***Powercolor PCS+ R9 290 Mini Review***

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I bought this version of the R9 290 because it was inexpensive compared with other custom R9 290’s and looked like it had a good lump of a cooler on it.
This is also not my first Powercolor GPU, its actually my third, the first was 10 years ago, an ATI 9### series, the last was a PCS+ 7870 MYST which I was impressed with.
Although the cooler wasn’t much good it could still hold the card in good temperatures even while very overclocked, the GPU its self was also very solid and reliable.

So onto the card. It came in a nice black box with the PCS+ cut out on the top for the raised logo on the plastic lid underneath to poke through,
inside that card was well packed in rubber foam, accessories were scant with a DP to HDMI adapter only.
The card is a very big 2.5 Slot monster, it weighs 1KG (2.2lb)

Quality

It has a Grey Textured full Metal Shroud and a thick Black Brushed Alloy Back Plate screwed to the PCB, it also has cut-outs and the logo printed on it,
the PCB, what you can see of it is Matt Black.
The card has a nice look and a good quality solid feel. I Have a gallery of it on Post #2

Cooling

There are three 92mm fans sitting over a very big Heatsink that fills the huge shroud, the cooling solution on this card looks like it means business.
An hour of Crysis 3 with the GPU running at 99% all the time results in 67c on an automatic fan profile, about 55% at that temperature,
its audible but not load, it’s also an acceptable sort of noise, if that makes sense.

The GPU





It’s Factory overclocked to 1040Mhz on the core and 1350Mhz on the vRam.
It has 2560 Stream Processors, 64 ROP’s, a 512Bit Bus, 4GB of vRam, and what you can’t see in GPU-Z; 8 ACE Units.

Gaming Performance


BF4 Shanghai: Ultra @ 1080P (Mantle API)
Min - Max - Avg
68 - 116 - 94.085

BF4 Shanghai: Ultra @ 1080P
Min - Max - Avg
48 - 97 - 65.158

Dirt Showdown: Ultra + Global illumination + 8x MSAA @ 1080P
Min - Avg
70 - 90

Sniper Elite V2: Maximum Settings @ 1080P
40.9 FPS

Tomb Raider: Ultra + TressFX + 2x SMAA @ 1080P
60.0 FPS

Synthetics

3DMark FireStrike
GPU Score
10227

Heaven 4: Maximum Settings @ 1080P
1277 Points

Compute Performance

LuxMark v 2.0
Sala: 2713
Room: 1409
LucBall HDR: 19824

AMD Mantle

Mantle is the only Low level API currently in existence; its purpose is to reduce the CPU Bottleneck when compared with DirectX,
the result of that is you get much better performance, especially with the Minimum FPS and if you have a weaker CPU,
it’s not so much effective if you’re running an i7 3960K or 4960X, but then how many of us do?

More on Mantle here

Mantle Benchmark results

BF4 Shanghai: Ultra @ 1080P





BF4: CPU Bound Latency, Low Preset.








Star Swarm: Follow, Extreme @ 1080P











Coil Whine

That annoying noise that can put you off your Game.

The good news here is Powercolor have very thoughtfully put Glue around the coils in a bid to stop the noise, and it has worked on my card, there is no noise at all from the coils.
I think that’s a nice touch and speaks volumes about their quality control.



Overclocking

The R9 290 comes with reference clock of 947Mhz Core and 1250Mhz Memory

The PCS+ R9 290 is 1040 / 1350 out of the box, on stock volts I managed to get it to 1125 / 1450, giving it a total 19% overclock on the core and 16% on the Memory, stable with no artefacts.

Conclusion

I think it’s a very good quality Card, its very well made, they have gone to extra lengths to make sure it has no coil whine, it looks good and it has excellent cooling.

 

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Pix courtesy of TPU.

 

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Hi humbug do you find your phenom holding it back much

Yes and no.

Crysis 3 has 97 to 100% GPU usage all the time
As does Dirt Showdown, Tomb Raider, Sniper Elite V2.

BF4 does have some pretty bad Bottlenacking in places, but then who doesn't? In Mantle there is no bottlenecking at all.
Valley Benchmark, yes, defiantly.
Most DX9 MMo's no doubt will.

The CPU is holding up very well in the games i play, but its far from an ideal CPU for this GPU, an i7 would be much better.

Very nice review humbug. Looks like a stunning card.









We Are Liverpool

Thanks Scouse

 

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Nice review It is a great card. I noticed the glue on the on the coils too.

I like that, it shows they have though about it, not just knocking GPU's out and saying "yeah well, Coil Whine happens, sniff, shrug"

 

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Yep it's pretty cool. I haven't noticed any whine at all so it definitely works.

The only thing I don't like about the card is that the stock fan profile is pretty naff.

The Default fan profile is a bit too aggressive, the GPU is rated by AMD to run at 94c, there is no reason why it needs to try and keep its self at around 65c, which is what it looks like its trying to do, you can quieten it right down to low noise levels if you allow it to get to 75c, which is still a very good temperature and miles within AMDs specifications.

 

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Yep mine runs 59-60C with the stock fan profile but is quite audible. If I let it run 5C higher it's barely above my case fans
The 30% fan speed at idle is annoying too, it's much better at 20%.

Like you i have a HAF Case, its has a 200mm intake fan, with a nice quiet custom fan profile on the GPU i can hear that huge intake fan droning over it, while its a booming noise its not loud at all, you can't hear it with headphones on.
Because of the size of it its just a hell of a noise.

 

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Hm which 200mm fan do you have? Mine isn't even audible over my hard drives.

A standard Cooler Master one.

An old pic of the inside of the case, the fan is on the right.

Its a HAF 912+

 

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Hi humbug i to have the PCS+ 290, very pleased in general great cooler.

one test I'd like you to do if you get 5 is run a game or a benchmark with GPU-Z open and log to file checked play for 10mins or so and see if you're GPU mhz lock to 1040 , when i do that mine drop every 10 seconds or so as much as 100 mhz even with +50 power limit, running 13.12 driver

I'm curious if this is normal or not

PS great mini review

Thanks

I will do that but like thefogo it only jumps about by 1Mhz, unless in Heaven 4 or Valley, then it jumps up and down between scene changes.

Does it do it all the time or is it just specific things? also do you run vSync? if you do that card could be down-clocking its self if higher clocks are not needed to keep up the FPS.

 

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Humbug have you kept the voltage on +50mV as it comes stock?

Yes, it Black Screens right on the Desktop if i set it to 0

Whats your ASIC Quality? mine is 68.6% i think the Volts are 1.25v

 

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just changed my After Burner Skin, it doesn't feel right in Green. much better in Red

 

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I was using the blue version of that one above... until i realised it has no option for Aux voltage. I can share my blue theme one if you want.

I think i have it, i like this one, it has everything to.

got it from here http://event.msi.com/vga/afterburner/skin.htm

more here http://www.deviantart.com/customization/skins/?q=MSI%20Afterburner

 

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Do any of those have Aux voltage control? When i last checked several of them none of them did. Its something i can't live without.

I don't see an option for Aux voltage in the screenshot you posted.

I know the Dragon ones do, yes.

 

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Good review humbug, the card has a nice cooler. Very reminiscent of the gigabyte wf cooler. Good mantle figures in bf4 too.

Thanks. Yes i though that too, it does look a lot like the Gigabyte WF Cooler.

 

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I take it your able to max bf4 now, iirc your at 1920x1080. 1920x1200 here, on shanghai on max settings i do drop into the 50's sometimes, ive found it to be the most demanding map. Dont like those minimums tbh, averages are good at 90+fps. Bf4 is a game i play an awful lot of hence why i bench it most, the latest nv betas have helped a good bit with minimums, but i think the game engine itself causes a few issues for owners of both nv and amd cards.

Yes, i have it on Ultra Preset with Mantle now, Min FPS at worst are 60+ and i think thats GPU bound.

 

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I haven't played it, though I am thinking about looking into something new for multi-player. God knows how many hours I've sunk into CS:S (steam doesn't).

I might look into something like a space game, or even an rpg...

I used to like Space games, i'm a SCi-Fi fan, its hard to find a good space game these days. Star Conflict is ok but pay to win. far too often you get shot down in a second by someone so far way you can't even see him because he spent $200 on unlocks.

EVE is OK but i find that a bit to complicated.

I'm playing the latest Star Trek Game on and off, but that has horrible third person controls, enough to kill the Game Play.

Its all a bit sad for SCi-Fi.

 

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Yeah, I'll have to educate myself about the space genre first before I get any pinkies wet. I did buy Eve on a whim many moons ago, though on reflection I feel reluctant to play something that has a monthly subscription. The steam sale lured me in...

From what i have seen on EVE it looks like it could be an awesome Game if you can get into it, i couldn't. and yeah the monthly subscription is part of the reason, i don't like the idea of having to keep paying to access your game.

 

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Tbh guys, the game i play the mosxt is tiger woods online, a 780 gtx is overkill lol. I just love golf games. I do play a lot of bf3/4 but on the onboard gpu would probably run it fine, though i keep it disabled as my haswell cpu is an extremely hot running chip. It needs scalping and pasted with clu/pro on the chip itself. Extremely fast chip though.

Thats an idea, i used to love that game on the PSX / PS2.

 

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I seen in an earlier post you were considering an upgrade, my advice. 4770k and a mobo that offers both xfire and sli. Always leave your options open on the multi gpu front. I made the mistake one time of buying a p5q deluxe, great clocking board for s775 quads, but xfire only. At that time xfire was in it's infancy and a bit buggy. I had to move to x58 which thankfully offered both xfire and sli at full x16 per slot, (still have a bloomfield setup) but it is very slow compared to the haswell setup.

I'm looking for a Sandy or Ivy i7 setup.

 

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Out of those, id go for the ib 3770k setup, yes it will run a bit hotter. But a 3770k @4,5ghz is equivalent to a 26/700k at 4.8ghz, (owned both 3570k and 3770k here) prior to the 4770k in sig. Great chips if you decide to go xfire, mantle will do away with some bottlenecks on i5 cpus even with xfgire/sli, but personally i would reccomend an i7 everytime.

I'm happy with either one, i'm on an AMD CPU for Christ Sake

It depends on cost, i want it in the shorter term and i can't afford that much in the short term.

 

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Neither you or Gregster have a Phenom II cpu with slow memory though. I expect its quite a bottleneck on Siege Of Shanghai 64 player server at 1080P.

What's interesting to see ( i think) is his latency via Mantle with that slow cpu/memory is a fair bit lower than what you posted with a Haswell cpu at 4.9ghz, faster 1866mhz memory and two clocked 780's in SLI.

Didn't see his Latency.

In DirectX i average 13.24ms, in Mantle i average 7.29ms, its about half of what DirectX is, i think just over 7ms is excellent, if its better than a very overclocked Haswell, what's the problem?

Gregster?