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In the market for a new g/card - 290/780/7990?

Mine don't run that high and I mine with them. That said fan speed is around 70% so might be a fair bit loud for you.

I think they are fantastic cards personally. 3 290 in TriFire blew my 7990 QuadFire away.

Just a shame no one wanted my water cooled 7990s otherwise i'd be running that now.
 
snips86x said:
Are they sandwiched or is there 1 PCIE bracket between them?
Click to expand...

I have two slots between my cards as i have a P8Z77 WS board so i have four pci-e slots. Slot 1 and 3 use a PLX chip so have a higher x16 bandwidth where as the other two go through the cpu and are x8. I could move the second card down to slot 4 if i wanted to give three slot space between, but then id lose some bandwidth. I removed all the other pci brackets too so the hot air can escape easier.

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Basically looking for temps and noise under load, so BF3/4, Batman if you have it. Don't really play much else.

Idle temps and noise would be useful also. This is helping me with my choice if crossfire, sk if its too loud/hot, I'll re think.
 
Was having the exact same thoughts as you snips.

Was really wanting to try nvidia this time, however, I just couldn't justify the extra cost for it so went with the MSI 290 at £300 the other day, this is how I looked at it:

- get 3 games, which can be sold on for £30-45 (depending what you select)
- 4GB VRAM (future proof)
- mantle (seems like game developers are really liking this API) and mainly because both next gen consoles are using AMD GPU's so since majority of games are poor ports to PC, they might run a bit better on AMD......

As for temps

idle - about 41-45 (with 2 monitors connected, it raises to 50/53
load - about 80-85

Case/cooling setup is the antec p100 with 2x120mm antec fans at the front (on high setting), 1x120mm akassa apache fan at the back. i5 750 oc to 3.6ghz and 5 drives.

And this is in a pretty damn hot room (room gets the sun the entire day)

Noise wise, doesn't seem bad to me but then I have a lot of noise in the house/outside (especially with window open) so can't really notice.
 
snips86x said:
Basically looking for temps and noise under load, so BF3/4, Batman if you have it. Don't really play much else.

Idle temps and noise would be useful also. This is helping me with my choice if crossfire, sk if its too loud/hot, I'll re think.
Click to expand...

Will you be using vsync in BF3/4? I can do a quick lap of Unigine if you like with the cards in different slots? Will you be using a custom fan profile, if so what speed should i set the cards to? Will you use the auto fan profile? On reference cards this means you set a temp target (or leave it at the default 94c) and set a max fan speed to use to try and keep to that target. If you want the lowest noise possible then its best to set the temp target to 94c and the fan speed to 100%.
 
@Nexus - Was that the reference model or the third party coolers?

LtMatt said:
Will you be using vsync in BF3/4? I can do a quick lap of Unigine if you like with the cards in different slots? Will you be using a custom fan profile, if so what speed should i set the cards to? Will you use the auto fan profile? On reference cards this means you set a temp target (or leave it at the default 94c) and set a max fan speed to use to try and keep to that target. If you want the lowest noise possible then its best to set the temp target to 94c and the fan speed to 100%.
Click to expand...

I'd not thought about it in all honesty. I'll tell you what I'm after and you can suggest settings/config.

The case is micro atx so looking to vent out the back, PCIE slots are 2 spaces apart, so crossfire will be hot. I'm after a balance between performance and noise and after looking at the R9 290 reference noise tests, I think 65-75% would be the limit, ideally no more than 55% without loosing too much performance.

I would also be looking to limit the temp to no more than 80c, my MSI HD 7970 TF III was happy there, I didn't have an issue with that. In all honesty, you'll be better to advise me than me tell you as I've no idea the best way of configuring reference cards. I've just found an EVGA 780 SC on the MM for £400, so really debating where to go.....I'll leave the testing to you!

Oh - Will be moving to a 1440p monitor also over the coming months.
 
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snips86x said:
@Nexus - Was that the reference model or the third party coolers?



I'd not thought about it in all honesty. I'll tell you what I'm after and you can suggest settings/config.

The case is micro atx so looking to vent out the back, PCIE slots are 2 spaces apart, so crossfire will be hot. I'm after a balance between performance and noise and after looking at the R9 290 reference noise tests, I think 65-75% would be the limit, ideally no more than 50% without loosing too much performance.

I would also be looking to limit the temp to no more than 80c, my MSI HD 7970 TF III was happy there, I didn't have an issue with that. In all honesty, you'll be better to advise me than me tell you as I've no idea the best way of configuring reference cards. I've just found an EVGA 780 SC on the MM for £400, so really debating where to go.....I'll leave the testing to you!

Oh - Will be moving to a 1440p monitor also over the coming months.
Click to expand...

Well if you run the fans at 65-75% you will have no trouble keeping temps in check. I will do a couple of tests using my undervolted settings and see what i get. If you undervolt the core and AUX (easily possible if you run stock) and save it to a profile in afterburner you can apply that profile when the pc boots up. This will help keep temps down nicely and can enable you to run a slower fan speed. I use -0.031v and -0.100mv AUX for stock clocks of 975/1250. I will report back tomorrow morning with the results. :)
 
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