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

LtMatt · 24 Oct 2013 at 11:12

flopper said:
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.

Be interesting to see how it compares in games. I reckon the 290X might fall a bit further behind in games vs my stock 7950 crossfire setup but it will be interesting to compare.

SS-89 · 24 Oct 2013 at 11:12

LtMatt said:
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.

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.

Because you directly quoted my comment regarding the performance of 780 and posted a non-relevant lower score of a titan, fair enough if you were just doing it to placate your own interest but as a response to my comment it made no sense?

I'm not looking for an argument at all but everything you write points to a serious bias towards AMD cards. It's a great card but maybe take of the red tinted goggles for a second and accept that the card is not devoid of fault. It's hot, power hungry and without any non-reference coolers at release. Great performance but for the majority of people who want to get the best performance out of the card they'll either need a waterblock or have to wait 1-2 months for non-ref cards.

61DB at load in uber mode (which based on most reviews is needed to sustain 1000mhz clock speeds) is unacceptable.

flopper · 24 Oct 2013 at 11:13

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.

yea, temp wont matter if the air is blown out of the case.
good for me as we soon have winter here.
still watercooling is on the list once a card make its into my machine.

Boomstick777 · 24 Oct 2013 at 11:14

Pray Nvidia go easy with the GTX 780ti, the only advantage AMD have right now is raw performance at the expense of power use / heat / temps / awful looking cooler.

When Nvidia launch the 780ti it will reclaim the crown. What will AMD have then? Mantle...

Time to get the fixer..

SS-89 · 24 Oct 2013 at 11:14

flopper said:
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.

It's astoundingly impressive price/performance overclocked 1200/1600 yes I agree.

However, it is not astoundingly impressive performance as 780's have been getting similar or better performance overclocked for months.

SS-89 · 24 Oct 2013 at 11:16

Boomstick777 said:
Pray Nvidia go easy with the GTX 780ti, the only advantage AMD have right now is raw performance at the expense of power use / heat / temps / awful looking cooler.

When Nvidia launch the 780ti it will reclaim the crown. What will AMD have then? Mantle...

Time to get the fixer..

Now you sound like an Nvidiia Fanboy!

teppic · 24 Oct 2013 at 11:16

Boomstick777 said:
Pray Nvidia go easy with the GTX 780ti, the only advantage AMD have right now is raw performance at the expense of power use / heat / temps / awful looking cooler.

When Nvidia launch the 780ti it will reclaim the crown. What will AMD have then? Mantle...

Time to get the fixer..

Or the 290X will get aftermarket coolers that remove the problems with the reference cooler (which nobody expects to be very good). All you're repeatedly saying really is that you don't like the reference cooler performance.

Scougar · 24 Oct 2013 at 11:17

Boomstick777 said:
Pray Nvidia go easy with the GTX 780ti, the only advantage AMD have right now is raw performance at the expense of power use / heat / temps / awful looking cooler.

When Nvidia launch the 780ti it will reclaim the crown. What will AMD have then? Mantle...

Time to get the fixer..

What will they have? Lower price.

Marine-RX179 · 24 Oct 2013 at 11:17

SS-89 said:
It's astoundingly impressive price/performance overclocked 1200/1600 yes I agree.

However, it is not astoundingly impressive performance as 780's have been getting similar or better performance overclocked for months.

Yea but £550-£650 pricing is out of the "affordable" and "willing to pay" range for most people, so the term "available for months" means very little for most people.

And you are forgetting the fact that the 290x is already faster than the GTX780 on launch driver...

flopper · 24 Oct 2013 at 11:18

SS-89 said:
Great performance but for the majority of people who want to get the best performance out of the card they'll either need a waterblock or have to wait 1-2 months for non-ref cards.

61DB at load in uber mode (which based on most reviews is needed to sustain 1000mhz clock speeds) is unacceptable.

heat no issue for me to decide to buy or not, power? none again.
could it been better, sure but when you beat the competition at stock you dont need overclocking.

any overclocking fan will do custom set up anyhow, I do watercooling others do other solutions.

Overclocking btw isnt included when a company sells a card.
just beacuse people do it wont mean the company needs to support it for you.

LtMatt · 24 Oct 2013 at 11:20

SS-89 said:
Because you directly quoted my comment regarding the performance of 780 and posted a non-relevant lower score of a titan, fair enough if you were just doing it to placate your own interest but as a response to my comment it made no sense?

I'm not looking for an argument at all but everything you write points to a serious bias towards AMD cards. It's a great card but maybe take of the red tinted goggles for a second and accept that the card is not devoid of fault. It's hot, power hungry and without any non-reference coolers at release. Great performance but for the majority of people who want to get the best performance out of the card they'll either need a waterblock or have to wait 1-2 months for non-ref cards.

61DB at load in uber mode (which based on most reviews is needed to sustain 1000mhz clock speeds) is unacceptable.

I didn't even mean to quote you, which ive now gone back and removed. Must have quoted you on +quote by accident.

I never said the card is not devoid of fault. I've had plenty of AMD cards so know how hot they run and how loud they can be. Reference or otherwise, it doesn't bother me. I'll just enjoy the price vs performance of it. I had a 7970 reference for a long time and that thing was just as hot and loud as a 290X, only that didn't have a quiet mode. On quiet mode the 290X is running at 85-90c. I'd just put the fan up like i did with my reference 7970 to keep temps lower. I have excellent airflow in my case so id expect even lower temps. I'd likely change the paste as well to drop temps further. Then further down the line id stick an accelero on there and keep temps around 60c overclocked.

