Radeon R9 290X Pictured, Tested, Beats Titan

[Blín D'ñero]

Meh, all of this is willy-waving until reputable reviewers have the actual cards in their hands. At the very least it should drop the price of the GeForce 700 series, which is what I'm looking forward to... been burned by crappy AMD drivers too many times.

And on the topic of crappiness, AMD need to get rid of that POS blower cooler. It works fine at stock clocks, but as soon as you try squeezing an overclock out of it you need to push the fan speeds to unacceptable noise levels to keep the card reasonably cool.

That is an ES card; the block shroud is not representative for the retail card.

I have my 7970's running at 1100/1500 (CCC Overdrive) and you can hear them during gaming (when you take the headphones off) but i wouldn't call that woosh unacceptable. It's not like my old X1900XT. Their reference coolers have improved.

Burned by drivers? That was an nVidia feature iirc...

 

[Octavean]

Titanfall, booom!

Attack on Titan,....

Yeah I said it!!!

 

[Supercrit]

And on the topic of crappiness, AMD need to get rid of that POS blower cooler. It works fine at stock clocks, but as soon as you try squeezing an overclock out of it you need to push the fan speeds to unacceptable noise levels to keep the card reasonably cool.

At least the hot air will be exhausted out of the case, instead of spreading it inside the case. Problem is the dual-DVI that takes half of the ventilation area.

 

[THE_EGG]

http://videocardz.com/45837/amd-hawaii-gpu-2816-stream-processors

"That said we believe 1020 MHz (1GHz) clock was obtained with this mode enabled. The real clock is lower (around 900 MHz). Without Turbo R9 290X will be slower than TITAN."

Well if it turns out to be close to those figures, it is definitely a winner! Although it should be taken with a grain of salt...

 

[ironwolf]

It will cost half a human soul on release of course, if the final card does indeed beat a Titan. It's going to be severely overpriced, then a few months later (when NVidia release the GK110 without any parts disabled), it will drop in price to pre GTX7xx 7970 price.

Dang. I currently only have half a soul left.

 

[RCoon]

Dang. I currently only have half a soul left.

With two 780's, I'm afraid I'm no longer considered a member of humankind.

 

[Akrian]

Give me 499-550$ price tag, and I will sell my 7970s, add some $$ and get at least 3 of those

 

[ensabrenoir]

I predict $699......After a few months Release $749 to $799 Good to...hopefully see it beats Titian... they had enough time to. Anything less would be meaning less.And they'd be a fool to sell it for less

 

[vanyots]

No one mentioned it so far, but the thing I like the most is that this kind of performance is achieved with only one 8-pin and one 6-pin power connectors.

 

[EarthDog]

Haha Anyone hoping this card releases with a reasonable price is delirious. It's going to be as badly priced as the Titan until somebody gets AMD off of the pedastal.

It says $600... But I am betting it will be around 780 pricing ($650-700).

 

[Mombasa69]

I hope the new Radeon doesn't come with a crappy looking cheap cooler and case, if so I'm going to wait for a decent 3rd party cooler.

 

[RCoon]

It says $600... But I am betting it will be around 780 pricing ($650-700).

If a default 900Mhz clock is true, and it strike blows with the Titan but keeps it's pacing against the 780, you're probably right, it will be there to mock the 780, its performance and price point.

I hope the new Radeon doesn't come with a crappy looking cheap cooler and case, if so I'm going to wait for a decent 3rd party cooler.

From experience, water coolers prefer reference cards. Less wasted money, better compatibility.

 

[buildzoid]

I hope they go for a cooler similar to the one on the 6970 but with better performance and if they added 1 more phase to the vrm I'll buy it.

 

[the54thvoid]

To those that keep trolling "Titanfall" etc....

What do you expect? We should all fully expect AMD's next gen release to beat Nvidia's last gen king. Despite it's name the Titan is still nothing more than a huge die compute centric Kepler card. The architecture is OLD.

I'm disappointed that in those benchmarks, AMD's card doesn't win EVERY metric. If you look at the source material - now password protected from web site DGNerdy(?) the new AMD card loses to Titan by 10% in Bioshock Infinite. It doesn't beat it hands down and that's bad news.

This is AMD's next gen release - it has to be the best. If it's not - it's frankly very disappointing. I want it to destroy Titan. Then i can go and buy a single AMD gpu and play with the voltage and not worry about Nvidia's bloody nanny state gfx card protection meddling.

