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AMD Radeon R9 290X with Hawaii GPU pictured, has 512-bit 4GB Memory

Boomstick777 said:
^^ Not sure Titan is ridiculed tbh, it still has that massive vram, along with running cool and quiet, using a bit less power. The 290X is a great GPU but it does sacrifice heat / temps / noise to get their. That can't just be ignored. Anyone who got a 780 at sub £500 needn't feel to bad either, all that performance for months ahead of AMD's cards and the 780 can be clocked to match the 290X when overclocked. When both cards are clocked to their max, performance difference is negligible.
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Also, given the fact that the Titan has been out for 8 months.
 
With all the comments about 'Titan-ic' and 'Titan Killer' etc, didn't Nvidia essentially do that for themselves already with the 780?

A nice card release from AMD. For the first time in a long time, I'm excited about graphics cards again :-) It's likely after a couple of driver releases it will be on par with a 780.

Sometimes I wonder what happens to you guys when it comes to things like this, you seem to be drawing handbags at dawn when really you just need to look subjectively at it, and discuss it. Things like "limited overclocking" etc, means you just didn't bother to read properly or haven't had the time to catch up. When you get corrected, take it on the chin and thank the person for pointing it out.

Personally... I know what I'm aiming for now when I get my new machine :-)

Note: Heat.... personally I thought the AMD stock coolers were always badly designed and it's one area they could really improve.
 
Drizmod said:
I don't get it. Why are the reference coolers so rubbish? Why don't they copy a little from after market coolers? Surely these reviews with 95 degrees temps will hurt sales?
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It's not really just the cooler, they have pushed the core too hard to match Nvidia, they just seem incompetent to me.
 
LtMatt said:
There's only one review what shows that, Linus. No doubt using voltage control on a 780 vs a voltage locked 290. ;)
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Um.. Not sure if serious..

Starting to think that maybe you work for AMD.. Damage control anyone? Lol.

Here's a few examples. There are lot's, lot's more.

(OC3D)


There are a couple of flies in the ointment.

Firstly it looks awful.

The card runs hot at 95°C which heats up the whole of the inside of your case, and that's a problem.

the moment you quit a game the fan drops to 20% despite the card being able to boil water. So it takes ages for it to cool down.

The other note is that the R9 290X is on a par with the GTX780. However the release of the 290X has caused nVidia to announce the GTX780Ti. So the latest Radeon could have a very short stay at the top of the pile.
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(Anandtech)

AMD has had to push quite a bit of power through 290X, and by focusing on price they had to do so without blowing their budget on cooling

the 290X is more power hungry than any comparable high-end card

It’s not so loud as to be intolerable for a single-GPU setup, but it’s as loud as can be called reasonable, never mind preferable.
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(Tom's Hardware)

The Radeon R9 290X’s power consumption at idle is surprisingly high.

This means that the R9 290X consumes more power than two overclocked GeForce GTX 780s in SLI with more than one monitor attached.

We even saw 335 W from the card, though that's probably not at all something you want to reproduce.

We decided to forgo the video demonstrating what a 95% duty cycle sounds like. It’s pointless and potentially bad for your long-term hearing. The noise is simply unbearable without commercial-grade ear protection.

AMD is pushing its Hawaii GPU pretty hard in order to achieve the performance it’s getting. Although the R9 290X is rated for 1000 MHz, the right load will get Hawaii up to its 95 °C limit pretty fast.
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(Bit Tech)

a 12 percent overclock in both cases, which is far from terrible. Under load, the fan peaked at around 50-60 percent to maintain the target temperature, which was definitely noisier than we liked, and that was in an open and very well ventilated chassis.

The card's power draw really isn't a great showing, however, as it has the highest idle and load results of any single GPU card.

The simple truth is that AMD's GCN architecture is less efficient than Nvidia's Kepler one. Not only does our system power draw reach 82W more when using the R9 290X 4GB compared to the GTX 780 3GB, but the card's 426W result is even higher than the GTX 690 4GB, a card that has two GPUs.

The high power draw may also have something to do with the card's high temperature, as these are also the highest we've yet seen.

There are certainly valid concerns to be had about the card's power draw and efficiency, and if this is a top priority for you you'll likely want to look elsewhere.

there's no denying that this is one hot running GPU
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(Tech Spot)

chugs up to 300 watts under load (20% more than the GTX Titan)

When gaming, a Core i7-4770K system armed with the R9 290X can consume up to 351 watts, which is a lot. A lot of that power is converted into heat and as a result, the R9 290X hit 95 degrees under load using AMD's reference cooler. The card was toasty at idle too, never dropping below 44 degrees.

