AMD Radeon R9 290X 4 GB

The Von Matrices · Oct 30, 2013

sweet said:
As if you owned the card, lol.

70% fan in a close case is just around 55 dba at your seat. That guy said that the card is noticeable, but it is not a big deal when he wears his headphones. Of course he is using the stock coooler.

For your information, a normal conversation is 60 dba, and when wearing headphones you barely notice it.

I have used the reference 7970 cooler, which is nearly identical to the R9 290X's cooler in that it uses the same motor and fan, and it is very annoying if it gets above 45%.

erocker said:
Wear headphones.

I use speakers and not headphones, so I can see how headphones would make a difference, but any additional noise is going to affect perceived audio quality. If you have a loud computer you have to reduce dynamic range to still hear the quieter sounds while not blowing out your eardrums when something loud happens in game. There's also no point in getting a high end sound card that has a high SNR if you're going to make the noise floor really loud.

Sure, you you can put on headphones, but if you're playing an online multiplayer game you still can't stop the fan noise from obscuring your voice in voice chat, especially if the card's noise is just as loud as your voice. In every online game I've played there's always a few people who have good microphones but really loud computers that compete with their voices and make understanding what they're saying difficult or impossible.

radrok · Oct 30, 2013

The funny thing is that after price cuts the 780 costs 100 eur less compared to the 290x here in Italy.

It's the same for some other european countries according to geizhals, cheapest 290x is like 490 eur and cheapest 780 is 405-410 eur.

No brainer imo, AMD has to kinda drop prices (and it has to fast) if it wants to sell its cards in here.

HTC · Oct 30, 2013

radrok said:
The funny thing is that after price cuts the 780 costs 100 eur less compared to the 290x here in Italy.

It's the same for some other european countries according to geizhals, cheapest 290x is like 490 eur and cheapest 780 is 405-410 eur.

No brainer imo, AMD has to kinda drop prices (and it has to fast) if it wants to sell its cards in here.

Don't think that's AMD: probably both distributors and vendors trying to cash in.

Tatty_Two · Oct 30, 2013

it is indeed the vendors playing the game, if you look at some UK prices they are way lower than those Radrok has quoted so these are not AMD rrp's.........

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Comp...R5+PCI-Express+Graphics+Card+?productId=57980

radrok · Oct 30, 2013

Someone is ruining AMD sales , either AMD or vendors because let's face it, would you rather buy that 290x or this?

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Comp...Graphics+Card+++3+FREE+GAMES+?productId=57506

It even has three games bundled lol

Solaris17 · Oct 30, 2013

the 290x

crazyeyesreaper · Oct 30, 2013

Ill take the 780 my card was free though hurray early Christmas lol

MxPhenom 216 · Oct 30, 2013

radrok said:
The funny thing is that after price cuts the 780 costs 100 eur less compared to the 290x here in Italy.

It's the same for some other european countries according to geizhals, cheapest 290x is like 490 eur and cheapest 780 is 405-410 eur.

No brainer imo, AMD has to kinda drop prices (and it has to fast) if it wants to sell its cards in here.

Not to mention the Lightning GTX780 here is $539.99 which is already a bit faster then the Titan which will be faster than the 290x for a bit cheaper.

And it comes with free games so you could come out spending ~$500 or less.

broken pixel · Oct 30, 2013

290x ? 780 aftermarket variant? 780ti hell no. I will wait for an aftermarket 290x, or even the R10 Zues to be released, hahahaha!

radrok · Oct 30, 2013

MxPhenom 216 said:
Not to mention the Lightning GTX780 here is $539.99 which is already a bit faster then the Titan which will be faster than the 290x for a bit cheaper.

And it comes with free games so you could come out spending ~$500 or less.

Talking about Lightning, let's hope AIB get wild with 780ti and 290x :toast:

Tatty_Two · Oct 30, 2013

personally, I am waiting for the straight 290 version, hopefully with a very decent aftermarket cooler, if it don't look nice, sound nice and perform nice, i will be getting me one of them cheaper 780's, I can take a miss on the games bundle, maybe they could replace that for a troop of half naked dancing girls!

radrok · Oct 30, 2013

Tatty_One said:
personally, I am waiting for the straight 290 version, hopefully with a very decent aftermarket cooler, if it don't look nice, sound nice and perform nice, i will be getting me one of them cheaper 780's, I can take a miss on the games bundle, maybe they could replace that for a troop of half naked dancing girls!

I was expecting massive boobs from Sapphire's boxes but they failed to deliver :mad:

HumanSmoke · Oct 30, 2013

radrok said:
I was expecting massive boobs from Sapphire's boxes but they failed to deliver

Given the way Roy Taylor love to self-publicize, maybe he can strike a deal to appear on the custom cards box art thereby fulfilling both his and your wishes

eidairaman1 · Oct 30, 2013

Good Review

qubit · Oct 30, 2013

The Von Matrices said:
In every online game I've played there's always a few people who have good microphones but really loud computers that compete with their voices and make understanding what they're saying difficult or impossible.

So that one player who's got the loud computer effectively imposes the inconvenience on his fellow players who also use headsets since that microphone's output is transmitted to everyone. Nice. :shadedshu

Suka · Oct 31, 2013

Great Card and a great review. Wish i could afford one of these suckers and a decent machine, i would be in dreamland :laugh:

N3M3515 · Nov 1, 2013

For anyone looking for a direct comparison between titan/780 SLI and 290x CF:
SLI vs CF review

sweet · Nov 1, 2013

I think W1zz should have included the new overdrive feature in CCC for 290x

HTC · Nov 1, 2013

N3M3515 said:
For anyone looking for a direct comparison between titan/780 SLI and 290x CF:
SLI vs CF review

WOW: i knew the R9 290X was faster but, in crossfire, i didn't expected it to be this much faster!

Wish W1zzard could make one of these reviews (minus the 4K display part).

Still, what surprised me the most was that the crossfire frame pacing problems that were plaguing AMD are totally gone with this card, so much so that now it's nVidia that "seems" to have frame pacing issues and just recently they were being praise for not having this: i find that amazing!!!!

radrok · Nov 1, 2013

Yep the only thing that's left to fix is DX9, which it can wait imo.

This review is much better than the hardocp one (which I never liked as a site, always kinda biased towards Nvidia), http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphi...deon-R9-290X-CrossFire-and-4K-Preview-Testing.

HTC · Nov 1, 2013

radrok said:
Yep the only thing that's left to fix is DX9, which it can wait imo.

This review is much better than the hardocp one (which I never liked as a site, always kinda biased towards Nvidia), http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphi...deon-R9-290X-CrossFire-and-4K-Preview-Testing.

So this frame pacing fix seems to be DX10 and DX11 only? Though, with only 1 DX9 game tested, i'm not sure of this.

Seems the previous review made the R9 290X look better then it was, frame pacing wise, but it still shows massive improvements over previous cards: hopefully, they can learn from this and come up with some driver optimizations for the other cards already out there, unless this is an hardware issue, in which case, other card's owners are pretty much screwed

crazyeyesreaper · Nov 1, 2013

Still doesnt tell all very small subset of games, and if you havent noticed AMD's fix is per game some games will never get fixed. You will also notice they stick to fixing the most popular titles. Thus overall SLI may not be scaling as well but it still works across a greater number of games and tends to work without issue across all Direct X versions.

I enjoy new eyecandy as much as the next person but there is still alot of work to be done by AMD before I would consider Xfire again.

HTC · Nov 1, 2013

crazyeyesreaper said:
Still doesnt tell all very small subset of games, and if you havent noticed AMD's fix is per game some games will never get fixed. You will also notice they stick to fixing the most popular titles. Thus overall SLI may not be scaling as well but it still works across a greater number of games and tends to work without issue across all Direct X versions.

I enjoy new eyecandy as much as the next person but there is still alot of work to be done by AMD before I would consider Xfire again.

I'm sure you agree: this is a step in the right direction.

All that's needed now is enough steps to reach "goal" :laugh:

crazyeyesreaper · Nov 1, 2013

Correct it is a step in the right direction the problem is AMD tends to take a few steps then just kinda stops to shoot the breeze for awhile lol. Then they seem to remember oh shit i was suppose to be working on this I better get back to it. :roll:

mastershake575 · Nov 2, 2013

Damn I checked newegg again and the Evga GTX 780 with the ACX cooler is $495 after promo code and $485 after rebate (it includes three recent games also).

AMD for damn sure has to lower there prices (the Sapphire 290x with stock cooler is $100 more).

I wouldn't be surprised if AMD dropped the stock cooler editions to $500 and released the third party cooler editions for $550

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AMD Radeon R9 290X 4 GB

The Von Matrices

radrok

HTC

Tatty_Two

Gone Fishing

radrok

Solaris17

Super Dainty Moderator

crazyeyesreaper

Not a Moderator

MxPhenom 216

ASIC Engineer

broken pixel

radrok

Tatty_Two

Gone Fishing

radrok

HumanSmoke

eidairaman1

The Exiled Airman

qubit

Overclocked quantum bit

Suka

N3M3515

sweet

HTC

radrok

HTC

crazyeyesreaper

Not a Moderator

HTC

crazyeyesreaper

Not a Moderator

mastershake575

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