I hope these benchmarks are wrong. I hope the card is better.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

I hope they go for a cooler similar to the one on the 6970 but with better performance

You cant be serious....

a facepalm'able worthy comment if i ever heard one...

Heres the 6970....

and heres the R9 290X pictured in the first post.

'More performance' would mean you require a pilots license, a space suit, and ear protection because that leaf blower will be blowing so hard it will defy any laws of gravity and launch your PC into the stratosphere and deafen you in the process.

 

[john_]

To those that keep trolling "Titanfall" etc....

What do you expect? We should all fully expect AMD's next gen release to beat Nvidia's last gen king. Despite it's name the Titan is still nothing more than a huge die compute centric Kepler card. The architecture is OLD.

I'm disappointed that in those benchmarks, AMD's card doesn't win EVERY metric. If you look at the source material - now password protected from web site DGNerdy(?) the new AMD card loses to Titan by 10% in Bioshock Infinite. It doesn't beat it hands down and that's bad news.

This is AMD's next gen release - it has to be the best. If it's not - it's frankly very disappointing. I want it to destroy Titan. Then i can go and buy a single AMD gpu and play with the voltage and not worry about Nvidia's bloody nanny state gfx card protection meddling.

I hope these benchmarks are wrong. I hope the card is better.

I can understand your thinking but you are wrong because

- We are still at 28nm
- The core is much smaller
- You can't expect a card to win in every game because many games are written that way that a specific architecture have the advantage, even if it is worst than the competition.

 

[15th Warlock]

To those that keep trolling "Titanfall" etc....

What do you expect? We should all fully expect AMD's next gen release to beat Nvidia's last gen king. Despite it's name the Titan is still nothing more than a huge die compute centric Kepler card. The architecture is OLD.

I'm disappointed that in those benchmarks, AMD's card doesn't win EVERY metric. If you look at the source material - now password protected from web site DGNerdy(?) the new AMD card loses to Titan by 10% in Bioshock Infinite. It doesn't beat it hands down and that's bad news.

This is AMD's next gen release - it has to be the best. If it's not - it's frankly very disappointing. I want it to destroy Titan. Then i can go and buy a single AMD gpu and play with the voltage and not worry about Nvidia's bloody nanny state gfx card protection meddling.

I hope these benchmarks are wrong. I hope the card is better.

Agreed a 100%, GK110 is over 18 months old and I cannot believe what I see here, 2~10% lead in a couple of old games (AvP3? wtf...) does not make this card "significantly faster", this card cannot be the successor to the 7970...

Either these benchmarks are fake or that's a severely under performing ES card they have there, AMD needs to release a card that soundly beats Kepler at a reasonable price, otherwise they're setting themselves up for failure come Q1'14 when Maxwell is released, and we can expect another round of $650~1000 cards from the green team...

 

[RCoon]

I can understand your thinking but you are wrong because

- We are still at 28nm
- The core is much smaller
- You can't expect a card to win in every game because many games are written that way that a specific architecture have the advantage, even if it is worst than the competition.

AMD has to counter-bitch-slap NVidia for Titan and gimped Titan(780), regardless of die size and 28nm, AMD NEEDS to provide a bitch-slap, or face being second, only this time they have no 7990 to grasp on to for fastest singe card.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

Agreed a 100%, GK110 is over 18 months old and I cannot believe what I see here, 2~10% lead in a couple of old games (AvP3? wtf...) does not make this card "significantly faster", this card cannot be the successor to the 7970...

Either these benchmarks are fake or that's a severely under performing ES card they have there, AMD needs to release a card that soundly beats Kepler at a reasonable price, otherwise they're setting themselves up for failure come Q1'14 when Maxwell is released, and we can expect another round of $650~1000 cards from the green team...

Q1 14 id laugh but on a phone thats tricky (sort this please wizz) oh and the green camp is prob aiming at 800-1200 for maxwell wait and see again insert chuckles.

 

[the54thvoid]

I can understand your thinking but you are wrong because

- We are still at 28nm
- The core is much smaller
- You can't expect a card to win in every game because many games are written that way that a specific architecture have the advantage, even if it is worst than the competition.

I'm not wrong in my suppositions.

Core size is far less relevant than what the die space comprises of. It's still reckoned to be one of AMD's biggest dies. So 28nm or not, the efficiency of the architecture is paramount.

