AMD Radeon R9 290X 4 GB

[N3M3515]

The card has potential for sure, but AMD really should have worked on the stock cooler more. There is no getting around that. The price is the only saving grace, and since rumor has it the 780Ti will just be Titan with 3GB of RAM and likely price the same or slightly lower than 290X and with a stock cooler that doesn't deafen people, the price advantage will be short lived.

And when that happens i think amd might just lower msrp to $500, modified versions for $550, then whatever happens is good for us all, lower prices!

PD: also, after seing how good this card can be with custom versions: custom 780ti vs custom 290x, i bet 290x ends on top.

Haters are gonna say this card is loud, hot and inefficient, who cares? the performance is there, and for a reasonable price too! This goes on and on, Prescott, Bulldozer, GTX480, Titan, and now the 290X... Whatever, people will always find something to complain about.

+1
Dude, you nailed it. People wil ALWAYS find something to complain about. It's like women always complaining about something, life isn't perfect people!

 

[newtekie1]

And when that happens i think amd might just lower msrp to $500, modified versions for $550, then whatever happens is good for us all, lower prices!

PD: also, after seing how good this card can be with custom versions: custom 780ti vs custom 290x, i bet 290x ends on top.

Yes, it is nice that AMD is finally able to compete and prices will come down to reasonable levels. Of course I'm betting this will be short lived as nVidia will probably release what they've been working on for the past year in like January or something.

 

[buildzoid]

I wonder if the cooler mounting holes are in a position to support the red mod (ziptying a CLC to the gpu core) because if they do an h90/70 or antec h2o 920 should be able to cool one of these pretty well for a reasonable price.

 

[Am*]

Yeah, my VRM's dont help me game at 1136 core (143 MHz above max stock boost of 993) or bench at 1202Mhz (209MHz above stock max boost). Still......

And your definition of 'rape' is a tad off the mark. Single digit %'s does not cry 'rape'. Though in uber mode you could carry our many nefarious acts and not be heard.

However, I do believe that under proper cooling the card beats Titan in all fair fights. It might use a lot more juice but that's not really a point for enthusiasts.

But that's with your uber-expensive aftermarket watercooling setup (with blocks that cover the VRMs I presume) on top of the $1000 a pop GPUs. Add in the fact that:

A: GK110 had at least 6 months head start on drivers vs R290X with early release drivers

B: The potential of Mantle (yeah yeah, highly debatable at this point, but the potential is there, unlike for Nvidia)

C: Aftermarket versions potential (beefier VRM versions imminent)

D: R290X is nearly HALF the bloody price of the Titan, and that's even at the current ridiculous launch prices of the R290X that they are charging at the moment (nearly $1=£1 conversion rate). I wouldn't care too much if they weren't priced so far apart...but to say the Titan didn't get destroyed by the R290X is more than a little unfair as well IMHO -- everybody was shouting defeat from the rooftops when GK104 came out last year and barely matched the 7970

E: Full DirectX 11.2 hardware support (might not mean much to me, especially now, but some peeps with uber setups like yours will at least take a passing look at this)

When Nvidia decide to do the same as AMD and come out with a $600 GPU that can beat a $999 GPU from AMD, I will be jumping on it in an instant to upgrade my current card. The last cards Nvidia released that came even close to doing this were their golden era G80s/G90s/G92s. So far, for the past 4+ years Nvidia have been, at best, matching AMD at a higher or same price -- and absolutely wallet-raping at every tier above with their Apple-like pricing structure (their "people will pay more for our shit because we're pretentious with loads of gimmicks under our belt and brand recognition" plan): might work fine for their silly "fans" who don't know any better -- doesn't mean much for the average informed gamer/enthusiast. I'm getting a bit tired of it TBH -- I was initially going to wait it out to see what Maxwell brings but so far I see no reason to play the waiting game any more -- especially with Nvidia, seeing how they are just about matching everything AMD has already available and almost never trying to beat them by a decent noteworthy price or performance margin these days. Might make me buy this card sooner than later methinks.

 

[Hilux SSRG]

B: The potential of Mantle (yeah yeah, highly debatable at this point, but the potential is there, unlike for Nvidia)

Mantle = Dead [at this second].

No game is currently running on Mantle and therefore no benches to compare with DirectX/OpenGL/etc.

 

[Assimilator]

While this card may be the big kahuna I am personally more interested in the 290. I have a feeling that it will boast significantly better thermals and power than 290X at only slightly lower performance.

Either way NVIDIA is between a rock and a hard place now. Maxwell is still half a year away, it will be interesting to see what Team Green does to keep Kepler competitive. 780 Ti and price cuts are obvious, but will they be enough?

