Are you using vsync? Frame Pacing plus vsync gives me massive fps drops, could always be that they use a different method of frame pacing on the R9 290X compared to the 7970's.
I just upgraded to 3 x R9 290 in Trifire from GTX 680 SLI yesterday after being a long time Nvidia user ( 7 years ). Took me a bit to test and get familiar with the AMD drives but I found that more often then not framepacing works much better when you enable V-Sync from the CCC instead of in game. The performance jump from GTX 680 SLI to 290's in trifire are crazy. Battlefield 4 I am getting 60 - 70 fps all ultra w/4xAA and the resolution slider at 130% at 2560x1600 !!! It is a sight to behold ! I must admit I was worried about micro-stutter, affects some games more then others but battlefield 4 runs super smooth. now if only these cards only could run a bit cooler they would be perfect, with 3 of them so tightly together I need a very aggressive fan profile to keep my overclock of 1050Mhz all the time with our throttling.
If you are running reference coolers, your cards must running like at 400mhz. I had two running with those coolers and it was horrible.
400mhz ?? All three running at 1050mhz at full load. have to set a fan speed to 80% max. to stay under 95 C, but It is noisy but my rig is about 15 ft away from where I sit in my set up so it does not bother me. it is loud though.
I also created an account on this site just for this thread because I am having the same problem with my Xfire 290's. I have also come to the conclusion that we have to run these cards without Vsync because of the frame loss and I get a crackling noise from my headset in every game with vsync on. I have tried everything you could imagine to try to fix this, switch slots around, different OS (Win7, Win8, Win8.1), tuning off ULPS, Changing to different refresh rates vs the vsync, DVI vs HDMI cables, Vsync from the CCC(which never seems to work for me in any game) vs in game Vsync, other monitors, other systems, and the conclusion I came to was that my only choice is frame limiters(for the game engine that have console commands & user configs) and not using vsync, but herein lies the problem I get screen-tear frame-limited with vsync off. So I hope AMD is working on a fix or new drivers to fix their vsync problem. As far as temps go when I game I run my fans at 50%, and the cards never go above 68c. As far as power, I dont know about the rest of you but Im getting 70FPS in BF4 @1920x1200 Ultra Setting 160% Resolution Scale.....with vsync off.
i get the same performance as op and many others in the thread with r9 290 crossfire its apparently not happening with the 290x in crossfire, its annoying we need amd to acknowledge this issue for them to solve it, have you guys sent amd feedback?
That's pretty much how mine runs with v-sync and frame pacing enabled at the same time. Mines fine with v-sync on and frame pacing disabled, although I also cap my fps using the gametime.maxvariablefps 60 command.