Bioshock is also an AMD sponsored title - should play better on their hardware, not worse.

There is no point in AMD releasing a card that cannot comfortably surpass the competitors flagship. The early benches also show that the Titan beats the unnamed Radeon card in every synthetic benchmark (and I know we all know benchmarks mean nothing).

I guess we all need to see what happens on Wednesday. I'm not surprised if it beats Nvidia's greatest in most metrics. But again, clocks and maximum overhead play a huge role.

Hell, an overclocked well cooled 780 beats a stock Titan.

If I'm wrong and it doesn't hump Titan, I really hope it has a lot of headroom (some sources say it doesn't). It will be a bit dull if the two cards are close.

 

[wickedcricket]

wooooaaahh! GTX 780's £10 less straight away! I hope THIS will start the price avalanche

 

[john_]

AMD has to counter-bitch-slap NVidia for Titan and gimped Titan(780), regardless of die size and 28nm, AMD NEEDS to provide a bitch-slap, or face being second, only this time they have no 7990 to grasp on to for fastest singe card.

No they don't. Remember HD4870 and HD4850? They weren't faster, but they where way cheaper. Especially HD4850 was a $199 dream. Nvidia was running scared to cut the prices for it's new cards only 1-2 weeks after it introduced them. AMD today is using the same rhetoric. They say that they don't target the ultra enthusiast market and they don't believe in very big cores (Hawaii is big but much smaller than Titan). AMD is preparing to do again the same HD4000 trick to Nvidia. Not the best performance, only excellent performance at an unbeatable price. Add to this the game bundles and ...this could be fun.

 

[buildzoid]

You cant be serious....

a facepalm'able worthy comment if i ever heard one...

Heres the 6970....

http://zapp1.staticworld.net/reviews/graphics/products/uploaded/amd_radeon_hd_6970_752476_g2.jpg


and heres the R9 290X pictured in the first post.

http://www.techpowerup.com/img/13-09-23/219a.jpg


'More performance' would mean you require a pilots license, a space suit, and ear protection because that leaf blower will be blowing so hard it will defy any laws of gravity and launch your PC into the stratosphere and deafen you in the process.

Sure the leaked cooler design looks really similar but that doesn't mean the retail one will. And there are ways to make that blower design cool better without being a as loud as a jet.

 

[EarthDog]

Sure the leaked cooler design looks really similar but that doesn't mean the retail one will. And there are ways to make that blower design cool better without being a as loud as a jet.

LOL, that is surely a 'glass half full' approach...

 

[john_]

I'm not wrong in my suppositions.

Core size is far less relevant than what the die space comprises of. It's still reckoned to be one of AMD's biggest dies. So 28nm or not, the efficiency of the architecture is paramount.

30% smaller is not something... small. Efficiency will be much better than Nvidia's even if it loses in one or two benchmarks or/and one or two games.

Bioshock is also an AMD sponsored title - should play better on their hardware, not worse.

That was always the "problem" with AMD. They don't ensure that the titles they sponsor will play better on AMD hardware than on Nvidia hardware. Nvidia on the other hand will ensure that if you use AMD hardware you will have to wait for 2 or 3 patches before playing the game. Think about it. TressFX running on Nvidia hardware. If it was an Nvidia feature the feature would have been disabled with AMD hardware or the game would be running on single digit fps.

There is no point in AMD releasing a card that cannot comfortably surpass the competitors flagship. The early benches also show that the Titan beats the unnamed Radeon card in every synthetic benchmark (and I know we all know benchmarks mean nothing).

As I said in a previous post, HD4000. It wasn't better but it was at a price that no one could resist. It could be losing in fps by a few frames here and there, but in the end it will win easily in overall fps/$.
Let me add something here. I do understand why you say that a company needs the top card. Someone reads the Titan's review and then goes out and buys a GT640 expecting to get a small Titan. Well this is changing with APUs. Low end market is changing from very important to non existing.

I guess we all need to see what happens on Wednesday. I'm not surprised if it beats Nvidia's greatest in most metrics. But again, clocks and maximum overhead play a huge role.

Hell, an overclocked well cooled 780 beats a stock Titan.

If I'm wrong and it doesn't hump Titan, I really hope it has a lot of headroom (some sources say it doesn't). It will be a bit dull if the two cards are close.

It will have a strong game bundle and a much lower price. Nothing more in my opinion, and hopefully performance close or equal to Titan.