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Thinking of getting my first AMD card in maybe 10 years, few questions

If you check some reviews you will find that the titan X cooler is actually fairly bad. It's a good reference cooler for sure (I mean its the same one they used on lots of previous cards) but every review I have seen shows the cooler holding the card back with thermal throttling when you start overclocking at all, it really should have a non ref cooler or a water block to allow its full potential imo.
Kinda funny too because according to nvidia's official specs it should only put out as much heat as the original titan which is not the case at all.

Stock cooler on the TX works perfectly well.

I'm running a custom BIOS with higher voltage and power draw and with a decent overclock of 1400/2000 it never exceeds 70c when gaming.

At stock with its intended clocks it's more like 60c.

Most people who have heat issues it's their own fault due to poor case airflow and review sites use open benches most of the time with nothing feeding the card air.
 
Having actually read the OP properly (unlike some others) the 290x on 2 x 1680x1050 monitors would be more than enough.

Coming from a 280 will be massive and the card will keep you in good order if you switch to 1080p monitors and upgrade your PC in the future.
 
Stock cooler on the TX works perfectly well.

I'm running a custom BIOS with higher voltage and power draw and with a decent overclock of 1400/2000 it never exceeds 70c when gaming.

At stock with its intended clocks it's more like 60c.

Most people who have heat issues it's their own fault due to poor case airflow and review sites use open benches most of the time with nothing feeding the card air.

We'll have to agree to disagree.

My 750D has great airflow (2x 140mm front fans intake, 2x 140mm top fans exhaust and 1x 140mm rear fan exhaust) and my first Titan X at both stock clocks & with EVGA SC Bios was hitting the 83/84°C throttle limit under load. (GTA V/4k)

That was before I added my second TitanX in SLI as well, which makes the top card even hotter.

I swapped the cooler out for the EVGA Hybrid at the weekend, and now it's hitting 55°C at stock clocks under load.

The bottom card is cooler because it has no display outputs attached to it and is getting cooler air anyway, I've still seen that get right near the throttle limit though.
 
Doesn't matter how many fans you have if they don't shift air well enough, I've got a 180mm side fan blowing over the card so that must be helping.

I'll post a screenshot of my max temp in GPU-Z tonight.
 
I am an out and out AMD fan boy and i just last night ordered Nvidia GPUs.
in the here and now AMD have nothing to offer not even on the used market, and the longer we have to wait for new cards/drivers the less fan boy there will be.
 
Kinda funny too because according to nvidia's official specs it should only put out as much heat as the original titan which is not the case at all.

That's the issue there. It's hotter than the original Titan yet the cooler has remained the same. At £900+ they really ought to have designed a new cooler so that you can add a reasonable overclock without any throttling.

If it were a £500 card I could just about understand but it should be rocking a new cooler to match the new technology.
 
I am an out and out AMD fan boy and i just last night ordered Nvidia GPUs.
in the here and now AMD have nothing to offer not even on the used market, and the longer we have to wait for new cards/drivers the less fan boy there will be.

Which Nvidia card did you buy out of interest as apart from the Titan X the current Gen perform pretty good compared with the rest of Nvidia's line up especially when price is brought in to the equation.
 
ive had vtx3d 290, msi ge 290x, powercolor 290 pcs+ and 2 sapphire 290 tri-x, none had coil whine and all but the reference vtx3d ran cool and quiet, is that just lucky, i dont think so
 
ive had vtx3d 290, msi ge 290x, powercolor 290 pcs+ and 2 sapphire 290 tri-x, none had coil whine and all but the reference vtx3d ran cool and quiet, is that just lucky, i dont think so

I have a Sapphire tri-x too, amazing card, even more so when overclocked.
 
ive had vtx3d 290, msi ge 290x, powercolor 290 pcs+ and 2 sapphire 290 tri-x, none had coil whine and all but the reference vtx3d ran cool and quiet, is that just lucky, i dont think so

So why keep getting rid of them?

I bought 1 card, an MSI Twin Frozer 290x gaming and temps are no better than reference models, Both these and the Asus DCUII's are known as having problems with the Hawaii temps. Plenty of users have posted on many forums about the issue, It's the only issue I suffer from, There's zero coil whine but the temps are awful. Single card drivers are fine aswell.

Anyone who buys either of these brands runs the risk of getting a card that does not perform as it should. And they can't necessarily get it replaced either as I found out after Overclockers told me they also run the same card and it runs at 94 degrees all day long and is quite capable of doing so therefore my card is fine and non returnable..
 
love my PCS+ 290.......barely oced it to 1100; not seen it go over 65c in heavy gaming....DCUII cooler is crap - this has been known since it came out as they didn't bother to redesign it - 2 out of the 5 heat pipes are even touching the core...

290/290X are extremely solid cards....:)
 
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