Partner-company I'm working with (they are probably bigest Asus partner here in Serbia) since few days ago has a stock full of brand new (!?) cards Asus R9290-4GD5: http://www.asus.com/rs/Graphics_Cards/R92904GD5/overview/ ..and as their partner I can get them dirty cheap: 202,58€ + 20% VAT = total 243€ (3 years warranty) I'm aware od that AMD stock leaf blower, it's noise and temps above 90 Celsius while runing demanding games and benchmarks, if I buy that card for sure I'll dump that stock AMD cooler and change it with some decent aftermarket cooler. I'm thinking about buying one card for me and another one for my older son's gaming rig, although my gaming in past 6 month is close to zero, lack of free time In our gaming rigs both of us are using Asus GTX760-DC2OC-2GD5 like that one in my specs, both are the same rock-solid OC'ed and perfectly doing it's job for 1080p gaming. I don't think we are going to game above 1080p in next 2 years because 24" Samsung LCD's we're using atm are just fine both for me and for him. But... I'm a bit concerned about those cards from the title, where they got all those Asus 290 cards with stock cooler and now selling them for such low price? Maybe those cards are refubrished or something else is going on there? I'm smelling something fishy here with those 290 from title, don't want to get myself into infinite RMA procedure-loop of those cards both for me and my son, I don't have time for that. Just for example how those cards are cheap from same company atm I can get: ASUS R9280-DC2T-3GD5 (189,08€ + 20% VAT) MSI N760 TF 2GD5/OC (212,03€ + 20% VAT)...etc Card like that one in my specs is 212,71€ + 20% VAT here. What do you say Guru's, to risk buying 2x Asus R9290-4GD5 or not?
do ya self a favour, i just went through 7 months of issues with two r9 290x's im not saying i am right but from my experience, i wouldn't bother with high end AMD cards atm maybe worth a look at an NVidia cards that has less driver or black screen issues, i'm probs a bit off with AMD atm, but after spending 840 quid on 7 months of issues who wouldn't be ? i say look at NVidia maybe you'll save yourself the problems i had and are that's known with these cards even though they say its been fixed? just my opinion and bad experience from my last upgrade of 2x r9 290x's
Indeed. Ne radi to komsija. Forget it, those 290's reference are just not good. Quite number of issues can come out...Save it, wait little more then decide. Not worth a risk.
Thinking the same as you guys, think I'm gonna wait some time... After all I'm aiming at GTX 970 as next gaming card both for me and for my older son but I'm gonna waiting for additional month-two-three for (I hope) GTX 970 price drop, then to throw both GTX 760 we are using atm into younger son's gaming rig for 760 SLI... Although personally I've never had an RMA neither for my business or home gaming or HTPC computers (can you imagine that, 30 years in front of all kinds of computers from C-64/A500/yxz PC's... and not a single RMA, probably because I look closely with 8 eyes before buying some new HW for my rigs ) this time with those R9 290 I'm thinking that my lucky star is going to turn back to me. Probably the best scenario for me is to skip this fishy/bargain 2x R9 290 purchase and save myself from throuble and hair pulling because of all kinds of problems with drivers and 290/290X stability issues I'm seeing here on Guru3D. edit (for Undying) Ma to je ono zemo kada novcanik svrbi za kupovinu neceg boljeg/jaceg, a to bolje/jace ti ustvari i nije realno potrebno. Kao i kod žena: uvek je tudja i bolja i sladja
I must be one of those that where lucky with it's r9 290, bought it december last year, reference one, not once i had a black screen, bsod or any problems of the like, run @ 70c on load with a costum profile set to 65%, sure its loud, but i can live with that since im used to my h80 @ max --'
Racayo - you not the only one. I've had Sapphire R9 290x(reference version) for almost a year now and been using it with MSI Afterburner software(for a fan control, OCing and screen shots/videos). Card never goes over 80c (even when OCed running Furmark/Crysis3 torture tests) nor did i ever have a black screen/any problems with it whatsoever. The only game i had problems with was WatchDogs but then again my buddy had the same crashes with his 780ti on it.
Shame that the prices are going up here and i would have to upgrade my psu, else i would buy another one. Ordered a msi one that costed 397e, but they were sold out at the time so the retailer called me and and asked me if i wanted an asus one, i said yes and they even lowered the price of that one for me since i buy things from them all the time, spent 379e with delivering costs included, it was a great deal at the time
I have the ASUS DCU II R9 290, and I purchased another one yesterday to crossfire. Awesome card. They are really quiet and run really cool. I had that black screen bug when using the HDMI out on the graphics card to HDMI on my TV. The easy fix was to use a DVI-HDMI adapter from the GPU to the TV, the black screen bug has NEVER happened since in 6 months.
Just wait a few months and AMD will have released the R9 390X GPU's and Nvidia will counter that with the GTX980Ti and probably a GTX970Ti or something like that as those 970's are selling like hotcakes.
Had a reference 290 for 6 months, not a single problem with it. Upgraded to a Vapor-X, not a single problem with it either.
No I would not buy a reference 290X even if it seems like it's a good deal. AN now with GTX 970 I feel like R9 290X is pretty much worthless.
