AMD begins slashing the prices of its Radeon R9 290, R9 290X GPUs

[Uncle Petey]

Copypasta from here.

In addition to testing Mantle, we were also able to give TrueAudio a chance. Thief is the first game to implement TrueAudio, TrueAudio offloads sound from the CPU to dedicated audio chips on the video card. Thief implements it to calculate “convolution reverb”, which is a technique to simulate noise in a real-life environment, this causes realistic echos which can be a little disconcerting at first. We are so used to playing games without realistic echos that when we hear it from a game it sounds wierd. However that fades very quickly and the noises of the game draws you in.

TrueAudio has a lot of potential, Thief’s implementation with echos can make a game much more realistic. Hopefully more games will implement Mantle and TrueAudio as they mature.

Seems like it might be decent if you have an ear for that kind of thing.

Not a massive selling point for me, personally. In the right game though...

 

[setter]

Now prices are dropping, im tempted by a 2nd 290, which leaves me wondering if i would benefit from a new mobo, and do i bother with Watercooling? my Enthoo Primo has a ton of room for adding a loop, but im not sure if i need to bother, my 290 rarely goes over 70c or so anyhow, adding a 2nd wont really impact the temps on the pair i'd think by so much i'd need to look at more cooling?

Id go for it, the g1 sniper is a good board for xfire. Watercooling would help with card temps, but wont make a massive difference to the CPU unless you delid it. With these price drops xfire is a pretty attractive prospect now.

 

[humbug]

Well we do seem to agree on what is power saving related, which has to be a good thing.

With as you quite rightly say a lot of the power saving features are refinements of earlier features and should all be present in tonga.

But I do have to ask with that in mind, what did you mean by this?




of course once again we have strayed from the main topic and that is that official price cuts are happening, which is a good thing. How this will affect OCUK already very good pricing remains to be seen.

Tonga = Hawaii in smaller form.

If you think of "intelligent boost and performance aware energy optimisation" as Nvidia's GPU Boost (can't remember the technical term they gave it) then Hawaii / Tonga are 'NV GPU Boost 1' (GTX 680)

On Hawaii and Tonga its ajusting the Frequancy of the GPU depending on the load, while the core volts remain constant, unlike 'NV GPU Boost 2' which also ajusts the core volts inline with load and frequency, that i think is the final development for AMD in "intelligent boost and performance aware energy optimisation" and should be seen on their next GPU's.

Not in Hawaii or Tonga, should be in the 2015 GPU lines;

"intelligent boost and performance aware energy optimisation - Version 3"

"Voltage adaptive frequency scaling" < Same thing ^^^^^ ? IE: NV GPU Boost 2

"Per-part adaptive voltage"

"Inter-Frame Power Gating"

"Integrated Voltage Regulation"

 

[meldarthx]

Thought tru audio was also in Murdered Soul Suspect also..need to snag me a new card soonish anyways....waiting for the fall out to hit to pick up something cheap

 

[shankly1985]

The good thing TrueAudio has going for it is the ps4 support it. Any games can easily be the ported between platforms.

 

[humbug]

IVR,AVFS,inter-frame and Per-part Adaptive Voltage would allow for the CUs to have an individual clock with no more P-States

IVR: Important to change freq extremely fast
AVFSicks the best freq with the best voltage(Frequency and Voltage are selected independently of each other)
Now we have DVFSicks from a P-state the best pair of freq and voltages and they have almost 100-150mv overhead

With inter power frame gating and all the above means that each cu has individual clocks with no more P-States.Instead, the CU choose the best clock for the given workload

AFS on SR:http://www.realworldtech.com/steamroller-clocking/

Thanks.

 

[Silent_Scone]

I wonder, what with all the switching back and forth between processes, redesigns, lower markup than what they'd like, cost of the PR blitz they used to brainwash people into buying weaker cards than we already had...

Weaker? Why don't you go and make a 175w TDP part that's better then. Clever Clogs.

