• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

ASUS Radeon R9 290X DirectCU II Graphics Card Review

That is a modest OC tbh, considering it's a DCu II. Could the methodology be flawed here or a bad reading?

Really wanna see power consumption at 1300/1600... :p
 
That is a modest OC tbh, considering it's a DCu II. Could the methodology be flawed here or a bad reading?

Really wanna see power consumption at 1300/1600... :p

It'll be a monster performer if it gets that high. 30% overclock? yes please.
 
That does seem a bit high. Whats the stock voltage for a 290X, 1.25v? If so hes pumping nearly 1.4v through it so i guess its possible. Pretty sure Scotty & other titan owners have said titans pull a lot of watts at 1.4v. This will never get shown in reviews though as Nvidia lock voltage afaik and reviewers never use hacks/custom bios to get around it.
 
That does seem a bit high. Whats the stock voltage for a 290X, 1.25v? If so hes pumping nearly 1.4v through it so i guess its possible. Pretty sure Scotty & other titan owners have said titans pull a lot of watts at 1.4v. This will never get shown in reviews though as Nvidia lock voltage afaik and reviewers never use hacks/custom bios to get around it.

On Reference maybe, 780TI's, the Asus 290X is 3% more power hungry than the same Asus 780TI, or practically nothing.

vs the reference 290X its quite a different story. The Asus 290X sucks up 13% more than that reference 290X, so perhaps the Asus 290X is also running a bit more volts.

But i know what your saying, AMD are far from conservative with their volts on cards, it just means they are able to overclock well on stock volts, this approach makes them look more power hungry to the layman.

I have taken masses of volts off my GPU, and i do mean masses. yet i am still reaching 25% overclocks, its a joke
 
Last edited:
On Reference maybe, 780TI's, the Asus 290X is 3% more power hungry than the same Asus 780TI, or practically nothing.

vs the reference 290X its quite a different story. The Asus 290X sucks up 13% more than that reference 290X, so perhaps the Asus 290X is also running a bit more volts.

But i know what your saying, AMD are far from conservative with their volts on cards, it just means they are able to overclock well on stock volts, this approach makes them look more power hungry to the layman.

I have taken masses of volts off my GPU, and i do mean masses. yet i am still reaching 25% overclocks, its a joke

As well as that the core is at 1050 so that will increase power draw as well. Not sure if the memory is overclocked or not.
 
As well as that the core is at 1050 so that will increase power draw as well. Not sure if the memory is overclocked or not.

It is, 100Mhz, meh... they actually overclocked it to 1550 just fine. i think they are holding back on the memory speeds for the higher range ones, they did the same thing with the 79## series.
 
It's a bit rubbish in the overclocking department, nowhere near as quick as the four ref Asus 290Xs I have got lol.
 
It's a bit rubbish in the overclocking department, nowhere near as quick as the four ref Asus 290Xs I have got lol.

"four ref Asus 290Xs I have"

Yeah, just, just go away with your stealth boasting, or donate one to some poor soul who needs one more than you need four, like me :D
 
"four ref Asus 290Xs I have"

Yeah, just, just go away with your stealth boasting, or donate one to some poor soul who needs one more than you need four, like me :D

I need all four to knock NVidia off the top of the benching charts (when my case turns up and I can build the thing).:D
 
"four ref Asus 290Xs I have"

Yeah, just, just go away with your stealth boasting, or donate one to some poor soul who needs one more than you need four, like me :D

Everyone here knows that if you had the choice between 4x290's of 4x7870's you'd pick the latter. ;)

Pitcairn 4 life dawg. :cool: :p
 
I need all four to knock NVidia off the top of the benching charts (when my case turns up and I can build the thing).:D

Well hand one over when your done :D

Everyone here knows that if you had the choice between 4x290's of 4x7870's you'd pick the latter. ;)

Pitcairn 4 life dawg. :cool: :p

7870 yes but Tahiti LE, actually, ner ner..... :p
 
612w at 1185/1550 surely that cannot be right, something has to be wrong there as that is ridiculous. The thread (on overclock.net ref: hardwarecanuks that nelly posted that chart from)says that is the card only and at 1.381v.
If that is really accurate (which I highly doubt) there will be no trifire going on then (without multiple PSU) with those cards 1800w + the rest of the system anyone.