 

[Xzibit]

While this card may be the big kahuna I am personally more interested in the 290. I have a feeling that it will boast significantly better thermals and power than 290X at only slightly lower performance.

Leaks of the 290 are showing up now

 

[newtekie1]

R290X is nearly HALF the bloody price of the Titan, and that's even at the current ridiculous launch prices of the R290X that they are charging at the moment (nearly $1=£1 conversion rate). I wouldn't care too much if they weren't priced so far apart...but to say the Titan didn't get destroyed by the R290X is more than a little unfair as well IMHO -- everybody was shouting defeat from the rooftops when GK104 came out last year and barely matched the 7970

So what, AMD knew the price of Titan and beat it. Titan has sat at that price for at least 8 months now. It is very easy for nVidia to just lower the price, they've been raking in the money with these cards. And no one actually thinks nVidia has to sell Titan at $1000 to make money, we all know it is an extremely high margin card.

So, no Titan didn't get destroyed by the 290X. AMD released a card that finally matches Titan, and you haven't even given nVidia 24 hours to adjust prices and you are already claiming Titan was destroyed by the 290X? That is a little bit unfair.

And everyone was shouting defeat when GK104 came out and matched the 7970 because everyone knew GK104 was supposed to be a mid-range GPU, yet it toppled AMD's best offering and allowed nVidia to hold back the release of GK110. Oh, and GK104 also managed better power, heat, and noise too...

While this card may be the big kahuna I am personally more interested in the 290. I have a feeling that it will boast significantly better thermals and power than 290X at only slightly lower performance.

Either way NVIDIA is between a rock and a hard place now. Maxwell is still half a year away, it will be interesting to see what Team Green does to keep Kepler competitive. 780 Ti and price cuts are obvious, but will they be enough?

Why wouldn't they be enough? They way I see it is all they have to do is drop the 780 price $125 and release the 780Ti at $550 and they've got AMD beat. *Assuming the 780Ti rumors are true and it is just Titan with 3GB of RAM.

 

[buildzoid]

So what, AMD knew the price of Titan and beat it. Titan has sat at that price for at least 8 months now. It is very easy for nVidia to just lower the price, they've been raking in the money with these cards. And no one actually thinks nVidia has to sell Titan at $1000 to make money, we all know it is an extremely high margin card.

So, no Titan didn't get destroyed by the 290o adjust prices and you are already claiming Titan was destroyed by the 290X? That is a little bit unfair.

And everyone was shouting defeat when GK104 came out and matched the 7970 because everyone knew GK104 was supposed to be a mid-range GPU, yet it toppled AMD's best offering and allowed nVidia to hold back the release of GK110. Oh, and GK104 also managed better power, heat, and noise too...

Except Nvidia has been adopting an Apple like policy locking down voltage making the card do everything for you and even has aluminium vanity coolers(at least they don't suck) they charge higher prices for the same performance as the competition(gtx 770 vs 280x) the only thing left is to not drop the price on the Titan(very likely considerig the gtx 770 price and the leaked/rummored gtx 780 ti specs). From what I just said above it should be obvious what Nvidia is likely to do with the Titan's price.

 

[purecain]

I thought i'd boost my memory subsystems while I had my wallet out...

heres mine


Dear purecain, Your Order has been packed and is in the process of being shipped.
----------------------------------------------------------
Goods Shipped:
£391.66 x 1 - HIS Radeon R9 290X Boost "BF4 Edition" 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
£141.66 x 1 - Kingston HyperX Beast 16GB (2x8GB) PC3-19200C11 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX24C11T3K2/16X)

I can not wait for tomorrow morning...

 

[radrok]

If someone/something "raped" Titan then it would be Nvidia itself with its stupid reference-locking and voltage-locking policy and price, of course.

The GTX 780 has always been the better buy over Titan, especially because it was allowed to shine through AIBs customizations.

I'm completely positive and sure that if Titan had been launched at 549$ as 780 in February it would have been an utter success with probably more units sold than actual 780 and Titan combined.


Also congratulations purecain Can't wait to see you post some scores in our valley thread

 

[GSG-9]

...they charge higher prices for the same performance as the competition(gtx 770 vs 280x)...

The 770 was released 5 months ago you nut, there was no 280x to compare it to.

 

[buildzoid]

The 770 was released 5 months ago you nut, there was no 280x to compare it to.

Once the 280x did come out they said they won't be dropping the price anyway so my point still stands. In that same press release they also said that they will not lower the Titan's price tag. So far they have kept to the gtx 770 part of that press release now we just have to see if Nvidia really thinks that a shiny cooler and a really (imo)cheesy name are worth 1000$.