 

[Nutella33]

Weaker? Why don't you go and make a 175w TDP part that's better then. Clever Clogs.

the basic fact is there's no performance increase in this release and it requires a 1.5 clock to equal a 1.2 part from a year ago. it might do it with lower power consumption but the performance is not a step up on a year old design.

you can rave about the overclocking but when its needing the OC to compete with a year old card... its weaker. no matter of power usage, performance is what matters and to say it overclocks is just ignoring the fact the older gen clocks comparably. Yes it might scale up magnificently in the future but we dont have those parts yet.

good prices on the 290 but the next gen is where my interest lies as a current 7970 owner. see if maxwell scales well and see if 3xx series rumoured new tech can do anything special.

 

[Silent_Scone]

the basic fact is there's no performance increase in this release and it requires a 1.5 clock to equal a 1.2 part from a year ago. it might do it with lower power consumption but the performance is not a step up on a year old design.

you can rave about the overclocking but when its needing the OC to compete with a year old card... its weaker. no matter of power usage, performance is what matters and to say it overclocks is just ignoring the fact the older gen clocks comparably. Yes it might scale up magnificently in the future but we dont have those parts yet.

good prices on the 290 but the next gen is where my interest lies as a current 7970 owner. see if maxwell scales well and see if 3xx series rumoured new tech can do anything special.

Where do you need to overclock a 980 for it to be faster? You realise that makes no sense? I appreciate its cheaper but you're packing out twice the heat, which has to go somewhere, for less performance.

Not sure what else there is to say.

 

[Deleted member 66701]

Well AMD have left it too late and even with the price drops on OCUK today, a 290 or 290x still doesn't make sense over a 970.

So I've ordered two MSI 970's and two EK Thermosphere's to replace my 7970's. First time I've gone green since I had an 8800gtx and the first time I've not gone with the top tier card either.

Lets see what AMD pull out of the bag in the new year and if they can tempt me back - interesting times

 

[Uncle Petey]

Twice the heat?

/pedant

 

[Geeman1979]

the basic fact is there's no performance increase in this release and it requires a 1.5 clock to equal a 1.2 part from a year ago. it might do it with lower power consumption but the performance is not a step up on a year old design.

you can rave about the overclocking but when its needing the OC to compete with a year old card... its weaker. no matter of power usage, performance is what matters and to say it overclocks is just ignoring the fact the older gen clocks comparably. Yes it might scale up magnificently in the future but we dont have those parts yet.

good prices on the 290 but the next gen is where my interest lies as a current 7970 owner. see if maxwell scales well and see if 3xx series rumoured new tech can do anything special.

Where have you got these figures from, 1.5 to equal a 1.2 part and which two cards are you comparing?

 

[Mal X]

.

Lets see what AMD pull out of the bag in the new year and if they can tempt me back - interesting times

yea me too, because the next AMD dual card next year will need to be miles cheaper to compete with the 970 SLI..... so it will be approx £600 to £700, that's pretty good

Nvidia wont raise their prices so this means that all cards next year will need to be miles cheaper ( and far better) to compete, this can only be good news for us

i bet you there will be another GTX 970 next year too, a Rev B of sorts, because Nvidia will deffo want to maintain their advantage

 

[jwilliamson47]

The 970 is clearly the better card, BUT if the 290s were £199.99 they would be a good proposition for people looking for crossfire them since £400 for a dual card setup is pretty damn impressive. A decent aftermarket 970 sli one is around £580-£600.

 

[Silent_Scone]

Twice the heat?

/pedant

300W undisclosed TDP. It has to go somewhere

Spoiler

 

[Uncle Petey]

Ok then.

Ed: Btw, I believe nutella is comparing 9xx vs 780/ti, not 9xx vs 290/X.
I'd say 1.5 vs 1.3-4 or roundabouts is closer to the mark though.
Depends which bench you look at, but there ain't much in it either way apart from power consumption.

 

[Efour]

AMD slashes 290x prices??

$100 off cards and no one here says a thing...... ??

Is this a conspiracy theory ?

 

[Ayahuasca]

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18628190

 

[~>Dg<~]

noticed other places doing same .

 

[Efour]

page 3 ... lol i thought this would be still the hottest topic here.