Part of what made the GTX Titan so amazing was its ability to remain cool while handling massive loads. For all its complexity and unrivaled power, the card never exceeded 300 watts or 81 degrees -- and even at that temperature, it wasn't overly noisy

Heat, unfortunately, may be a concern for some. Under load, the R9 290X reference sample was the hottest card we've tested lately at 95 degrees, and it never got below 44 degrees at idle.
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(Tech Power Up)

Actually, non-gaming power consumption is yet again worse and ends up significantly worse than on anything NVIDIA has to offer at this time. I am especially shocked by multi-monitor and Blu-ray power consumption.

Overall, I am disappointed by the acoustic experience the R9 290X provides. AMD should have invested some time into developing a good cooler, like NVIDIA did with the GTX Titan.

AMD's stock cooler is completely overwhelmed with the heat output of the card during voltage tweaking, though. Even at 100%, it could barely keep the card from overheating and was noisier than any cooler I've ever experienced. My neighbors actually complained, asking why I used power tools that late at night

Power draw also increases immensely, going from just above 400 W for the whole system to around 650 W!

Temperatures are quite high. At 94°C, especially its gaming temperatures seem very high, but it seems as though AMD had no other choice since the card had to be kept at somewhat sane noise levels (it's still noisy).

Pure performance is not everything. Nowadays, modern graphics cards are more limited by power, heat, and noise than anything else, and the R9 290X certainly cannot impress here.

We measured typical gaming power consumption in the 240W-250W range, which is a good deal higher than the GTX Titan (210W) or GTX 690 (230W). Non-gaming power consumption is very high, too, and higher than previous products from AMD, far beyond what NVIDIA has to offer. Blu-ray power consumption, for example, is 78W! Comparable NVIDIA cards handle Blu-ray tasks with under 20W.
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ihatelag said:
AMD on temps:

We have designed the 290 Series to operate at a steady state of 95C. By running at 95C, we are both maximizing the performance and minimizing the acoustics of the product. Be assured, that 95C is a perfectly safe temperature at which the GPU can operate for its entire life. There is no technical reason to reduce the target temperature below 95C.
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I find it interesting they have not done this before.

I guess that's the way forward for all of their cards from now on if there is no technical reason. A 280x for example would run quiet as heck on 95c while being powerful.

Or there is something else at work here.
 
ihatelag said:
AMD on temps:

We have designed the 290 Series to operate at a steady state of 95C. By running at 95C, we are both maximizing the performance and minimizing the acoustics of the product. Be assured, that 95C is a perfectly safe temperature at which the GPU can operate for its entire life. There is no technical reason to reduce the target temperature below 95C.
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Lol :D they really are incompetent fools then :D
 
Boomstick777 said:
Um.. Not sure if serious..

Starting to think that maybe you work for AMD.. Damage control anyone? Lol.

Here's a few examples. There are lot's, lot's more.

(OC3D)




(Anandtech)



(Tom's Hardware)



(Bit Tech)



(Tech Spot)



(Tech Power Up)
Click to expand...

What are you trying to prove? The card does not overclock well? None of these reviews had voltage control. Gibbo already got one up to 1200 core with a bit of voltage. Also 12% overclocking without voltage control is pretty good i think. None of those conclusions say a overclocked 780 is faster than a overclocked 290.
 
Boomstick777 said:
Um.. Not sure if serious..

Starting to think that maybe you work for AMD.. Damage control anyone? Lol.

Here's a few examples. There are lot's, lot's more.

(OC3D)




(Anandtech)



(Tom's Hardware)



(Bit Tech)



(Tech Spot)



(Tech Power Up)
Click to expand...

You should see the comments he made regarding the 290x in the gibbo overclocking thread. I mentioned that if/when the 780 got a price drop than it's comparable performance would be equally as impressive (since they score better/similarly when overclocked).

His retort?

He never mentioned the 780 and doesn't care if it gets a price drop, his observation was simply the 290x had impressive performance at 1200/1500 and that it matched 7950 crossfire at stock.

Summed it up perfectly for me.
 
