• 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.

How many 290/290x before it worked?

jh30uk said:
Well you asked for one thing and most of the replies are another (my card works great etc).

I told you when we spoke look at the other cards when you mentioned them (not me).

I know there is a jump in money but is the 3-4month of crap you have had an no enjoyment from PC worth £100ish?

I now post here on topic as you have edited the OP to include other choices.
Click to expand...

This is something i am indeed considering, but also trying to get an idea if i have just been very very unlucky as the nvidia equivalent is dearer and i dont have an endless amount of cash.
 
I have a Sapphire 290 Ref which i bought just before Christmas, its been solid with ZERO issues since day one, Elpida memory.

A week ago i bought a Sapphire 290 Tri-X, i swapped out the Ref 290 for it and put it in on the same drivers, got a few black screen issues, DDU uninstalled drivers, put new drivers back on and its been running ever since without a single issue.
 
I think this should go in OP, as it does link RMA figures.

Gibbo said:
Our returns rate is less than 5%, same for a card like GTX 780, so I think that maybe the black screen issue is overly talked about but in reality can't be that bad when the statistics for returns seem pretty much around the same as other high-end cards from AMD and NVIDIA.

I don't think there is any issue with the reference board, I've got one in my home PC, I only get a black screen if I try to push the memory from its stock 5000Mhz to beyond 6200MHz, anything under 6200MHz and there is no issue. I've tested cards at OcUK upto 6600-6800MHz with no black screen issues. Several members of staff here have 290's in crossfire and tri-fire, again no black screen issues.

If there was a failure in the design we'd have a 100% return rate. So AMD's design seems perfectly fine and until more custom cards come out, there is nothing to say that cards not using AMD designs won't suffer the same black screens. What it could most likely be is the simple fact Hawaii is a brand new architecture and some of the game coders are still adapting their software to run properly on it, hence why we see both game patches and AMD software to address the issue. Which obviously has some truth to it as newer cards still using AMD reference design seem to be having less issues which is no doubt down too because new purchases are using new software, later AMD drivers, games already patched. But more importantly it was probably something to do with the BIOS on the cards.

My Asus 290X reference at home before would only benchmark upto 6200MHz and was only game stable and black screen free upto around 5800-6000MHz. Asus released a new BIOS and I can now game upto 6200MHz and benchmark upto 6500Mhz.

So I personally feel that the issue is a mix of BIOS not correctly optimised for the memory fitted to the cards and drivers/software patches not correctly optimised for Hawaii architecture.
Click to expand...
 
I think part of the problem is the 290s are very demanding on hardward, this does not mean that there is anything wrong with the cards though.

Two problems I have had

1. I tried to run 3 x 290Xs and a 3970X on a Corsair 1200i, in theory it should have been ok but in practice the PSU was not up to the job.

2. When I ran quadfired 290Xs on a 3970X system it was too much for the CPU and I had to upgrade to a 4930k to get the system to run properly.

Neither of the above are the fault of the cards, it is more a case of the supporting hardware not being up to the job.

I am also sure that other people have had problems where the supporting hardware in their systems has not been up to the job.

Is it the fault of AMD for producing such a demanding card, no technology moves on and we all want the newest fastest cards.
 
Kaapstad said:
I think part of the problem is the 290s are very demanding on hardward, this does not mean that there is anything wrong with the cards though.

Two problems I have had

1. I tried to run 3 x 290Xs and a 3970X on a Corsair 1200i, in theory it should have been ok but in practice the PSU was not up to the job.

2. When I ran quadfired 290Xs on a 3970X system it was too much for the CPU and I had to upgrade to a 4930k to get the system to run properly.

Neither of the above are the fault of the cards, it is more a case of the supporting hardware not being up to the job.

I am also sure that other people have had problems where the supporting hardware in their systems has not been up to the job.

Is it the fault of AMD for producing such a demanding card, no technology moves on and we all want the newest fastest cards.
Click to expand...

Very much agree with the above.

When I first got my 290X I was running an i5 760 on a Gigabyte H55M-UD2H and whilst the processor was quick enough the motherboard wouldn't boot sometimes with the 290X installed. At first I thought it was my power supply or possibly the 290X but once I upgraded to my new Z87 Haswell setup it's been spot on.

The H55M-UD2H was a great board that I had used for 3 years but it obviously didn't have a stable enough power delivery to handle a 290X.

I guess a lot of users have had to upgrade other hardware to run these cards and get them to perform as they should.
 
the1gooner said:
Very much agree with the above.

When I first got my 290X I was running an i5 760 on a Gigabyte H55M-UD2H and whilst the processor was quick enough the motherboard wouldn't boot sometimes with the 290X installed. At first I thought it was my power supply or possibly the 290X but once I upgraded to my new Z87 Haswell setup it's been spot on.

The H55M-UD2H was a great board that I had used for 3 years but it obviously didn't have a stable enough power delivery to handle a 290X.

I guess a lot of users have had to upgrade other hardware to run these cards and get them to perform as they should.
Click to expand...

how can a mobo not have stable enough power on the PCI-E slot - surely they are tested at the 75W or whatever power is required on said slot
 
Buckster said:
how can a mobo not have stable enough power on the PCI-E slot - surely they are tested at the 75W or whatever power is required on said slot
Click to expand...

There has not been many cards that draw close to the amount the 290x can draw through the PCIe slot. At stock its been reported to peak over 300w when it gets just 225 from the 6 pin and 8 pin.

I guess things would get sketchy with multiple overclocked cards on a board with less than sturdy VRMs. Why these didnt come with two 8 pin plugs, i dont know.
 
Buckster said:
how can a mobo not have stable enough power on the PCI-E slot - surely they are tested at the 75W or whatever power is required on said slot
Click to expand...

In my statement above I didnt mention anything about the pci slot.

The H55M-UD2H only has 4+2+1 power phase and a 4pin cpu power connector.

Running with a 290x the motherboard quite often wouldnt boot, quite obviously due to the processor not getting proper power at start up. It was fine when running with the 6870 i had previous to the 290x.

Even when it did boot i couldnt run the i5 760 overclocked, which i could before the upgrade to a 290x.

So like i said poor power delivery to the processor when running a powerful card like the 290x.
 
All Added thanks.

Avenged7Fold said:
I think this should go in OP, as it does link RMA figures.
Click to expand...

I understand this point of view, but was just after my own overview of where these cards are at as i have seen figures quoted around before and then found out they didnt include certain RMAs, ie ones where by the rma had been created but not yet full filled etc.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom