Sapphire Readies Radeon R9 290X with 8 GB Memory

[Tyrael]

The 8GB is only for bragging right.

I prefer 4GB GDDR5 GPU, it's enough for work and gaming...

 

[Casecutter]

$700 for a 3gig 780 ti is no bargain either.

Yea, It's miserable Litecoin mining screwed things up... I wanted to see the "price war" at this position in the market! If AMD was at or below their MSRP's they set, where might Nvidia get there 780Ti prices down too? I think I'd like to see just where Nvidia’s margins on full GK110 start to break, and does Nvidia’s volume used in the professional side offset Hawaii being 30% smaller.

yeah you are right.but for Gaming i would choose 780Ti rather than an 8GB r9 290X...

Well, If just gaming even for 2650x you’d be overspending for either to do what you need.

Sapphire R9 290X 8GB = 6 eyefinity Monitor WITHOUT A SWEAT

Exactly, heck I like to see what this could do with multiple 4k panels. What is even the max resolution this can provide… Dreaming six 4k in Eyefinity.

 

[Disparia]

hehe with it's massive 1/2 \ 1MB addon chips lol.. They removed that later on too lol.

The Matrix cards hard card slots for the ram kinda like plugging the ram in to a laptop

Memory slots were nice, but the best thing I remember about those days was being able to throw into your computer a number of different cards and having it just worked. At one point I was using a Matrox G100, Voodoo Banshee, and an S3 Trio64 with three different sized monitors. Play a game on one, watched a hardware decoded DVD on another, etc. It all felt so much easier to do back then vs today.

 

[Xzibit]

Just cause no one has mentioned it.

Card looks to have 2x8pin instead of the normal 8+6pin all other Tri-X have.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

The 8GB is only for bragging right.

I prefer 4GB GDDR5 GPU, it's enough for work and gaming...

tell that to anyone trying to run 5760x2160 with the latest games at the higest settings. 4GB is NOT enough. and 1GB was enough just 2 or 3 years ago, when all games were built for a console with half a gig avaliable. now that the baseline is moved to 8GB, ill wager that 4GB will be standard for midrange cards in 2 years.

 

[GreiverBlade]

tell that to anyone trying to run 5760x2160 with the latest games at the higest settings. 4GB is NOT enough. and 1GB was enough just 2 or 3 years ago, when all games were built for a console with half a gig avaliable. now that the baseline is moved to 8GB, ill wager that 4GB will be standard for midrange cards in 2 years.

you proved his point was right ... since for going to do what you wrote 8gb is worth to... you have to be horrendously rich (unless you find some good deals ... )

also you proved my point, if 1gb was enough 2 3yrs ago 2gb is still enough for now to be a comfort zone and 4 gb a standard ... but 8gb is still not the baseline (4gb is) so according to what you say : for 2 yrs 4gb will be the baseline, 6gb is for Titan owner, 3gb is the Nvidia baseline (EH?) and 8gb is for bragging (and the new baseline in 2016 ... )

also a Standard/baseline/norm : is effective once it is widely adopted: do a poll i bet many user is on a 1gb and a 1080p monitor and have no problems running actual games (with settings tweaking maybe but still) then most of the others will be on 2gb-3gb cards with 1440p monitors (or 1080p) and a minority will be on 4-6gb (and/or multi gpu) on multi monitor and above 1440p

 

[Scrizz]

y

also you prover my point, if 1gb was enough 2 3yrs ago 2gb

nah, 2-3 years ago BF3 was taking more than 1GB vram

 

[Xzibit]

Apparently the middle fan is always on and the two on the side only spin up when temperature warrants.

Sapphire logo is yellow when middle fan is only spinning
Logo turns blue when all 3 fans are working

PCGamesHardware - Sapphire auf der Cebit 2014: Vapor-X- und Toxic-Modelle vorgeführt - R9 290X mit 8 GiByte VRAM (german site)

Video mostly shows the Vapor-Xs. At 5:30+ you see the 290X Tri-X 8GB in an open air test bed.

 

[GreiverBlade]

nah, 2-3 years ago BF3 was taking more than 1GB vram

yeah but it was not general to all games only a minority (point proved, again )

 

[Scrizz]

yeah but it was not general to all games only a minority (point proved, again )

well, if the minority includes some of the most popular games..........

 

[GreiverBlade]

well, if the minority includes some of the most popular games..........

popular doesn't mean general/majority.....................
(bis repetitam)

and most of the user played BF3 (me include) on a 1gb/1.5gb card without any problems. so 1gb was enough for the vast majority of game and even BF3, heck i even still use my GTX 460 HAWK 1gb atm, never had any problem even in modern games but i use a 32" 1080p monitor and my highest ram card is a GTX580 1.5gb, that i still need to go fetch at a friends place i had a 7950 with 3gb and 770/7870/R9 270 with 2gb ... oh well never made a huge diff to my initial 6850/460 1gb even with a modded (HD text/Hi poly count) Skyrim ... ofc frame rate went a bit down but as long as it keep above 30/35fps it is enough. (for me tho ... )

i intend to go for a 290 4gb later ... but never a 8gb, might be more future proof, but what is it worth when the only "future proof" feature is RAM and not a evolutive gpu i mean ... woohoo 8gb will be the baseline in 2016 but who will want to keep a 290/290X till 2016 ... (wait ... i still have a GTX 460 HAWK in my main rig ... oops ...)

 

[hanzawhtet7]

8GB is sweet! Will wait for the price point.