 

[Fluffmeister]

Hey, at least the GTX 480 has finally been validated.

 

[newtekie1]

Except Nvidia has been adopting an Apple like policy locking down voltage making the card do everything for you and even has aluminium vanity coolers(at least they don't suck) they charge higher prices for the same performance as the competition(gtx 770 vs 280x) the only thing left is to not drop the price on the Titan(very likely considerig the gtx 770 price and the leaked/rummored gtx 780 ti specs). From what I just said above it should be obvious what Nvidia is likely to do with the Titan's price.

Except they haven't been charging higher prices for the same performance. The GTX770 has pretty steadily outpaced the 7970 in price/performance for months now.

Once the 280x did come out they said they won't be dropping the price anyway so my point still stands. In that same press release they also said that they will not lower the Titan's price tag. So far they have kept to the gtx 770 part of that press release now we just have to see if Nvidia really thinks that a shiny cooler and a really (imo)cheesy name are worth 1000$.

You really think they are that stupid? Where did they say they wouldn't drop the price of the GTX770? And even if they did, they've said one thing and then done something totally different the next day, because the industry changed that quickly. Basically, nVidia has the upper hand right now, they can tailor their line-up to best AMD very easily.

Why do you think they haven't even bothered to release specs for the 780Ti? I'll tell you why, because they were waiting to see what the 290X was capable of so they could tailor the 780Ti to beat it.

 

[Am*]

So what, AMD knew the price of Titan and beat it. Titan has sat at that price for at least 8 months now. It is very easy for nVidia to just lower the price, they've been raking in the money with these cards. And no one actually thinks nVidia has to sell Titan at $1000 to make money, we all know it is an extremely high margin card.

So, no Titan didn't get destroyed by the 290X. AMD released a card that finally matches Titan, and you haven't even given nVidia 24 hours to adjust prices and you are already claiming Titan was destroyed by the 290X? That is a little bit unfair.

And everyone was shouting defeat when GK104 came out and matched the 7970 because everyone knew GK104 was supposed to be a mid-range GPU, yet it toppled AMD's best offering and allowed nVidia to hold back the release of GK110. Oh, and GK104 also managed better power, heat, and noise too...

A few things you seem to be forgetting:

1. GK104 was a gaming-only GPU, Tahiti was AMD's one-size-fits-all markets GPU, which absolutely mopped the floor with the GK104 Kepler in every non-proprietary compute bench (and even gave the Titan a good run for its money)

2. GK110 was nowhere near ready at the time and, had the 7970 been much faster, Nvidia would've pulled another infamous wood screws launch

3. AMD's flagship GPUs supersede/compete mainly against their own, previous gen flagship GPUs (in which case, AMD are doing pretty well). Nvidia's pricing is merely a side effect of this. Outside of this, Nvidia and AMD do not compare even remotely in R&D costs, revenue etc to each other so the fact that AMD are managing to pull GPUs like this off that even compare to Nvidia's on a performance level is astonishing to say the least, seeing how Nvidia are a GPU only company while AMD split their already vastly limited resources between their CPU and GPU divisions.

At least give them credit where it is due.

 

[The Von Matrices]

I don't know guys

All this sound & heat talk has me convinced that most people run an open air test bench setup between their keyboard and monitor while gaming and the exhaust is pointed at there face.

You need to reread how W1zzard does his testing before you make condescending statements. To quote a few important points:

"The tested graphics card was installed in a system that was completely cooled system passively. That is, passive PSU, passive CPU cooler, and passive cooling on the motherboard and solid state drive.

The measurement was conducted at a distance of 100 cm and 160 cm off the floor."

This is NOT an open air test bench, and the 50dB reading is over 1m away from the case. This is the noise you would experience if the case was on the floor next to a desk. Unless you are deaf and crank your speakers up to 100dB, this card will be audible and very annoying in "uber" mode.

 

[Fluffmeister]

A few things you seem to be forgetting:

1. GK104 was a gaming-only GPU, Tahiti was AMD's one-size-fits-all markets GPU, which absolutely mopped the floor with the GK104 Kepler in every non-proprietary compute bench (and even gave the Titan a good run for its money)

The GK104 has been a massive success for Nvidia, and as you said yourself it was purely focused on gaming and it has and still does it's job brilliantly. No one gives a toss about compute benchmarks they never run. Can't say I've missed out on anything running my little GTX 670, in fact it does me proud every day.

At least give them credit where it is due.

2. GK110 was nowhere near ready at the time and, had the 7970 been much faster, Nvidia would've pulled another infamous wood screws launch

And yet GK110 powered cards like the K20 and K20X have been on the market for ages already, the chip that powers Titan is literally over a year old already.

