Which 290x 8GB?....

TwinCalliber · 20 Feb 2015 at 18:58

Hey all,

Sorry for an inevitable duplicate thread!

Just seen the Sapphire AMD cards have gone down £20 in price. Depending on how well some stuff I have on ebay sells next week, will probs get and 8gb 290x.

So im looking at the Sapphire 290x 8gb Tri-x, MSI 8gb or PCS+ OC 8gb.

Ive seen a lot of guys saying 8gb is pointless for 1440p gaming atm, but I plan on having this card for a few years, and would rather have too much than to little, seeing that Dying Light uses nearly 4gb, and Far Cry 4 on ultra is pushing that as well!

Cheers!

arc@css · 20 Feb 2015 at 19:02

By all means get an 8gb card, though if you plan on keeping it for a long time, the chances are that it will run out processing grunt long before you do vram anyway. In your situation, I would go for the cheapest model, which is the MSI, I think.

TwinCalliber · 20 Feb 2015 at 21:36

arc@css said:
By all means get an 8gb card, though if you plan on keeping it for a long time, the chances are that it will run out processing grunt long before you do vram anyway. In your situation, I would go for the cheapest model, which is the MSI, I think.

Cool! Sound advice. I agree with you, just think as the prices are dropping, that I might aswell

arc@css · 20 Feb 2015 at 21:37

I don't blame you. I wouldn't mind an 8gb 290X! :cool:

Though, in my case I can probably still get away with around 2gb of vram.

TwinCalliber · 20 Feb 2015 at 21:45

arc@css said:
I don't blame you. I wouldn't mind an 8gb 290X!

Though, in my case I can probably still get away with around 2gb of vram.

Hehe, yeah. Ive had my mind set on one for a while now, been saving those pennies

. Is it not worth spending the £40 for the Sapphire Tri-X though? or is there no real difference in the fan quality? Most reviews I have read for the MSI says its fairly loud, but I think its quieter than my Sapphire 7950!

Hope I dont get any coil whine...

arc@css · 20 Feb 2015 at 21:50

TwinCalliber said:
Hehe, yeah. Ive had my mind set on one for a while now, been saving those pennies . Is it not worth spending the £40 for the Sapphire Tri-X though? or is there no real difference in the fan quality? Most reviews I have read for the MSI says its fairly loud, but I think its quieter than my Sapphire 7950!

Hope I dont get any coil whine...

It may well be, though I honestly don't know for sure. Other members will pop along that are better informed, I'm sure.

In terms of quality and looks, I do like some of the sapphire range a lot. If I wasn't putting value first on the agenda, then the sapphire would be the one I'd want, without a doubt.

pieman109 · 20 Feb 2015 at 23:35

My MSI 290X 8gb should be turning up tomorrow afternoon (thanks Boomstick) and the reasons I got it were:

It won't run worse than a 4gb version
Got it for a fair price
if I want to have go at Xfire in the near future I got 8gb to play with at 1440
If someone else wants the same as the above, I can sell it on
And lastly, I haven't lost any money at all in switching from a GTX970 3.5gb

I'm expecting it to run games a bit smoother but thats all and I've got a lot more vram to play over the 970.

r7slayer · 20 Feb 2015 at 23:42

^ 8Gb models will hold their price better too vs 4Gb as people will get them as cheaper options for bigger resolutions later on down the line. Why do you think Titans are still worth what they are? lol. If titans had 4Gb vram they would be worthless.

Gilbert89 · 20 Feb 2015 at 23:53

TwinCalliber said:
Hehe, yeah. Ive had my mind set on one for a while now, been saving those pennies . Is it not worth spending the £40 for the Sapphire Tri-X though? or is there no real difference in the fan quality? Most reviews I have read for the MSI says its fairly loud, but I think its quieter than my Sapphire 7950!

Hope I dont get any coil whine...

I went with the MSI 290x due to value for money and previous experience with the new Twin Frozr cooling design which gave me low temps and barely audible although this was on a GTX 970.

The more power hungry beast is more difficult to tame by the Twin Frozr it is noticeably louder than my 970 as to be expected and Crysis 3 is the only game to need fans speeds hitting 60% which to me is rather loud but under games such as BF4, Tomb Raider it seems to be marginally louder than my entire system. Take into consideration with speaker/headphones at an adequate volume the odds are it won't be heard.

Perhaps the 970 has spoilt me (I think that's more the case than this GPU being exceptionally loud)

TwinCalliber · 21 Feb 2015 at 00:26

pieman109 said:
My MSI 290X 8gb should be turning up tomorrow afternoon (thanks Boomstick) and the reasons I got it were:

It won't run worse than a 4gb version
Got it for a fair price
if I want to have go at Xfire in the near future I got 8gb to play with at 1440
If someone else wants the same as the above, I can sell it on
And lastly, I haven't lost any money at all in switching from a GTX970 3.5gb

I'm expecting it to run games a bit smoother but thats all and I've got a lot more vram to play over the 970.

Ahhh ok cool, let me know how you find it please!

Gilbert89 said:
I went with the MSI 290x due to value for money and previous experience with the new Twin Frozr cooling design which gave me low temps and barely audible although this was on a GTX 970.

The more power hungry beast is more difficult to tame by the Twin Frozr it is noticeably louder than my 970 as to be expected and Crysis 3 is the only game to need fans speeds hitting 60% which to me is rather loud but under games such as BF4, Tomb Raider it seems to be marginally louder than my entire system. Take into consideration with speaker/headphones at an adequate volume the odds are it won't be heard.

