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*** AMD Radeon R9 290 (PRO / NON-X) Benchmarks Thread ***

From TechReport;

I'm also not convinced AMD's cooler is a poor performer and therefore noisy, as some folks seem to think. Remember, it has more heat to remove than any of the coolers on the other cards we tested.
Click to expand...

That's what I've been saying! :D The cores are hot, not rubbish coolers. I think that would put me off attaching one to my loop, it would most likely make my CPU run hotter too by dumping more heat into the loop. I think I'll await the next gen, or get a 780ti in the new year.
 
Very impressive to see the 290, for the sake of 3-6 fps I doubt many will go for the 290x now.

780s need to drop to £300 and below to contend now..... make it so Green !

And hopefully AMDs Mantlehype pulls through big time next month forcing Nvidia to drop prices even more !
 
R3X said:
Very impressive to see the 290, for the sake of 3-6 fps I doubt many will go for the 290x now.

780s need to drop to £300 and below to contend now..... make it so Green !

And hopefully AMDs Mantlehype pulls through big time next month forcing Nvidia to drop prices even more !
Click to expand...

Nearly 50x GTX 780's sold today at OcUK, sales pretty un-affected, NVIDIA don't need to move and they certainly won't move, not until next year now.
 
R3X said:
Very impressive to see the 290, for the sake of 3-6 fps I doubt many will go for the 290x now.

780s need to drop to £300 and below to contend now..... make it so Green !

And hopefully AMDs Mantlehype pulls through big time next month forcing Nvidia to drop prices even more !
Click to expand...

Exciting times, for sure. I only wish my own need to upgrade wasn't so dire, can't even play modded Skyrim since I'm still stuck on GTX 570. The waiting is almost unbearable!
 
LtMatt said:
Fair point but im not sure if disabling ULPS will stop a 290 from throttling. All ULPS does is turn off any 2nd/3rd/4th gpu when in 2d mode. It turns the gpu off completely, 0% fan speed and 0% power draw.
Click to expand...

Is there a quick way to do this in CCC as doing it in the registry for 3 or more cards is a pain with about 40 entries.
 
R3X said:
780s need to drop to £300 and below to contend now..... make it so Green !
Click to expand...

The cheapest 780 is currently £390, the cheapest 290 is £320 but that's a special launch day offer, tomorrow the cheapest will be £325. That's still a £65 difference obviously but that £65 buys you a lot less noise, less heat* and ever so slightly better out of box performance.

All in all the price difference is akin to the 7970/680 one and this time round the are more reasons to go green than the were before, so I doubt Nvidia are going to budge on price any further.

*Though at this time of year heat could be considered a bonus lol.
 
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290 question.

All these reviews suggest it has a high idle power.... I read that the 290x literally switches off and uses 2watts when idle ?

So the 290 normal one does not do this ?
 
I think you mean the 'second' GPU switches off and uses something like that. The 290 would as well.

As a primary GPU they would both use more than that, but they should be the same, 290 or 290X.

I think they can use about that much in sleep state, but again should be the same for 290 and 290X.

Under load the 290 does use a bit more power though than the "Normal' BIOS setting of the 290X and not as much as the 'Uber' BIOS setting of the 290X. The 290 BIOS (or driver tweak) is some where inbetween the Normal and Uber BIOS' of the 290X.

Reason being AMD, through the driver, juiced up the 290's performance a bit from what it was originally supposed to be.

The 290 has two BIOS's on it like the 290X, but they are the same BIOS on either position, unlike the Normal and Uber BIOS' of the 290X.
 
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It could be that, really nagging me now cos I only read it days ago when all the 290x reviews and info and cant find that part again !

Clearly mentioned somewhere the 290x when doing nothing literally switches itself off and consumes 2-3watts of power.

No explanation of anything.... I just thought this is perfect rather then having a power hungry card eat electricity....
 
They've got a stunning selections of cards available right now but the coolers have got to be destroying their sales...

Who wan'ts a noisy card that runs at 95C no matter how fast it is and cheap it is!

Here's hoping for some decent aftermarket coolers soon. Christ they should have made them a priority knowing how bad their stock cooler is.
 
Well looking at these results I am glad a didn't get a 290x the performance difference isn't worth the extra cost in my view I have ordered a 290 and seeing as I am slapping a waterblock on the sucker I should be able to get a bit more out of it anyhow ;)
 
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