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

[Kaapstad]

All boards should perform similarly to the AMD-issued samples seen in reviews. Period.

You guarantee everyone should be able to hit 95c on their cards.

 

[vUNREALv]

Sounds more like a quick fix driver, not a main release.
Shame they can't do a quick fix driver to fix the cooler they went & put on the cards. Surely they should have known to update the cooler from the 7970 one

Have any of you guys ever had a reference 480? I think everyone should own atleast one in their lifetime then anything that comes out will be far less likely to surprise you with its heat and noise!

They should have gone with something better for the stock cooler but for me it doesn't matter, just spend £50 on a nice aftermarket cooler have a day fitting it and tweaking jobs a goodun.

 

[Kaapstad]

Have any of you guys ever had a reference 480? I think everyone should own atleast one in their lifetime then anything that comes out will be far less likely to surprise you with its heat and noise!

My HD 5970s in CF can match the GTX 480s for temps.

The funny part about it is I never worry about what they are doing temps wise and they are still going strong.

 

[no_1_dave]

Have any of you guys ever had a reference 480? I think everyone should own atleast one in their lifetime then anything that comes out will be far less likely to surprise you with its heat and noise!

They should have gone with something better for the stock cooler but for me it doesn't matter, just spend £50 on a nice aftermarket cooler have a day fitting it and tweaking jobs a goodun.

I had 2 470s in SLI
That's why I started water cooling

Unfortunately it means people who want a top of the range card because they like games but don't know anything about computers can't be recommended a 290. I've fixed PCs for people who love playing games at max settings, but they also have massive dust build up inside their case because they're too scared to open it up. Would you recommend a 290 to one of them?

 

[Mei]

its really a nonsense story
most the press samples i saw reviewed didnt overclock at all
or maybe the reviewers didnt know how to overclock at all

and whats the deal with that, where are the reviewers that know what they are talking about, not people that just like unboxing pretty things, rubbing their ego n twitter and talking about their dog for an hour

i dont care how many followers they have, stop giving them cards!

 

[humbug]

I'll chip in with official word on this.

Two outlets in hundreds sampled have uniquely reported instances of AMD Radeon R9 290(X) boards purchased in retail that have exhibited an uncharacteristic level of performance variance as compared to press samples issued by AMD. As retail products purchased by almost every other outlet (e.g. Sweclockers) do not demonstrate this phenomenon, we’re working to secure the aberrant board(s) in question for further analysis. In the meantime, we’ve identified areas where variability can be minimized and are working on a driver update which will minimize this variance.

We will be releasing that driver in the next 24 hours to fully correct this behavior by normalizing fan RPMs vs. PWM control. The 290X in Quiet mode should be at 2200RPM, and the 290 should be at 2650RPM. If anyone is seeing fan speeds below that, they are affected by this issue, and the driver will resolve the issue in 24 hours.

//EDIT: All boards should perform similarly to the AMD-issued samples seen in reviews. Period.

Any other improvements? it would be nice to get another 12.11 sort of performance boost

The GTX 780TI needs a response.

 

[Jakus]

Personally I think the whole "boost" situation is totally messed up, I liked it when we had a simple "this card runs at #MHz" then Nvidia started doing "This card is clocked at #MHz but will run faster depending on cooling" and now we have AMD saying "This card will do up to #MHz depending on cooling". They could have at least gone for similar methods so not to confuse the consumer...

Agreed, boost is annoying, just give us a core speed and let the users do the overclocking.

The whole situation is a little more complex because regardless of the core speed/temp the power draw is monitored/limited and as we know for many reasons cards do not run at 100% utilization all the time.

But totally agree re boost clocks, they are really deception as when you need the extra processing speed you may have already maxed out the permitted power, but at lesser load on the power circuit or GPU the clocks will wind up just freewheeling !

 

[LtMatt]

The GTX 780TI needs a response.

No it doesn't. AMD said the Hawaii card targets the 780. The 7990 is aimed at the 780TI. AMD normally target the Ultra enthusiast segment (their words not mine) with a dual gpu and i can't see this being any different. A 7990 will still beat a 780TI for a fraction of the price.

 

[no_1_dave]

No it doesn't. AMD said the Hawaii card targets the 780. The 7990 is aimed at the 780TI. AMD normally target the Ultra enthusiast segment (their words not mine) with a dual gpu and i can't see this being any different. A 7990 will still beat a 780TI for a fraction of the price.

