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R9 290

NirK said:
Whats powercolour like? I have not read much about them, do they use good caps etc. like asus and gigabyte? Looks good though maybe I will get that one, also is it loud?
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Its an AMD reference board, which is a good thing, arguably one of the best, ask anyone who knows AMD cards they will tell you that.

The cooler, as i say is very good, but its big and heavy, tho its not a problem for your case and it has a solid metal back plate so it doesn't droop.
The fan profile they use is aggressive, it ramps up too much and does get a little noisy, i use MSI AB for a custom fan profile to lower the RPM's, it has little effect on temps which are always low.

Powercolor you could say are the underdog, they have something to prove, they know that and they work hard to prove themselves.

If you look closely at them, they use a much larger VRM cooler than anyone, they are the only ones who glue their VRM's, they have one of the best back plates, it is metal, it is solid, the shroud is metal, it has a massive cooler which is very effective, its beautifully put together.

I have had a lot of GPU's in my time from Most of the established brands, this is the best card i have ever owned.
 
So if its an AMD reference board does that mean it is exactly the same as the original cards (that had the poor coolers) but basically with a better heatsink on it? I don't want to buy anything that has been downgraded from the reference board, some of the manufacturers add better components, caps etc. I assume that if its an AMD reference board that has not been changed then it should use decent quality bits and last for a few years.. But I think some people like MSI actually use worse parts so they can sell for cheaper..
 
NirK said:
So if its an AMD reference board does that mean it is exactly the same as the original cards (that had the poor coolers) but basically with a better heatsink on it? I don't want to buy anything that has been downgraded from the reference board, some of the manufacturers add better components, caps etc. I assume that if its an AMD reference board that has not been changed then it should use decent quality bits and last for a few years.. But I think some people like MSI actually use worse parts so they can sell for cheaper..
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I don't look that closely at them TBH, but it has been said that some AIB's do downgrade with cheaper components to increase margins.
 
humbug said:
I don't look that closely at them TBH, but it has been said that some AIB's do downgrade with cheaper components to increase margins.
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I am not an expert either but I just want to make sure I get a good card that is not going to fail, the powercolour looks good in the review I read, can you set the fan profile to whatever you want with the 290? So if the default one is too loud you can set RPM at temperature? On my out of date 5870 there are not many options for changing the fan speeds except for 1 slider..
 
The Powercolor is a beast. Strangely it comes overvolted out of the box (+50mV) so if you take it back to 0 you can knock quite a bit off the temperatures.
I had mine running at 70C with around 35% fan speed. Pretty quiet.
 
Darren555 said:
Very tempted by the Powercolor deal. What would be the best games to get from the point of view of off loading them?
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The Star Citizen AMD Mustang Omega Packadge seems to have a high value, then Sniper Elite III and Alien Isolation.

Or just sell the voucher as it is.

NirK said:
I am not an expert either but I just want to make sure I get a good card that is not going to fail, the powercolour looks good in the review I read, can you set the fan profile to whatever you want with the 290? So if the default one is too loud you can set RPM at temperature? On my out of date 5870 there are not many options for changing the fan speeds except for 1 slider..
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Yes, use MSI AB to set a custom fan profile.
 
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Heres a post I did a few months back, between my 6950 and R9 290 power consumption.......

Up to a few days ago I had a HD 6950, but now I have the R9 290, I thought I would measure the power difference between the 2 cards, using my system thats in my sig. Im using one of these plug in power monitor things to get the readings

Ok, PC is plugged to a UPS and the UPS is plugged in to the power monitor and that is using 30 watts, so I will leave that out that from the readings.

Ok here goes, first the 6950.....
166watts in windows with screen on
300 watts running furmark
270watts running furmark + burntest

The same tests with the R9 290 on the same system....
143watts in windows with screen on
428 watts running furmark
492watts running furmark + burntest

I am quite impressed with the windows test,, I would have thought it would have been higher then my 6950. On full load my psu has 128watts to spare and I was thinking my psu would be more or less maxed out, so "happy days"
 
Just as a bit of input for anyone looking to buy an R9 290 my MSI one with Twin Frozr cooler hit 78 Celsius stock clocks and 85 Celsius at 1100/1300 running loops of Unigen Valley. In game I don't think I've ever broken past 80 Celsius as I'm normally capped at 60fps with vsync.
 
I did a bit of an unorthodox method with two cards and that was buying 2 reference cards for dirt cheap (£150 for R9 290 and £200 for R9 290X), pulling the coolers off and putting Corsair H55's and NZXT Kraken G10's on both, they both overclock like beats and both hit 1250/1650. Although that may be quite expensive, is definitely worth it if you're interesting in maxing out the cards.

Needless to say, the cards to go for personally would Be the Sapphire Vapor-X or Tri-X cards or the Powercolor PCS+ cards as they are well built, quiet and cool, have good overclocking potential and both having Hynix VRAM from my understanding. Althought nothing to stop you from going all out and buying a MSI Lightning since they are currently a steal at £300
 
Gibbo said:
Cough, Civilization! :D
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Time for your medicine Gibbo. :p

cOr3xch.jpg
 
humbug said:
There is a fix for it, see above. stop reading reviews about early reference cards which have blower coolers
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What fix do you mean? undervolting the card? That is an option but I was hoping it had been fixed in drivers or it is possible to change the cfg or something to make it better,
 
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