• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

[H] AMD Radeon R9 290X CrossFire Video Card Review

Kaapstad said:
My point is a 4k monitor is about 32" and a 1600p monitor is 30"

If you are going to run with reduced settings @4k, would it not be better to use 1600p maxed out instead.
Click to expand...

Not sure would need to see a side by side comparison. I'd probably rather have 4k at 60hz and sacrifice a bit of AA than have 1600P with x8AA.
 
ihatelag said:
Putting heat issue aside, the power consumption is high, 140W more than the Nvidia SLI configuration!

Time to get nuclear powered rigs!
Click to expand...

Yea because when you have the money to buy these kind of setup's you are going to be worried about 140w more in power. Power matters little but gpu temp and noise do hence a lot will be watercooling..
 
I hope Nvidia sort out the problem with Metro at 4k it would be interesting to see how it performs when it's fully working.
 
140W per hour, equals to £0.09 for ever 7 1/6 hours you run the cards at 100%.
(except you pay more for your power per kwh, so switch provider).

Even if you burn those cards at 100% for 7 1/6 hours per day over the course of a year (365 days) the cost will be ~£33 .

Compare that to the cost of the Titans, and you need to burn it for 20 years for the costs to even out.
 
I always enjoy the power usage debate because the big headline of "USES 60000W MORE" often equates to pennies per day and less than £50 a year assuming a max possible usage scenario. So in reality the difference in power to your average user often works out way less than £20 electricity per year.

i.e. inconsequential
 
TheRealDeal said:
Yea because when you have the money to buy these kind of setup's you are going to be worried about 140w more in power. Power matters little but gpu temp and noise do hence a lot will be watercooling..
Click to expand...

I've not mentioned money, but I agree with what you are saying, interesting the first thing people think of when someone raises the point of power is cost :).

With the crossfire setup taking 780W under load, many people with PSU's with up to 850W PSU's might need to think about getting a 1000W+ option with these.
 
humbug said:
Nice bit of work with xFire, Performance and Frame Latency, Good to see AMD beating Nvidia at their own game. :)
Click to expand...

Its good amd did step up, competition at high end and mid end just got interesting again.
Personally however I am still surprised amd didnt understand this earlier.
its likely they dont play games themselves. :p

good scaling in those games, might change in other games, support is always needed. good price ratio with the 290 down the line.

Must be a lot of these nowdays then? ;):cool:
10hv960.jpg
 
flopper said:
Its good amd did step up, competition at high end and mid end just got interesting again.
Personally however I am still surprised amd didnt understand this earlier.
its likely they dont play games themselves. :p

good scaling in those games, might change in other games, support is always needed. good price ratio with the 290 down the line.

Must be a lot of these nowdays then? ;):cool:
10hv960.jpg
Click to expand...

Yea AMD stepped up but could have stepped higher. If they had just released a decent reference cooler that could at least have managed to keep the temperature at a 85°c max at a fair noise level, they would have gone wildly more popular. I think AMD have underestimated the psychological perspective of having the card running at 95°c, even though they claim it doesn't to any damage. There's still a lot of people aren't at easy with the fact (thought) of having something in their machinery almost as hot as boiling water !
Frankly after seeing the crossfire results I could very well have gone with the intial idea of snatching two for crossfire, but the temperatures worry me ! The exhaust heat is extremely hot and can give burns ! that's quite worrying if you have the PC with it's back to a wall - could this heat set something on fire ? what if my cat takes a walk behind the PC in fill load ? will the cat suddenly burn away all 9 lives in an instant and catch fire.

I see AMD engineers making high five's and squeezing their nuts at the same time ! it's sooo good but it also hurts a bit !

AMD could easily have made a hands down winner in all aspects .:o
 
Last edited:
Is this smoothness down to the new bridgeless xfire? Or just architecture?

Also, nice to see AMD winning the smoothness war after all the green boiz taking pot shots at them endlessly about xfire vs sli. :cool:
 
Orangey said:
Is this smoothness down to the new bridgeless xfire? Or just architecture?

Also, nice to see AMD winning the smoothness war after all the green boiz taking pot shots at them endlessly about xfire vs sli. :cool:
Click to expand...

They aren't winning any smoothness war, the numbers from both sides are that low now the difference isn't even perceivable.

GG trying to start AMD vs nvidia flaming I guess though.
 
Suarez7 said:
They aren't winning any smoothness war, the numbers from both sides are that low now the difference isn't even perceivable.
Click to expand...

HardOCP sure perceived it.

From the Article
"A very important note to make, while the performance shown there shows the framerate, it does not relate the smoothness and feel of the game. In this, AMD Radeon R9 290X CrossFire was a lot smoother in Far Cry 3. We found that with both TITAN SLI and 780 SLI there was an extreme choppiness and stutter to the game. Whereas, with R9 290X CrossFire, it was a smoother experience. So far, in each game, a pattern is forming favoring CrossFire for smoothness on R9 290X CrossFire."

"So much talk about smoothness, frametime, and the actual experience of multi-GPU video cards while gaming has been discussed lately. In the past, AMD has been highly criticized of having a sub-par CrossFire experience, and rightly so. There were major issues with smoothness where games would stutter or feel choppy, even though the framerates looked good. We've been telling our readers for years that CrossFire just didn't feel as good as SLI while gaming.

Those times have changed, at least on the new Radeon R9 290/X series. The new CrossFire technology has improved upon the CrossFire experience in a vastly positive way. Playing games on the Radeon R9 290X CrossFire configuration was a smooth experience. In fact, it was smoother than SLI in some games. It was also smoother on the 4K display at 3840x2160 gaming, and it was noticeably smoother in Eyefinity at 5760x1200."

I had ordered a second GTX780 for SLI, the plan was to use it until 20nm was matured. I cancelled it after reading this review. I only game at 2560x1600 but even at that res a GTX780 is ~13% slower than R9 290X. I do plan to go higher res and that appeals to me far more than G-Sync, though to be honest that's not going to happen before these cards are a distant memory. I won't tie myself into a GPU solution that is clearly slower at 2560x1600 and higher res. GTX780Ti SLI is going to have a hard time coming close to these numbers.
 
Last edited:
Last edited:
Makes me laugh with you lot, would slate HARDOCP as pro nvidia when ever they said anything negative about AMD, soon as they give them a bit praise they must be right.
 
Last edited:
Gripen90 said:
Yea AMD stepped up but could have stepped higher. If they had just released a decent reference cooler that could at least have managed to keep the temperature at a 85°c max at a fair noise level, they would have gone wildly more popular. I think AMD have underestimated the psychological perspective of having the card running at 95°c, even though they claim it doesn't to any damage. There's still a lot of people aren't at easy with the fact (thought) of having something in their machinery almost as hot as boiling water !
Frankly after seeing the crossfire results I could very well have gone with the intial idea of snatching two for crossfire, but the temperatures worry me ! The exhaust heat is extremely hot and can give burns ! that's quite worrying if you have the PC with it's back to a wall - could this heat set something on fire ? what if my cat takes a walk behind the PC in fill load ? will the cat suddenly burn away all 9 lives in an instant and catch fire.

I see AMD engineers making high five's and squeezing their nuts at the same time ! it's sooo good but it also hurts a bit !

AMD could easily have made a hands down winner in all aspects .:o
Click to expand...

Something I've been thinking about too. I'll wait for 3rd party coolers top pop up before I'm doing anything.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom