AMD Radeon R9-290X tested and reviewed

I'm happy i went for the 280x. I bought my 280x for R4300 and the 290x goes for R8300 (yeah, hardware prices are way overpriced in South Africa).

I will wait for a refresh of the 290x with better cooling.

Nonetheless, this is a great card. The TITAN goes for R11700 in SA.

 

My estimate would be A LOT. UBER mode has to throttle back by 15-17% once the reference 290X hits 94*C, so just keeping it at a steady 93*C at 1GHz should allow for a very significant performance increase. And all the custom coolers we know from the AIB partners should do a lot better than that.

 

Great card with a great price! AMD has a winner with this one!

Too bad about the temps and noise but nothing that an aftermarket cooler can´t fix...

Great review as always Hilbert!!!

I hope Nvidia doesn´t forget to lower the prices ot the 780 and Titan after this...

 

hows 1000 to 600 core 17% reduction?

 

It SPIKED down to 600MHz, but seems to stabilize towards slightly over 800MHz with the fan doing over 3000RPM. It may just as well go below 800MHz but the graph doesn't show us that. That would be 20% lower than advertised for the UBER mode.

 

a reference gtx 480 ran similar temps with a lot of noise. my gtx 480 with a thermalright shaman + vrm heatsink ran inaudible and topped out around 60C, that's with a beefy overclock and voltage increase. So things can be improved by a good cooler.

I'm guessing something like a Vapor-X, Sapphire Toxic, HIS IceQ, MSI lightning or Sapphire Dual-X would reduce the temps + noise by quite a lot.

 

Oh well I will wait for the custom versions with better cooling, no point in getting the reference if you don't plan to put it under water.

What was the timeline for custom verions? Mid november?

 

last I heard it was December. Also asder, do you know what drivers were used for all of these 290x reviews?

EDIT: nvm, I see you answered my question in the other thread. thanks

 

Can range anywhere between 10-25c...depends on type of cooler. Case cooling comes into it as well.

Here's one example:

 

Good card and good value, begging for a waterblock this thing would fly while being almost silent. Better than the Titan and 780 regarding price and performance ratio.

 

yeah, the only way seems to be either waterblock or some good 3rd party cooler . Great price, I wonder how low the price will drop if nvidia drop the 780 price and price the 780ti competitively.

 

R9-290X Vs. GTX780/780Ti, are two identical in performance and price, only from power consumption and temp/noise AMD looses a bit, that's why its cheaper, honestly I think the decision for opting for one or another it as to be in personal taste and features like Eyefinity, Mantle, Cuda, G-Sync etc..

 

My gigabyte 7970GHZ stables at 69C at FULL load. Thats far from that ...
Thats why i hate in reviews you get standard samples , which NO ONE buys ...

 

You can check the performance of a custom 780 with the 290X by opening 2 tabs side by side and compare their performance in games etc. It's the easiest way to do it afaik.

 

Are the GFX cards tested in the BF3 test with 100% usage?
If not how can the test give a correct result?

Im running my 2500K@4600mhz with 670 GTX SLI and nor my CPU or GPU is under 100% usage

 

I couldn't help myself...

Bought myself a pair to CFX.

I will, however, be fitting them with a aftermarket cooler as soon as I can for obvious reasons...

Now to ebay the old'ens

 

Keep us posted in performace, temps etc. :thumbup:

 

What were your oldens?

 

Will do, here tomorrow with any luck! May need to do some cable management for once xD

780's - I'm hoping the switch the AMD will mean less driver crashes xD

 

Aftermarket coolers with this card will be a winner.