire bridges to connect 2 cards? I always used one without problems. But now we don't need them any more

 

[MxPhenom 216]

I have to agree, but only for a none Crossfire or SLI design. The card with the fan or fans beween the cards always gets hotter. What is also an issue for me, the none blower cards exhaust heat goes upwards inside the case and heats up the cpu-cooler as well, before the heat gets blown out. Not a problem for gaming, but if you run GPU and CPU at full speed, you can hear the difference

By the way, did the question ever got answered, if you need 1 or 2 crossfire bridges to connect 2 cards? I always used one without problems. But now we don't need them any more

The top card will be hotter than the bottom regardless when it comes to air cooling. Also CPUs run so cool these,days that heat from a gpu if it makes its way through the cpu heatsink will not increase temps all that much. Key is case airflow.

Not to mention the 290x reference cooler is junk. Card shouldnt be hitting 95c load or make 50 db of noise at the same time.

For 2 cards 2 bridges does not make a difference compared to 1.