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AMD accused of "Golden Sample" on 290X given to reviewers, retail bought cards throttling

Ahh I wanted to hold out setting up my 290 til the new driver hit but couldn't resist so I went with the beta 8's, its really really impressive so far the noise has been so over exaggerated by either fanboys or armchair experts who haven't even got the cards or are using some kind of terrible airflow chassis that wont keep anything cool.

I've had it running a valley loop for quite some time now to make sure its a stable card and at 48% fan speed temp 89c its quieter than my crossfire setup, I have owned cards that sound like hoovers (480 sli anyone) and water cooled silence, this is by no means silent but it really isn't the jet plane people are claiming, listen to people who own them and use them not people spouting crap they read.
 
Thracks

When I play say bf4 my fan stays at 20 I have to turn it up or seem to stay at 20
Is this because bios Is on quiet mode?
 
humbug said:
Now, AMD's marketing department had something to work with in that.

Something along the lines of:

"The R9 290X has a core clock of 850Mhz and a GPU boost of 900Mhz.
The R9 290X is engineered to operate safely at higher temperatures, this coupled with and intelligent cooling solution means the R9 290X has the potential to operate at higher core clocks giving it lots of overclocking potential"

Boom- ^^^^^^ the temperature and throttling complaints all preemptively negated!

Are you taking notes AMD?
Click to expand...

Yes that is great marketing, what that would have resulted in is making the card slower, making review results slower, making it slower than Titan and the 780gtx and for no reason at all?

No, AMD Marketing didn't get it wrong, and suggesting they kill the performance by over 10% in multiple situations is a very very bad idea.

99% of users don't care what temp the card runs at, don't benchmark and wouldn't even care if their card(or know) was throttling more than they thought it would. they read reviews and weigh up performance vs the cost, as do OEM's and everyone else.

Usually speaking marketing people don't purposefully reduce the speed, for absolutely no reason because a few guys on a few forums think 95C is awful but 85C is fine, so it looks worse in reviews and sells less.

GoogalyMoogaly said:
I'm sure the GTX 560 or something (460?) was only released with 3rd party coolers wasn't it?
Click to expand...

oldestgregg said:
The Ti has just launched with custom coolers.
Click to expand...


In both cases you're talking about already designed pcb's and coolers. The TI is exactly no different at all physically to a Titan or 780gtx, only the core itself has less shaders fused off, this means precisely no changes at all to the pcb, no components being moved, the 3mm change in height from a new VRM that means the heatsink off a previous card wouldn't fit the new one.

Rebranded/rereleased things can be launched with custom cooling straight away, no cards from either company come out usually within at least 6 weeks of a newly released card. Sometimes you can get things a tad quicker if a card is heavily heavily delayed, IE the 480gtx, but even then if the PCB changes at all or the layout in any way changes then it will still take time.

The 560gtx used the same pcb as the 460gtx, it was all but the same core with minimal changes, same pin out and no significant changes, it was clocked a bit higher.


If in 6 weeks there are a wealth of 290x custom cooled cards, then AMD released a 295X that was clocked 200Mhz higher, they could all use the same coolers based on the same pcb and design straight off. This hasn't changed for 10 years from either company, I really don't know why people are bringing it up today like it's new, or as above, why people are ignoring that the Titan cooler both throttles the core at stock and is easily beaten by custom coolers, therefore is in exactly the same situation as AMD's cooler.
 
drunkenmaster said:
Yes that is great marketing, what that would have resulted in is making the card slower, making review results slower, making it slower than Titan and the 780gtx and for no reason at all?

No, AMD Marketing didn't get it wrong, and suggesting they kill the performance by over 10% in multiple situations is a very very bad idea.

99% of users don't care what temp the card runs at, don't benchmark and wouldn't even care if their card(or know) was throttling more than they thought it would. they read reviews and weigh up performance vs the cost, as do OEM's and everyone else.

Usually speaking marketing people don't purposefully reduce the speed, for absolutely no reason because a few guys on a few forums think 95C is awful but 85C is fine, so it looks worse in reviews and sells less.






In both cases you're talking about already designed pcb's and coolers. The TI is exactly no different at all physically to a Titan or 780gtx, only the core itself has less shaders fused off, this means precisely no changes at all to the pcb, no components being moved, the 3mm change in height from a new VRM that means the heatsink off a previous card wouldn't fit the new one.

Rebranded/rereleased things can be launched with custom cooling straight away, no cards from either company come out usually within at least 6 weeks of a newly released card. Sometimes you can get things a tad quicker if a card is heavily heavily delayed, IE the 480gtx, but even then if the PCB changes at all or the layout in any way changes then it will still take time.

The 560gtx used the same pcb as the 460gtx, it was all but the same core with minimal changes, same pin out and no significant changes, it was clocked a bit higher.


If in 6 weeks there are a wealth of 290x custom cooled cards, then AMD released a 295X that was clocked 200Mhz higher, they could all use the same coolers based on the same pcb and design straight off. This hasn't changed for 10 years from either company, I really don't know why people are bringing it up today like it's new, or as above, why people are ignoring that the Titan cooler both throttles the core at stock and is easily beaten by custom coolers, therefore is in exactly the same situation as AMD's cooler.
Click to expand...