So as much as you like to point out faults, ill point out the other side of things as i see it.

SS-89 · 24 Oct 2013 at 11:20

Marine-RX179 said:
Yea but £550-£650 pricing is out of the "affordable" and "willing to pay" range for most people, so the term "available for months" means very little for most people.

And you are forgetting the fact that the 290x is already faster than the GTX780 on launch driver...

I paid less than £500 after selling off games etc. Others have got them for <£480 so no I don't quite agree.

Launch drivers, maybe? but the 780 hasn't improved massively since launch maybe 5-7% on average.

flopper · 24 Oct 2013 at 11:20

Scougar said:
What will they have? Lower price.

Problem for Nvidia is that they dont have anything to save them from Mantle.
not sure how long before they can do a similiar solution but they will have issues and so will Intel once Mantle change the IPC race.

Noxia · 24 Oct 2013 at 11:20

Here in lies the 'issue', noise is one of the biggest factors for me so I'm out straight away. People have to accept that others do not share the same views on these things.

Plenty of 780 around the £470 mark.

ihatelag · 24 Oct 2013 at 11:23

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.

Just for info:
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/10/23/amd_radeon_r9_290x_video_card_review/16#.Umj0dKyUabo

R9 290X vs. GTX 780

The new AMD Radeon R9 290X slightly overpowers the GeForce GTX 780 in performance. We found that in every game we played the performance was always higher than the GeForce GTX 780. We are dealing with small margins though, as the GTX 780 and TITAN's difference are only 10-15% apart at best anyway. This means the Radeon R9 290X sits in-between the GTX 780 and GTX TITAN on performance a lot of the time (except at 4K). But most of the time it is closer to the TITAN in performance, than it was the GTX 780
The R9 290X is more than price competitive with the GTX 780. In fact, the R9 290X is ~$100 less than the GTX 780. The 290X is a better value than the GTX 780.

flopper · 24 Oct 2013 at 11:24

LtMatt said:
ill point out the other side of things.

there is only one side its red hot chili style.

Lot of cons sure,
faster
hot
red
sexy
loud fan if you OC
but when have any mistress been perfect?

Boomstick777 · 24 Oct 2013 at 11:24

teppic said:
Or the 290X will get aftermarket coolers that remove the problems with the reference cooler (which nobody expects to be very good). All you're repeatedly saying really is that you don't like the reference cooler performance.

Yeah the reference card is the one to avoid unless you use LN2 for cooling

The non reference cards could be amazing, look forward to seeing what Gigabyte come up with.

Scougar said:
What will they have? Lower price.

I'm sure which camp you're referring to, but I bought my GTX 780 for £450 all those months ago at launch. If Nvidia drop the price to £400, AMD will be in trouble getting their RRP.

Marine-RX179 · 24 Oct 2013 at 11:25

SS-89 said:
I paid less than £500 after selling off games etc. Others have got them for <£480 so no I don't quite agree.

Launch drivers, maybe? but the 780 hasn't improved massively since launch maybe 5-7% on average.

You sure that was around launch? Don't recall GTX780 had games offers that worth that much back then, nor did it priced that low.

As for driver, I wasn't talking about Nvidia's, I was talking AMD's.

SS-89 · 24 Oct 2013 at 11:26

LtMatt said:
I didn't even mean to quote you, which ive now gone back and removed. Must have quoted you on +quote by accident.

I never said the card is not devoid of fault. I've had plenty of AMD cards so know how hot they run and how loud they can be. Reference or otherwise. It doesn't bother me. I'll just enjoy the price vs performance of it. I had a 7970 reference for a long time and that thing was just as hot and loud as a 290X, on that didn't have a quiet mode. On quiet mode the 290X is running at 85-90c. I'd just put the fan up like i did with my reference 7970 to keep temps lower. I have excellent airflow in my case so id expect even lower temps. I'd likely change the paste as well to drop temps further. Then further down the line id stick an accelero on there and keep temps around 60c overclocked.

So as much as you like to point out faults, ill point out the other side of things as i see it.

No I agree it's a fantastic card! If I still had my 7950 I would either be snapping one up and considering watercooling or I would be patiently (read struggling) to wait for non-reference designs.

At the moment if people are looking to buy no contest I'd get a 290X in a heartbeat, however if the non-reference 780's drop to £450 then I think the choice isn't anywhere near as clear cut and I would be inclined to lean the other way until non-ref 290x's come out.

ihatelag said:
Just for info:
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/10/23/amd_radeon_r9_290x_video_card_review/16#.Umj0dKyUabo

Irrelevant my points in that thread were regarding OC vs OC.

RanxZy · 24 Oct 2013 at 11:27

Boomstick777 said:
Pray Nvidia go easy with the GTX 780ti, the only advantage AMD have right now is raw performance at the expense of power use / heat / temps / awful looking cooler.

When Nvidia launch the 780ti it will reclaim the crown. What will AMD have then? Mantle...

Time to get the fixer..

290X is great for competition though but this is AMD's last ditch effort on 28nm so they will have to sit on their hands for what NVIDIA bring. They do love to steal AMD's thunder.

I think the 290 depending on price will make NVIDIA a little bit uncomfortable though as it's going to seriously muddy the waters on the price to performance where the 770 lies. The Titan is already obsolete at $1000 and the 780Ti will compound that.