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R9 290X Owners Thread

LtMatt said:
Proud of you Kaapi boi. I knew you wouldn't let me down. After all the crap written about the card, tell me how it is. What do you think? Good card, bad card? Put aside the heat/cooler crap. People buying a reference AMD card should know what to expect.

Good card for £400 vs a £800 titan, or not??

I assume AIB cards will make things much better.
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Now now Matt. I know you defend AMD to the death and that's cool but that's not really a fair way to look at it. The titan is WAAAYYYYY overpriced and always was but the 290x is still a £450 card and to gloss over its faults because its cheaper isn't right. They are excellent cards performance wise but reviewers are right to give them crap about the heat and cooler as its still an expensive card and they've made no development on that cooler in years. Not having a go at you matt just making the point that whilst they have got a wicked fast product here they have thrown cooling/noise out the window to get there.
 
oldestgregg said:
Now now Matt. I know you defend AMD to the death and that's cool but that's not really a fair way to look at it. The titan is WAAAYYYYY overpriced and always was but the 290x is still a £450 card and to gloss over its faults because its cheaper isn't right. They are excellent cards performance wise but reviewers are right to give them crap about the heat and cooler as its still an expensive card and they've made no development on that cooler in years. Not having a go at you matt just making the point that whilst they have got a wicked fast product here they have thrown cooling/noise out the window to get there.
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Precisely. If you compare the build quality alone between a 780 Gtx cooler and the 290x it's night and day. I know in the long term and if you're not planning on keeping the cooler it's largely irrelevant but reviewers have to concentrate on it as a package.
 
oldestgregg said:
Now now Matt. I know you defend AMD to the death and that's cool but that's not really a fair way to look at it. The titan is WAAAYYYYY overpriced and always was but the 290x is still a £450 card and to gloss over its faults because its cheaper isn't right. They are excellent cards performance wise but reviewers are right to give them crap about the heat and cooler as its still an expensive card and they've made no development on that cooler in years. Not having a go at you matt just making the point that whilst they have got a wicked fast product here they have thrown cooling/noise out the window to get there.
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When i buy an AMD reference card i don't complain about heat or noise. It comes as standard. The faults lie with the cooler, not the card. Anyone with just a modicum of intelligence will wait for a AIB card or use a waterblock. I had a 7970 reference card so i know what they're like. That's how i see it. That's how its been with AMD and ive seen buying their cards since the 9200SE. The reason i asked Kaap for his opinion on the card and not the heat/noise is because i alread know what to expect to get with a reference cooler. The 780/titan may run cooler, but it still runs hot and it still makes a lot of noise if you intend to overclock. So really, its not that much different.
 
LtMatt said:
When i buy an AMD reference card i don't complain about heat or noise. It comes as standard. The faults lie with the cooler, not the card. Anyone with just a modicum of intelligence will wait for a AIB card or use a waterblock. I had a 7970 reference card so i know what they're like. That's how i see it. That's how its been with AMD and ive seen buying their cards since the 9200SE. The reason i asked Kaap for his opinion on the card and not the heat/noise is because i alread know what to expect to get with a reference cooler. The 780/titan may run cooler, but it still runs hot and it still makes a lot of noise if you intend to overclock. So really, its not that much different.
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Yeah, I agree. All this happened exactly with the reference 7970. Nobody has complained about the 7970 being noisy or too hot for ages, because the reference card becomes irrelevant after a short while and nobody cares about them. It'll be the same with this one. The results with the aftermarket cooler have proved this GPU is not too hot, too inefficient, or too anything - it's fine with regular decent cooling.
 
oldestgregg said:
Now now Matt. I know you defend AMD to the death and that's cool but that's not really a fair way to look at it. The titan is WAAAYYYYY overpriced and always was but the 290x is still a £450 card and to gloss over its faults because its cheaper isn't right.
Click to expand...

I think if we're being intelligent about comparisons the Titan does not come in to the picture. We all know the competitor for this is the 780 as anyone buying a Titan right now would be mental so Matt asking if the Titan is £400 better when we can see how close the 780 is just reaching for it.
 
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If you have to turn on uber mode just for it to be stable I would send it back tbh, the cooler is not fit for purpose if that is happening.
 
Is this a driver and/or optimisation issue or something else going on here.

In most of my games, the core clock is really inconsistent, and some games it seems fine (jumping back and forth between 999 and 1000MHz). The memory clock, is always maxed out.

I would say it is throttling but the temp seems perfectly fine, even after a 1hr session in Resident Evil 6 (peaked 70c - FYI: I set my Fan speed to 70%, noise doesn't bother me once I've got my headset on).

Note: I'm using MSI Afterburner on-screen display for temp and clock readings
 
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