High DX11 CPU overhead, very low performance.

Sapphire reference cards yes.

 

....

 

Are you talking to me?

I owned a Raven 01 years ago.

The HAF-XM is not as bad case.

Even a vertical slot case like the Ravens will not solve a 3 slot cfx setup, believe me.

 

I already edited it when I saw it was that big. Anyway my sullotion is much easier to implement and cheaper than Custom watercooling loop. It might not look as good but it works

 

Look for the Silverstone Raven series. I personally recommend the RV-03 because it has cavernous amount of space for HDDs and the two 180mm fans blow directly over everything. That's the case in the link I posted.

A vertical desing is very good for reference cards actually, since they get the fresh cold air from the bottom fans and send all of it out.

I went with the Raven RV-03 three years ago, I have modded the fan stands so they give no vibration at all, and the case is amazing. I don't know about triple setups, but a dual setup should be a breeze in a Raven. Also there is the matter of the fan profiles with the 290(x) cards, I don't know what settings he has. The cards look very clumped to me. Keep in mind that most of them can work just fine at 95c, as they are rated for those temps.

 

I also owned a raven rv-2, i had massive problems with several graphics cards, because of heatpipes not working properly when turned 90°.
And i´m not the only one.
As in no graphics cards specifications you find information if they work properly vertical, i´ll never do that again.

 

No pun intended bro.

Cheap solution is ok when it's possible.

Here in the south of spain the climate is too hot to allow me to solve it this way.

My solution was a 1080 RAD with 4x180mmx32mm Phobya fans each side, here besides the HAF-XM case:

Maybe with dual slot GPUs it could solve the problem but with tri slot GPUs like the MSI 290X Lightning there is simply no space for a proper airflow even in a Raven case.

 

I'll just leave this quote here, from people that know how to explain things better than I do.

TL;DR: It depends on the orientation of the heatpipes themselves, 90% of the GPUs won't ever have a problem. Kyle Benet who is the owner of HardOCP and wrote the article I linked, has no problem at all with R9 290x Crossfire in the Raven.

EDIT: Nothing like your glorious setups, but it has survived a 45c ambient summer without even a hang, and everything overclocked

Spoiler

PS: I should have black sleeved cables, it looks like a mess but it's not :infinity:

 

I know the theoretical whay a heatpipe should work.
Can´t speak for the 290x, but i owned a gainward gtx 480 and changed it to a gtx 480 AMP and both overheated when turned. [solved the problem with a ****ing expensive] thermalright cooler.

If you believe me or not, but i took those cards to work, where we had an open test board configuration, and ran furmark. i turned it about 75° and temps went up by at least 15°C.

My personal conclusion is, that i think, that some of those cheap "heatpipes" are just metal pipes that contain sh**. did you ever open one of them?

 

If you have bad quality heatpipes, then what you say might actually happen. That the pipes are either not properly sealed, or not having good enough thermal conductivity and the water doesn't vaporize. Then it is a problem. The Fermi generation had a lot of ****ty coolers unfortunately.

My previous card was a Sapphire 6950 with heatpipe cooling and it behaved really nicely in the same position as I have the 7970 now.

 

@PRministerGR: Hmm, when I put together my next build I will definitely consider the Raven. I just finished my current one about two months ago. Tnx for the heads up

 

I got 6970, and it's hot like hell.
Can't really overclock core at all without it failing.
(It basically fail at like 80-90+ Celsius when a bit overclocked on core, and it get's to those temps really easily).

Reference cooler, always had those, don't wana again

 

It is a pity that they don't refine the design more, and give us something more sexy like the H440 W(which looks nice, but is warm an noisy), or the Phanteks Enthoo Pro (which is awesome, but not a vertical design).

There is really no successor to the Raven RV-03 yet. With some refinement and a bit more space in the back and some grommets and already set cabling positions, it would have been awesome and much better than most modern cases.

I had a modest amount of OC on my 6950, but it wasn't a reference card. With top end GPUs, you need good case ventilation, it matters more than most things.

 

I am pretty sure my system has quite good ventilation, not top notch of course.
It's HAF X, 2 big fans on top as well as H100, then side, front and back fan.

But then again i am not that knowledgeable about this stuff, i just see the fans and think, this blows

Damn when is that new Driver incoming, would love to see if they put the DX11 improved driver in W8 without having to mod (not that it's anything wrong with the mods per say, it just shouldn't be necessary).

 

This is getting wayyyy offtopic but this case is also very nice In Win 904. Just a few fans but comes out on top in benchmarks when it comes to temperatures.

 

4gb stacks but theoretically you could have like 4 stacks with a quad link interposer and a memory controller that cost 10 kajillion (scientific estimate) usd.

On Tonga (285) we saw better tessellation performance than the 290X but nothing else very special unless we looked at the specs its memory bus the 280 had a 50% wider bus and 50% more ram but worse performance on memory intensive tasks surely this means 1.2 Architecture is more efficient in handling some of these tasks.

 

http://arstechnica.co.uk/informatio...nfirms-4gb-limit-for-first-hbm-graphics-card/

It's actually a limit of 1GB per stack, for this HBM generation.

 

The theory is alway marvellous with AMD superior hardware.

The problems start when AMD try to take advantage of this superior hardware with subpar software.

As you said ultra-expensive solutions to solve HBM (phase 1?) problems are not practical solutions.

Yep 285 (tonga) is so good AMD left his flagship 295X2 without proper support for his two last features: VSR and freesync.

DX12 or GCN phase 5604953 will not solve this.

AMD and his customers NEEDS drivers, GOOD drivers and proper implementation of his OWN features like VSR and Freesync with more GPUs including 295X5 not only 285....

AMD can't always blame Nvidia or game developers for his problems.

 

Is there anything stopping them from putting 8 or 6 stacks there, instead of 4?

Tonga has on the fly differential data compression for ram, that's why it has only a 256bit bus. My guess that that's what the 3xx series will have too, but on top of HBM :3eyes:

 

They can only stack to 4 hi but can use 2 stacks of 4 hi. Or even 4 stacks of 4 hi. Expensive to do so.

HBM gen 2 can stack 8 high but the stacks are higher gb as well.