Decent coolers certainly seemed to have tamed the beast though.
 
Last edited:
612w at 1185/1550 surely that cannot be right, something has to be wrong there as that is ridiculous. The thread says that is the card only and at 1.381v.
If that is really accurate (which I highly doubt) there will be no trifire going on then (without multiple PSU) with those cards 1800w + the rest of the system anyone.

Decent coolers certainly seemed to have tamed the beast though.

Which review was that?
 
bru said:
It was the link that nelly posted up with that chart showing 612w usage in post 18 of this thread

http://www.overclock.net/t/1452037/hardwarecanucks-asus-r9-290x-directcu-ii-oc-review/130#post_21421107


I really do think there must be some amiss as that power usage seems ridiculous for a single card at only 1185 MHz.
I don't know why Hardware Canucks doesn't include power consumption results when overclocked/overvolted.

That actual graph, Im not sure where it originated, I think the guy calculated the difference for wattage/voltage, and it came out at over 600 watts.

What do most reference cards normally clock to 1200MHz on what voltage?
 
It was the link that nelly posted up with that chart showing 612w usage in post 18 of this thread

http://www.overclock.net/t/1452037/...-290x-directcu-ii-oc-review/130#post_21421107


I really do think there must be some amiss as that power usage seems ridiculous for a single card at only 1185 MHz.

Yeah, none of the other reviewers show power with in a mile of that, overclocked, they show something thats normal and expected.

612 Watts is insane, thats ~250% above the reference board power line limit, on a refrence board it cannot go above that +20% if that is set.
The Asus is not a Reference board, yet the same thing applies, there is a limit to what the board can draw, whatever Asus set, its not 600 Watts, not even close.

The only way you could get it to pull that much power is with an LN2 BIOS / MSI AB Hack and crank up the volts to insane amounts.
With that much power coursing through the Chip it would boil its self to death in less that a minute unless it has liquid nitrogen passing over it.

In short, their claims in that slide are physically impossible.
 
That will be whole system draw - take into account average efficency and remove an estimate amount for the rest of the system and you get about 400-450watt for the GPU itself which is more likely and still quite high.
 
That will be whole system draw - take into account average efficency and remove an estimate amount for the rest of the system and you get about 400-450watt for the GPU itself which is more likely and still quite high.

No the graph is claiming board power as at idle some are running in single digit figures and the highest power draw at idle is under 20. If it was full system draw surely the idle figures would be higher. The graph itself also says board power.
 
Last edited:
I think we can all agree that those particular figures are decidedly dubious and not to be relied upon.
 
Yeah, either there is something crazy inefficient about those vrm's at higher temps or voltages or that number is pretty much bogus.

Maybe they accidentally set 1.6v or something, maybe the asus software is doing voltage completely out of whack. Then again their tdp numbers for pretty much all cards are pretty daft and don't seem to match any other reviews.

Maybe they are using a 1000W psu they bought in 1985 which is 60% efficient :p

Either way, haven't rated Asus cards myself in ages, the main thing you want is airflow, huge sink does very little extra with no airflow. I'd go with the Sapphire or Gigabyte myself, more airflow via extra quiet fan, and with air being pushed through the majority of the heatsink rather than lots of dead zone. Then you've got the "asus" factor in which, for no reason at all they always charge more for the same thing. Asus are always the most expensive reference card, pretty much the most expensive third party cooled, when you get into silly editions like lightnings maybe they aren't but essentially stock cards with similar costing heatsinks they always scam you for more money based off their brand and nothing else.
 
Back
Top Bottom