Perhaps the 970 has spoilt me (I think that's more the case than this GPU being exceptionally loud)

Ahh ok, I might look into the Tri-X then, its still only takes up two slots which I like, and I have a sapphire card at the mo which I have been happy with.

But yeah, I never pay much attention to my PC sound when playing games, guess its more important what it idles at, which wont be any louder than what it is at the mo!

pieman109 · 21 Feb 2015 at 11:03

The only issue I think I 'm going to have is with the fan noise level. For all its Vram faults, the 970 was an incredibly quiet card and cool too. I'm not fussed about the 290x heat output as thats the nature of the beast and I've got sufficient cooling to get rid of that out the back of the case. Its really a case is how loud is the 290 gonna be at idle? I don't care that much when gaming as long as its not like a leaf blower and theres other sounds being produced, audio, wife, etc. Its the idle noise that interests me and that can be sorted by setting a fan profile in AB hopefully.
Performance wise, well I'm expecting the same visuals and in game performance with 290 as I got with the 970 to be honest, maybe a tad smoother when a load of textures load up on screen in Crysis 3 'frinstance, but thats about it.

Gilbert89 · 21 Feb 2015 at 11:43

Well it idles virtually silent in my case 18% fan speed at idle.

As for the 290X im at 1080p and in a few games it's slightly behind the 970 but the bigger picture is 1440p. Even though the 290X's are sometimes marginally lower in some games I find it a smoother experience with my 970 far too many times the GPU usage would drop when I wasn't anywhere near the VRam limit.

TwinCalliber · 21 Feb 2015 at 12:06

Gilbert89 said:
Well it idles virtually silent in my case 18% fan speed at idle.

As for the 290X im at 1080p and in a few games it's slightly behind the 970 but the bigger picture is 1440p. Even though the 290X's are sometimes marginally lower in some games I find it a smoother experience with my 970 far too many times the GPU usage would drop when I wasn't anywhere near the VRam limit.

Yeah, been looking at reviews of my 7950 and the MSI card, both seem to reach same dB level, infact I think the MSI is slightly quieter, so I am happy with that!

RanxZy · 21 Feb 2015 at 12:26

Yeah the Sapphire 8GB card would be the one I would like to go for, even though it's more expensive I think the triple fan setup is more suited to the Hawaii GPU than the twin fans on the MSI.

TwinCalliber · 21 Feb 2015 at 12:30

RanxZy said:
Yeah the Sapphire 8GB card would be the one I would like to go for, even though it's more expensive I think the triple fan setup is more suited to the Hawaii GPU than the twin fans on the MSI.

Cool, I will see what the funds are like next week. Its like £40 more for it at the mo, so might go with it

pieman109 · 22 Feb 2015 at 11:06

Initial impressions with the MSI 290x 8gb are:

Very slightly noisier at idle than the 970 I had before
Gets a fair bit noisier than the 970 when gaming/ benching (expected) but not intrusive and this is in a very quiet room.
Only tried Crysis3, fps is down a tad when compared to the 970 but only by about 5fps ish.
Heaven benchie score is lower than with the 970, but again, not by much and appears to be comparable with all other benchies using a 290x.

General "feel" when gaming is that even though the fps in Crysis 3 is slighlty lower, it that its running "smoother" I can't really explain it and for all I know it might even be a placebo effect, but it deffo feels like it smoother.
Obviously the 970 a slightly better card all round when looking at benching scores, and the 970 is certainly quieter and cooler, but if gaming at 1440 with ultra settings or 4k, a pair of these in Xfire will certainly hold their when utilising the full 8gb "if and when" games start to utilise it, thats where these cards will obviously shine I reckon

This post copied from another thread regarding these 8gb jobbies.

TwinCalliber · 22 Feb 2015 at 11:59

pieman109 said:
Initial impressions with the MSI 290x 8gb are:

Very slightly noisier at idle than the 970 I had before
Gets a fair bit noisier than the 970 when gaming/ benching (expected) but not intrusive and this is in a very quiet room.
Only tried Crysis3, fps is down a tad when compared to the 970 but only by about 5fps ish.
Heaven benchie score is lower than with the 970, but again, not by much and appears to be comparable with all other benchies using a 290x.

General "feel" when gaming is that even though the fps in Crysis 3 is slighlty lower, it that its running "smoother" I can't really explain it and for all I know it might even be a placebo effect, but it deffo feels like it smoother.
Obviously the 970 a slightly better card all round when looking at benching scores, and the 970 is certainly quieter and cooler, but if gaming at 1440 with ultra settings or 4k, a pair of these in Xfire will certainly hold their when utilising the full 8gb "if and when" games start to utilise it, thats where these cards will obviously shine I reckon

This post copied from another thread regarding these 8gb jobbies.

Cheers for posting this. Its definitely between this and the Tri-X Sapphire for me then. You getting any coil whine? Seeing a few people complaining of that on some cards

pieman109 · 22 Feb 2015 at 12:13

No coil whine at all, either in gaming or benching, dead quiet (from that point of view)

TwinCalliber · 22 Feb 2015 at 17:58

pieman109 said:
No coil whine at all, either in gaming or benching, dead quiet (from that point of view)

Ahh awesome, thats good!

TwinCalliber · 24 Feb 2015 at 10:39

Just ordered the Sapphire Tri-X 290x 8gb, will get it Thursday! (Busy tomorrow

) I will report back how I find it!

Cheers for help guys!