 

[FX-GMC]

tell that to anyone trying to run 5760x2160 with the latest games at the higest settings. 4GB is NOT enough. and 1GB was enough just 2 or 3 years ago, when all games were built for a console with half a gig avaliable. now that the baseline is moved to 8GB, ill wager that 4GB will be standard for midrange cards in 2 years.

Hint: It's not the lack of vram that is slowing it down. Just because a game uses the full 4GB doesn't mean more will make it perform better.

2GB pretty much matches 4GB performance at 4K.

With that 512-bit memory bus I don't see doubling the vram helping the 290X

Update: http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/t...x-with-8-gb-memory.198813/page-2#post-3080771

 

[Sapphire?]

Being that the Sapphire R9 290x is nothing but problems , I cant see spending ANY money on this card.
This card will be well over $1000 IF they ever release it.
They only have been hyping it for two months.
Ali Bakhshi is right, the GTX 780Ti is a far better gaming card.
This is a mining card plain and simple and the problem is AMD cant get the R9 280 or 290s to work right.
On the Sapphire forums it is nothing but complaints.
Miners have FIVE R9 290s and at the factory clock, FOUR have failed.
Basically on all the 7900 series, and R9s have a 50-60% failure rate.
I personally wouldn't spend silly money on a card that WILL have to be RMA'd.
Most likely more then once.
AMD doesn't care and blames its failure on everything BUT the cards.
I would wait for two things:
First AMD to figure out what is wrong with their cards, especially Sapphires.
Second wait until the mining craze calms down and prices come way down.
Then I would buy one new as there are going to be a flood of secondhand 4GBs hitting the market.
Beware the used ones, abused and likely to be RMA'd.
The problem is you are going to get another bad card back with a bad excuse.
8GB on a GPU that is spotty at best because the TITAN has 6GB?
Definitely would go with a NVidia for gaming or AMD for mining.
That seems to be the norm.

 

[FX-GMC]

Being that the Sapphire R9 290x is nothing but problems , I cant see spending ANY money on this card.
This card will be well over $1000 IF they ever release it.
They only have been hyping it for two months.
Ali Bakhshi is right, the GTX 780Ti is a far better gaming card.
This is a mining card plain and simple and the problem is AMD cant get the R9 280 or 290s to work right.
On the Sapphire forums it is nothing but complaints.
Miners have FIVE R9 290s and at the factory clock, FOUR have failed.
Basically on all the 7900 series, and R9s have a 50-60% failure rate.
I personally wouldn't spend silly money on a card that WILL have to be RMA'd.
Most likely more then once.
AMD doesn't care and blames its failure on everything BUT the cards.
I would wait for two things:
First AMD to figure out what is wrong with their cards, especially Sapphires.
Second wait until the mining craze calms down and prices come way down.
Then I would buy one new as there are going to be a flood of secondhand 4GBs hitting the market.
Beware the used ones, abused and likely to be RMA'd.
The problem is you are going to get another bad card back with a bad excuse.
8GB on a GPU that is spotty at best because the TITAN has 6GB?
Definitely would go with a NVidia for gaming or AMD for mining.
That seems to be the norm.

So they fail a lot but you would buy one for mining? Great logic.

 

[Sapphire?]

So they fail a lot but you would buy one for mining? Great logic.

Don't do any mining. Just said that seems to be the norm.
AMD=mining
NVidia=gaming and graphics
That seems to be the logic.

 

[FX-GMC]

Don't do any mining. Just said that seems to be the norm.
AMD=mining
NVidia=gaming and graphics
That seems to be the logic.

ah. Gotcha.

 

[Xzibit]

Hint: It's not the lack of vram that is slowing it down. Just because a game uses the full 4GB doesn't mean more will make it perform better.

2GB pretty much matches 4GB performance at 4K.

With that 512-bit memory bus I don't see doubling the vram helping the 290X

The article your referring to tested 2 games.

LegitReviews - Gigabyte GeForce GTX 760 4GB Video Card Review – 2GB or 4GB of VRAM

 

[FX-GMC]

The article your referring to tested 2 games.

LegitReviews - Gigabyte GeForce GTX 760 4GB Video Card Review – 2GB or 4GB of VRAM

Nice, I missed that. GTX 760 is too weak for that resolution and that may be skewing the results.

GTX 770 was less affected in Far Cry 3 although at 5760x1080 (~1mil less pixels)
http://alienbabeltech.com/main/gtx-770-4gb-vs-2gb-tested/3/

 

[kn00tcn]

some games are more intelligent at streaming than others, which is why i like the idea of streaming, if everyone did a combination of rage+grand theft auto world loading, nobody would have vram trouble

 

[leeb2013]

tell that to anyone trying to run 5760x2160 with the latest games at the higest settings. 4GB is NOT enough. and 1GB was enough just 2 or 3 years ago, when all games were built for a console with half a gig avaliable. now that the baseline is moved to 8GB, ill wager that 4GB will be standard for midrange cards in 2 years.

Except that ps4 devs only have 5gb total to play with due to the os. So I'm sure 6.5gb systen ram and 4gb vram will be more than plenty on pcs.

 

[Prima.Vera]

tell that to anyone trying to run 5760x2160 with the latest games at the higest settings. 4GB is NOT enough. and 1GB was enough just 2 or 3 years ago, when all games were built for a console with half a gig avaliable. now that the baseline is moved to 8GB, ill wager that 4GB will be standard for midrange cards in 2 years.

Who cares about 5760x2160? Probably only 1 guy in a billion runs a game in that res.
95% of the gamers are on 1080p