A fraction of the price with an extra sprinkling of occasional xfire compatibility issues meaning sometimes you might be only getting a fraction of the performance

 

[humbug]

That ^^^

No it doesn't. AMD said the Hawaii card targets the 780. The 7990 is aimed at the 780TI. AMD normally target the Ultra enthusiast segment (their words not mine) with a dual gpu and i can't see this being any different. A 7990 will still beat a 780TI for a fraction of the price.

Sheee.... i would quite like to see an R10 Zeus

 

[MrMoonX]

My retail 290x was throttling at stock so I DSR'd it, it's not fit for purpose

 

[LtMatt]

A fraction of the price with an extra sprinkling of occasional xfire compatibility issues meaning sometimes you might be only getting a fraction of the performance

True. Rare to find a decent game these days that doesn't work with crossfire though. If they don't its usually (but not always) a good sign its a terrible game.

My point here is though, AMD won't respond (in my opinion) to the 780TI as they never produce a big gpu to compete. Instead favouring a dual gpu card on a single pcb. The 290X is vs the 780 and the 290, although faster than the 780 is vs the 770 based on pricing.

AMD already on record (i can dig up the quote/link if required) as saying they're not targeting the titan with the Hawaii card (290X) only the 780. The titan/780TI is faced off vs their dual gpu on one pcb.

 

[Gregster]

So we have:

280X Vs 770
290 Vs 780
290X Vs Titan
7990 Vs 780Ti

Something seems wrong with that picture

 

[mmj_uk]

People do not seem to grasp the seriousness of even a single situation occuring (Toms that is) whereby a review 290 outperforms a retail 290X, if it's happened once then it obviously means that sufficient quality control is not in place.

Okay, lets say that AMD are NOT cherry picking GPU's for reviewers (doubtful but anyway) and AMD are handing reviewers perfectly average GPU's, the problem is that many BELOW AVERAGE GPU's exist and will be sold into retail (these will run hotter and require more cooling at any given speed). In the past this just meant that those unlucky enough to have bought the below average GPU's did not see the card boosting as much, but at least got the guaranteed minimum base clock at all times.

With 290/290X AMD ARE NOT GUARANTEEING ANY BASE CLOCK which means that people who buy the below average 290X could find their card underclocking itself anywhere from 0-300mhz, this could lead to many more situations where a stock 290 outperforms a 290X (in silent mode that is) and people would not be getting the performance as seen in reviews.

So in essence, the only way to guarantee that you are getting the performance you have paid for is to use uber mode/custom fan profile and ensure the card is not hitting the temperature limit and throttling. Otherwise, those paying £450 for a 290X could if unlucky be getting the same (or less) performance as someone who purchased a 290 for £300 when running in silent mode, which is exactly what Toms experienced.

 

[LtMatt]

So we have:

280X Vs 770
290 Vs 780
290X Vs Titan
7990 Vs 780Ti

Something seems wrong with that picture

Like it or lump it Greg thats how it is. If you don't like it just blank out the 7990. That's how AMD target it though and have done since the 2900XT.

 

[Lokken86]

So when are we going to see 3rd party coolers like lightning ed. etc?

 

[Gregster]

Like it or lump it Greg thats how it is. If you don't like it just blank out the 7990. That's how AMD target it though and have done since the 2900XT.

I don't care but it is the way AMD fans see it and not the way the world see's it. The 7990 Vs the 690 would be fair but hey, whatever allows people to say they have the fastest is cool with me.

7990 Vs the 780Ti it is then

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

People have very short memories indeed,and forget about the Nvidia non-deterministic boosting and the issues that multiple websites listed.

If they are so panicked about an AMD card doing it,then they should have stuck with the HD6000 or GTX500 series.

Multiple Nvidia cards with reference coolers had problems in reviews.

Either get a third party cooler or get non-reference cards.

Nvidia cards use non-deterministic boots,which had a minimum limit of boost frequency and no upper limit in practice. Looking at the last three generations of AMD GPU boost(it was first done on their IGPs),it has a defined upper limit. I actually was talking with one of the staff on Hexus about this last year as it was quite interesting.

People really need to look at the articles from Hardware Canucks,hardware.fr,pcgameshardware and other websites,where they showed the GTX660TI,GTX760 and Geforce Titan having throttling issues with the stock cooling,especially after longer runs,where there were clockspeed drops over time.