AMD hasn't said that the card needs to run at 95C, rather that it can run at 95C completely safely, and that's what it'll maintain for high performance. Add in an aftermarket cooler and no doubt you can get the same speeds at a lower temp and near silent running if you want to.
 
LtMatt said:
What are you trying to prove? The card does not overclock well? None of these reviews had voltage control. Gibbo already got one up to 1200 core with a bit of voltage. Also 12% overclocking without voltage control is pretty good i think. None of those conclusions say a overclocked 780 is faster than a overclocked 290.
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High stock clocks and temps being the limiting factor on why the 780 is faster when overclocked, i.e the 780 can clock higher at lower temps.

The 290X would be great for an LN2 bencher, I imagine people will break some records, but what about peeps with everyday cases? Who wants a 95c part in their case?

The non reference cards could be awesome, the reference card is to hot / loud for anyone who wants to overclock, unless they plan on ripping that cooler off and putting it under water.

It's like the FX 9590 VS 3930K..

AMD had to clock higher, temps and noise are out of the window just to get a few extra fps. It's not all about raw performance. Kepler is just the better architecture imho.
 
SS-89 said:
You should see the comments he made regarding the 290x in the gibbo overclocking thread. I mentioned that if/when the 780 got a price drop than it's comparable performance would be equally as impressive (since they score better/similarly when overclocked).

His retort?

He never mentioned the 780 and doesn't care if it gets a price drop, his observation was simply the 290x had impressive performance at 1200/1500 and that it matched 7950 crossfire at stock.

Summed it up perfectly for me.
Click to expand...

The comment i made was in the 290X thread, shock horror! I said a 290X scored the same as my 7950 crossfire setup. Then i compared a similar score from a titan. That was it. I don't see a problem there personally.

Why would i mention a 780 and a price drop? I didn't talk about prices anywhere. I never even mentioned the 290X pricing when i was comparing. You've lost me to be honest and it seems as though you're looking for an argument or reading into something that i didn't say.

Boomstick777 said:
The 290X would be great for an LN2 bencher, I imagine people will break some records, but what about peeps with everyday cases? Who wants a 95c part in their case?
Click to expand...

I'd quite happily have a 95c part in my case. I'd just turn the fan up a bit and run it cooler. Easily done. I'd also enjoy titan beating performance at stock for £430. Each to their own and all that.
 
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Boomstick777 said:
High stock clocks and temps being the limiting factor on why the 780 is faster when overclocked, i.e the 780 can clock higher at lower temps.

The 290X would be great for an LN2 bencher, I imagine people will break some records, but what about peeps with everyday cases? Who wants a 95c part in their case?

The non reference cards could be awesome, the reference card is to hot / loud for anyone who wants to overclock, unless they plan on ripping that cooler off and putting it under water.

It's like the FX 9590 VS 3930K..

AMD had to clock higher, temps and noise are out of the window just to get a few extra fps. It's not all about raw performance. Kepler is just the better architecture imho.
Click to expand...

You REALLY need to start reading some of the threads, in particular regarding the overclocking of the 290X.

Also, perhaps as you suggested about LtMatt, that you work for Nvidia and just like to stir the pot? :rolleyes:
 
SS-89 said:
You should see the comments he made regarding the 290x in the gibbo overclocking thread. I mentioned that if/when the 780 got a price drop than it's comparable performance would be equally as impressive (since they score better/similarly when overclocked).

His retort?

He never mentioned the 780 and doesn't care if it gets a price drop, his observation was simply the 290x had impressive performance at 1200/1500 and that it matched 7950 crossfire at stock.

Summed it up perfectly for me.
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it is astoundingly impressive, same 28nm node and a single card manage to match 7950 crossfire. I stated a 290x OC would came close to 7990 performance and that is amazing value.
with mantle and bf4 I dont find any reason why someone would buy a 780/780ti etc..especially if their main gaming is BF4 and other frostbite 3 games no matter if there is pricecuts or not from nvidia.
 
LtMatt said:
I'd quite happily have a 95c part in my case. I'd just turn the fan up a bit and run it cooler. Easily done. I'd also enjoy titan beating performance at stock for £430. Each to their own and all that.
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That's only because you're a die hard AMD fan :p. Who else would want to damage their hearing, or overheat their case..

It's not even Titan beating performance, yeah it's clocked higher at stock but.. Overclock the Titan and it would laugh at the 290X, all while using less power and not upsetting the neighbors with it's noise.

Like you say though, each to their own.
 
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