Soldato
If the 780ti comes in at £30-50 above the 290X I'll eat my hat.
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AMD Radeon R9 290X with Hawaii GPU pictured, has 512-bit 4GB Memory
- Thread starter LtMatt
- Start date
I recall coming across data on that a while ago and it quite a significant effect. I suspect it's significant enough that the 290X would easily provide Titan perf at Titan power if they could keep temps lower which is hindered by the die transistor density and smaller surface area.
The way I see it is it's the last cpl of dozen wattage requirements to push performance consistently above the Titan/780 for release reviews that spoil (relative to what it would be) power efficiency due to those diminishing returns (prbably quite minimal returns for significant power usage). In that respect they have pushed the Hawaii core hard and beyond an optimal balance.
But I do want to say, the reason it's beyond and optimal balance and a hot chip is not necessarily because the arch/core is being pushed near its absolute limits (the typical power demands for small clock increases prior to failure to force switching speeds that bit faster that we are familiar with and we'll only really find out that point for Hawaii over the next months) to beat nvidia, but they pushed the practicality of heat transfer to the limit in deciding to make such a compact active die per mm2 that brings that scenario further down the arch's scale of clocks; and it's nipping them in the bud a little in this products case - but not their wallet due to die cost savings. Wall of text but I feel that is an important distinction to make from a technical perspective but perhaps not for the end user.
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Soldato
I cracked up when the guy comes with the fire extinguisher
TBH AMD brought his on themselves, Nvidia and fermi had it just as bad.
Haha, thought that video was worth posting in both threads, did make me chuckle. Even 290X owners are saying it's to hot. I had two GTX 480's, I know what it's like lol. Once the 290X is under water, I bet it'll be a monster. I'm very interested in non ref cards.
As said before, amd cards loading at 90c+ is nothing new really, my 2 cards currently load around 92c, same as my 4870x2 did long before them, and the x1900's before that. Not really sure why all the "shock horror" if its been that way for quite a while now. 
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As said before, amd cards loading at 90c+ is nothing new really, my 2 cards currently load around 92c, same as my 4870x2 did long before them, and the x1900's before that. Not really sure why all the "shock horror" if its been that way for quite a while now.
I am more put off by the crappy performance. Sure, it beats the 7970 by 25%-30% but an O/C'd 7970 beats a 7970 by about 25% also, yet according to reviews I have read the R9 290X dont overclock worth a shiet.....
A card to miss I would say.
Those numbers are off. The 30% gain is over a ghz edition 7970 and noway in somewhere downstairs hot enviroment are you going to put another 25% performance on top of that just by OCing it. All this is vs a stock 290x and 1080p. The game changes completely the second you give it a proper cooler, proper oc(which it can) and a proper res, 1440p or 1600p.
Soldato
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- 7 Aug 2012
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Another 25% on a ghz 7970 would give it a 1250mhz clock - clocks that many (if not the majority) of 7970's are capable of reaching there or thereabouts.
I'm not saying 25% higher clocks is going to translate to 25% performance gain in games, but certainly in my experience with benchmarking it wouldn't be far off.
Apologies if I have picked you up wrong.
But for those not really wanting to dick around with H2O cooling at the expensive of an extra hundred quid or three, by the time all is said and done, the R9 290X offers about 10% better performance than the HD7970.
All the reviews of the HD7970 stated that it was a monster overclocker which is something I have found true to form without the need for 3rd party cooling and with chunky performance increases to match. Similar situation to the GTX 680 'trumping' the HD7970, where 7970 owners knew that taking overclock performance of both cards into consideration, that the HD7970 was still the more powerful card. Indeed, this is the whole reason for the HD7970 Ghz edition in the first place, allowing AMD to steal back the performance crown with the same card which was a fantastic overclocker and/or simply released underclocked to begin with. R9 290X on the otherhand is said to be crappy overclocker, which is something I would also tend to believe.
It may be overall 'a better card' than the HD7970 and a very slightly faster card than the less power hungry GTX 780, but for anyone one with either of those already in their machine (gaming at 1080p or less may I add), it just isn't that fantastic an upgrade for anyone even the slightest bit resistant to pi$$ing cash up against the wall just for the sakes of it.
When the HD7970 hit, it was a great single GPU upgrade for anyone using any other single GPU system. The R9 290X just isn't all that.
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Caporegime
The R9 290X will be a lot better once it gets a 3'rd party cooler from board partners, as it is it is still much faster than the 7970 GE, its faster stock for stock than the GTX Titan, despite the crappy cooler.
Lets get a few things straight.
1)The 290x is comming out the gate OCed, note the boost clock of up to 1000mhz
2) The stock clock on the 290x is 800 mhz
3) You cannot point at a reference cooled card and say that its terrible at overclocking and then compare it to cards with aftermarket cooling on.
4) I think it was rjkoneill in the promotion of the Prolimatech MK-26 Multi-VGA Cooler that showed what a difference aftermarket cooling does. 55 Degrees load is not bad at all @ stock.
5) Gibbo did a 1225mhz OC on the 290x using reference cooler model.. thats bloody 50% OC over stock speeds and nowhere should that be counted as "bad".
To sum up, at 1080p we are looking at around 40-50% faster than a 280x(which is a glorified 7970). Ofcourse you can OC the 280x(7970) as well to close the gap a bit but you will still see roughly 30% performance difference between the the 2. May not sound like much but if the difference is 45 fps vs 60 i know im going with the later. This is all at 1080p, a resolution where it doesnt really stretch it legs. 1440p, 1600p or even 3 monitor setups is where this card really starts to shine.
All this is based on release drivers vs drivers for the 7970 that have had a long time to mature. The X factors in this equation is True Audio and Mantle. We dont know if Mantle will raise the performance equally across 7000 series and 2xx series cards(most likely but we dont know yet), and we dont know how much of an impact true audio is going to have either on the performance by taking the load of the CPU(in games that support it, but likely not that much unless you are heavily bottlenecked already).
Please dont take this as a "if you got a 7970 you should upgrade to 290x" post cause that is not what this post is about. But i think ive proven that the 290x is not a bad clocker by itself on a reference cooler design, but there is always those who are unlucky due to the silicon lottery. Just imagen what this beast can due once the thermal limitations set by the reference cooler is gone.
Caporegime
I'm guessing AMD's logic was:
Early adopters are likely to be enthusiasts with water cooling set ups, so lets cut costs on the reference cooler to smash Nvidia on price and grab headlines. Then release the more expensive 3rd party ones for other customers later on.
Early adopters are likely to be enthusiasts with water cooling set ups, so lets cut costs on the reference cooler to smash Nvidia on price and grab headlines. Then release the more expensive 3rd party ones for other customers later on.
Something along those lines i would think. It would also give them room to battle the 780ti with some aftermarket cooled preoverclocked 290x.. But i also thing its about getting as much money in their pockets right now. I would think that AMD is getting a slightly bigger bite of the cake vs in 3 month with the aftermarket cooled cards which is most likely going to cost roughly the same.
Caporegime
Seeing some early bench results in the 3DMark threads, it does look like these cards will be the faster or possibly equal to Titans/780's however, on saying that, they do look like they need water to do that and a fair chunk of voltage but custom cards could be the telling point. I can see a binned chip on a Lightning under water beating out a Titan with little effort.
For the consumers, this is great news and AMD fans have a top top card at a fair price and the Nvidia fans have a top top card at a fair price, so win win for the consumer.
For the consumers, this is great news and AMD fans have a top top card at a fair price and the Nvidia fans have a top top card at a fair price, so win win for the consumer.
Caporegime
Might take another look at it then but as things stand just now (crappy reference coolers n all):
after O/C's are applied, it is ~10% faster than a card that costs half the price, no ifs nor buts about it.
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Custom Radeon R9 290X available in late November
http://videocardz.com/47269/custom-radeon-r9-290x-available-late-november
Awesome news
Sweet, looking forward to these.
eh?
Sorry m8 but i do not know where you get these numbers from? it is a lot faster than 10% even after OC is applied.