At least give them credit where it is due.

3. AMD's flagship GPUs supersede/compete mainly against their own, previous gen flagship GPUs (in which case, AMD are doing pretty well). Nvidia's pricing is merely a side effect of this. Outside of this, Nvidia and AMD do not compare even remotely in R&D costs, revenue etc to each other so the fact that AMD are managing to pull GPUs like this off that even compare to Nvidia's on a performance level is astonishing to say the least, seeing how Nvidia are a GPU only company while AMD split their already vastly limited resources between their CPU and GPU divisions.

At least give them credit where it is due.

Can't argue with that, but you make your bed and you lie in it.

 

[Xzibit]

You need to reread how W1zzard does his testing before you make condescending statements. To quote a few important points:



This is NOT an open air test bench, and the 50dB reading is over 1m away from the case. This is the noise you would experience if the case was on the floor next to a desk. Unless you are deaf and crank your speakers up to 100dB, this card will be audible and very annoying in "uber" mode.

I did read it and I wasn't talking about him but since you brought it up

Compare that to Tom's Hardware Noise test which is Open Air at half the distance.

Well I hope you can tell the discrepancy

 

[Disruptor4]

And I thought, 2 years ago, that buying a HX 850W would be enough to future proof a bit. Oh how I was wrong!

 

[HTC]

I did read it and I wasn't talking about him but since you brought it up

http://tpucdn.com/reviews/AMD/R9_290X/images/kjaer_setup.jpg

Compare that to Tom's Hardware Noise test which is Open Air at half the distance.

Well I hope you can tell the discrepancy

Is that the actual noise in uber mode? I can see why W1zzard said the neighbors complained because of the noise when he was benching @ night.

Calling it nasty doesn't quite cover it, IMO.

 

[Xzibit]

Is that the actual noise in uber mode? I can see why W1zzard said the neighbors complained because of the noise when he was benching @ night.

or his testing room is acting like a parabolic reflector to his neighbors.

 

[SIGSEGV]

LOL!

Haters are gonna say this card is loud, hot and inefficient, who cares? the performance is there, and for a reasonable price too! This goes on and on, Prescott, Bulldozer, GTX480, Titan, and now the 290X... Whatever, people will always find something to complain about.

+1
you don't say..

It looks like that this card somehow throttled at 92 -94*C zone. I'm afraid that this card would still throttled at 92-94*C even using water cooling setup. Is there any possibility that this card would go into 75*C-80*C zone with driver optimization?

 

[tacosRcool]

So this at $550, what is Nvidia gonna do? The GTX 780 ti doesn't look appealing at all.

 

[newtekie1]

A few things you seem to be forgetting:

1. GK104 was a gaming-only GPU, Tahiti was AMD's one-size-fits-all markets GPU, which absolutely mopped the floor with the GK104 Kepler in every non-proprietary compute bench (and even gave the Titan a good run for its money)

2. GK110 was nowhere near ready at the time and, had the 7970 been much faster, Nvidia would've pulled another infamous wood screws launch

3. AMD's flagship GPUs supersede/compete mainly against their own, previous gen flagship GPUs (in which case, AMD are doing pretty well). Nvidia's pricing is merely a side effect of this. Outside of this, Nvidia and AMD do not compare even remotely in R&D costs, revenue etc to each other so the fact that AMD are managing to pull GPUs like this off that even compare to Nvidia's on a performance level is astonishing to say the least, seeing how Nvidia are a GPU only company while AMD split their already vastly limited resources between their CPU and GPU divisions.

At least give them credit where it is due.

There are some things you seem to be forgetting:

These cards are being sold mostly to gamers, so no one cares how good the cards are at GPU Compute tasks. You're making the same argument that people made to defend Fermi. AMD should have learned from nVidia's mistake and learned the GPU Compute doesn't sell desktop GPUs.

Of course if the 7970 had been faster nVidia wouldn't have been able to use GK104 to compete, but it wasn't faster. I might as well say if the GTX580 had been a little bit faster, nVidia wouldn't have needed to release GK104 at all. You can live in a land of IF's all you want, but it doesn't help you make a point.

The fact is no one but nVidia knows how ready GK110 was. We certainly know the fab was capable of producing GK110 when GK104 was launch, we also know the architecture was ready. So it really comes down to yields, and obviously since nVidia knew what they had to compete with, they went with GK104 because it had much better yields. But I bet GK110 would have been possible in place of the GK104 cards we got if nVidia had to use it.

And no, AMD cards don't compete mainly against their own previous generation, they compete against nVidia. And we should be cutting AMD slack just because they mis-managed their company and now have no R&D funds.