This lead to many websites,making pre-warming runs before testing current cards,so they would heat up and is also why some websites attempted to lock the clockspeed at fixed values.

Edit!!

Here are some of the articles:
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...roundup-asus-evga-gigabyte-galaxy-msi-21.html
http://translate.googleusercontent....s.html&usg=ALkJrhj8G8JD8-Rfoq7gPcX-0XdORhBOyQ
http://translate.google.com/transla...97980/Tests/Test-Geforce-GTX-Titan-1056659/4/
http://translate.google.es/translat...013/nvidia_geforce_gtx_760_im_test/index8.php

Some of the drops over time are quite large.

This brings whole exercise could bring up some worrying points about benchmarking NVIDIA’s Kepler-based cards in reviews (and charts) where every single FPS counts. Sites benchmarking with a single run or shorter sequences will likely achieve the “best” results rather than realistic performance. Luckily, we have been able to avoid this issue by using four run-throughs of every benchmark, each with somewhat long testing times. We’ll have a full article looking at GeForce Boost and AMD’s equivalent in the coming weeks but for the time being, this is certainly food for thought.

As mentioned in the introduction, with Anno 2070 as extreme an example, the GeForce GTX Titan is able to reach its maximum turbo frequency as the GPU does not reach 80 ° C. And it reaches this temperature in all games we tested on a bench bench, with and without additional cooling around the map. If we measure the performance of a traditional way, we would get results more pupils and non-representative of the playing conditions in all our tests.

We had to take the time to observe in detail the behavior of the GTX Titan in each game and on each resolution to make sure we do performance measures in representative conditions.

Here are two examples with Anno 2070 and Battlefield 3 with a rapid test, a test temperature stabilized after 5 minutes and the same test as the latter but with two 120mm fans positioned around the map:

Anno 2070: 75 fps -> 63 fps -> 68 fps
Battlefield 3: 115 fps -> 107 fps -> 114 fps

The drop in performance once the temperature reaches cruising can be considerable. An efficient cooling may partially offset this decline, but are there not a contradiction in having to add noise to compensate for a graphics card is trying to remain discreet at all costs?

It also raises the issue of reliability of performance comparisons that you can read here and there, since this may be the big difference based on test conditions (ventilation card but wait or not temperature rise of the GPU for measurements) between extreme cases the gain is 19% in Anno 2070 and 7.5% in Battlefield 3!

Here are the frequencies that we obtained in practice for two selected scenarios: limited to 889 MHz without additional / card capable of up to 1006 MHz with additional cooling cooling card. 3DMark is only able to maintain the maximum frequency due to loading time between scenes that allow the GPU never have time to reach 80 ° C.

It is worth emphasizing that a typical benchmark behavior, immediately after starting the game in all situations almost always has a GPU clock speed of 1137 MHz result. After 15 minutes in a static scene is an entirely different value is emerging, which is on average only in the range of about 1000 MHz and this at 21 ° C room temperature. Thus we see an agent that acts still below the NVIDIA naming of 1032 MHz.

The speed of the fan behavior is interpreted here in a maximum noise level of about 2190 revolutions per minute. After that, then usually provide a further clock reductions, which are also observed in the course of the game that way. The regular course can cause a very different behavior than a static benchmark scene, as used in the present case. The example we have here demonstrated.

In summary, we have the GeForce GTX Titanium why shooed in four settings through our course to cover every possible scenario useful:

• Standard method with artificially limited-on the Nvidia "guaranteed" Boost clock rate of 876 MHz. Similarly, we handle it since the GTX 670 These values ​​are also the basis of our tests represent ("@ 876 MHz")
• Free boost development on our open test stand with enough cooler air ('dyn. Boost ")
• Individually applied to the minimum clock rate at 28 ° C inlet air is warm, and after 30 minutes of warm-up phase at constant load in-game map set. This corresponds to the housing operation in summer temperatures ("28 ° C")

And last but not least, we use the OC potential of the map something out, by increasing the offset clock to 100 MHz via EVGA Precision, the Power Target to 105 percent and the target temperature is raised to 85 ° C - all relatively safe levels .

 

[LtMatt]

290 Vs 770
290X Vs 780
7990 Vs Titan/780Ti

Sorry Greg, just realised you had it wrong. This is how its supposed to be.

 

[Gregster]

Sorry Greg, just realised you had it wrong. This is how its supposed to be.

No probs and thanks for the correction.