Exactly hence why the R9-280X, R9-270x ect.. launched with custom coolers.
 
Final8y said:
Exactly hence why the R9-280X, R9-270x ect.. launched with custom coolers.
Click to expand...

The R9 280X and R9 270X are based on the Tahiti and Pitcairn GPUs which were launched last year,and already have custom designs based on them in the form of the HD7970 and HD7870.

Both the HD7970 and HD7870 launched with reference only coolers,with non-reference cards following over the next few months.
 
CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
The R9 280X and R9 270X are based on the Tahiti and Pitcairn GPUs which were launched last year,and already have custom designs based on them in the form of the HD7970 and HD7870.

Both the HD7970 and HD7870 launched with reference only coolers,with non-reference cards following over the next few months.
Click to expand...

Yes that why i said what i said and is why the the NV GTX 780 Ti has launched with custom coolers as its based off something that has been around already.
 
Make said:
New article from Toms on the issue:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/radeon-r9-290-driver-fix,review-32821.html

It's been fixed but the average fanspeed has gone up.
Click to expand...

Damn, I feel bad for bashing THG now. I guess we should be happy that somebody picked up on the issue so quickly and AMD were able to sort it ASAP.

NB: The issue was caused by quiet mode using 40% fan speed which due to fan variance was ±300RPM and so caused varying performance between cards (which adjust clocks to meet thermals), though I would personally have expected "quiet mode" to sacrifice performance for silence but w/e lol.
 
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ubersonic said:
Damn, I feel bad for bashing THG now. I guess we should be happy that somebody picked up on the issue so quickly and AMD were able to sort it ASAP.
Click to expand...
Yea me too. I feel like a fool to be led by the noise by Andy's topic title. Reading the previous article subjectively, Tom's merely pointed out that the performance of their retail 290x did not match their reviewed sample, and they were just trying to analyse the reason why.

Matt is right...Andy IS trolling regarding how much he pretends to be innocent. Tom DID NOT accuse AMD of Golden Sample...they merely "hinted" the "possibility". Look at the title of this topic...he's putting it in a way that he see fit, like Tom actually made such accusation vocally.

Yes it's not uncommon that people posting link to article in this manner, but most people would keep the original title of the article, and setting personal opinions/interpretations apart from the article.

Andy could have totally just put "AMD may have given "Golden Sample" to reviewers?" as title, but no...he taken the name of the well-known reviewer, and putting them across as having made such accusation when they did not. Now we got people going around quoting and spreading "the Golden Sample issue" :o

Honestly, if we were to ask Tom (before this 2nd article was out) "So...you are accusing AMD cherry-picking for review sample, and retail cards won't not match the performance of the sample?" I bet Tom would have turned around and said "No! I am not making such an accusation, at least not until I get more information and more analyses done". Tom's made it quite clear (in their futurama meme) "Not sure if super-fast graphic card, or golden sample"...note the not sure.

So basically this whole thing, Andy has put words into Tom's mouth which they did not say :o Ruining Tom's reputation for the sake of bashing AMD.
 
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Imagine if no-one had reported this issue as a reviewer and it surfaced later "In the wild" after a month. Now that media storm would have been horrible.

Now people are boycotting toms for doing their job; Analyzing cards and their findings with them.

GG.
 
Marine-RX179 said:
Yea me too. I feel like a fool to be led by the noise by Andy's topic title. Reading the previous article subjectively, Tom's merely pointed out that the performance of their retail 290x did not match their reviewed sample, and they were just trying to analyse the reason why.

Matt is right...Andy IS trolling regarding how much he pretends to be innocent. Tom DID NOT accuse AMD of Golden Sample...they merely "hinted" the "possibility". Look at the title of this topic...he's putting it in a way that he see fit, like Tom actually made such accusation vocally.

Yes it's not uncommon that people posting link to article in this manner, but most people would keep the original title of the article, and setting personal opinions/interpretations apart from the article.

Andy could have totally just put "AMD may have given "Golden Sample" to reviewers?" as title, but no...he taken the name of the well-known reviewer, and putting them across as having made such accusation when they did not. Now we got people going around quoting and spreading "the Golden Sample issue" :o

Honestly, if we were to ask Tom (before this 2nd article was out) "So...you are accusing AMD cherry-picking for review sample, and retail cards won't not match the performance of the sample?" I bet Tom would have turned around and said "No! I am not making such an accusation, at least not until I get more information and more analyses done". Tom's made it quite clear (in their futurama meme) "Not sure if super-fast graphic card, or golden sample"...note the not sure.

So basically this whole thing, Andy has put words into Tom's mouth which they did not say :o Ruining Tom's reputation for the sake of bashing AMD.
Click to expand...

I expected nothing less from him to be honest marine.
 
Make said:
Imagine if no-one had reported this issue as a reviewer and it surfaced later "In the wild" after a month. Now that media storm would have been horrible.

Now people are boycotting toms for doing their job; Analyzing cards and their findings with them.
Click to expand...
Yep. Thumbs up for Tom, thumbs down for Andy.
 
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