Confused yet again

[Zauski]

Hi all, again!

 

(some of you must hate me now)

 

Finally got my 290 returned and refunded. I was going to buy a replacement one, but more and more people are complaining about these black screens. I see a new comment/review at least twice a day.

 

It's making me almost not want to buy another one, but because of the UK (and nvidia) with their weird prices, the 290 is the only "good" card in my price bracket.

 

The only other thing that comes close is 960's, used 770's and other AMD cards.

[Najuno]

I would stick to the R9 290 and give it another try. A lot of people ride that hate train and rant about stuff that they don´t have. Same with nVidia´s GTX970. A lot of people never had those cards in there own hands but write in threads how bad the card performs due to its 'terrible and devastating' VRAM issue.

Just do not buy a reference design or an Asus DCUII design for the R9 290.

[Zauski]

I would stick to the R9 290 and give it another try. A lot of people ride that hate train and rant about stuff that they don´t have. Same with nVidia´s GTX970. A lot of people never had those cards in there own hands but write in threads how bad the card performs due to its 'terrible and devastating' VRAM issue.

Just do not buy a reference design or an Asus DCUII design for the R9 290.

 

I see your point for this. Also - what is wrong with the DCUII?

[Najuno]

I see your point for this. Also - what is wrong with the DCUII?

This design was taken 1 to 1 from the Asus GTX780 DCUII. But the PCB is different on those cards and so your VRM doesn´t get cooled apropriately. And that leads to bad results or crashes and blackscreeens.

 Up to a point where people couldn´t run the VRAM even in stock settings.

 

MSI and Gigabyte have decent R9 290 designs . And I would stick to the R9 290 because it is the most powerful solution in your bracket and the 4GB VRAM come in handy when playing games like shadows of mordor.

[Imakuni]

This design was taken 1 to 1 from the Asus GTX780 DCUII. But the PCB is different on those cards and so your VRM doesn´t get cooled apropriately. And that leads to bad results or crashes and blackscreeens.

 Up to a point where people couldn´t run the VRAM even in stock settings.

 

MSI and Gigabyte have decent R9 290 designs . And I would stick to the R9 290 because it is the most powerful solution in your bracket and the 4GB VRAM come in handy when playing games like shadows of mordor.

Ninja'ed

[Najuno]

Asus decides to make a quiet (therefore low cooling) design on one of the hottest chips around..... brilliant idea!

That wasn´t the issue it was a design failure because the PCB of the GTX780 and R9 290 was pretty similar in their measurments but not the same... bad idea from Asus.

[Briggsy]

I see your point for this. Also - what is wrong with the DCUII?

 

I have a DCUii 290 and the cooler is balls. the heatpipe direction is wrong for a 290 chip.

 

I replaced it with a G10. the card itself is really good, fully custom pcb layout, memory controller etc. but the cooler is only good for stock speeds. It buckles with even a small overclock.

[Zauski]

This design was taken 1 to 1 from the Asus GTX780 DCUII. But the PCB is different on those cards and so your VRM doesn´t get cooled apropriately. And that leads to bad results or crashes and blackscreeens.

 Up to a point where people couldn´t run the VRAM even in stock settings.

 

MSI and Gigabyte have decent R9 290 designs . And I would stick to the R9 290 because it is the most powerful solution in your bracket and the 4GB VRAM come in handy when playing games like shadows of mordor.

 

This is pretty much what happened to the Vapor-X card I had. Constant black-screens and the only fix was to change many things using MSI Afterburner.

[Zauski]

I have a DCUii 290 and the cooler is balls. the heatpipe direction is wrong for a 290 chip.

 

I replaced it with a G10. the card itself is really good, fully custom pcb layout, memory controller etc. but the cooler is only good for stock speeds. It buckles with even a small overclock.

 

I would personally go down that route but it's all money.

[Najuno]

I have a DCUii 290 and the cooler is balls. the heatpipe direction is wrong for a 290 chip.

 

I replaced it with a G10. the card itself is really good, fully custom pcb layout, memory controller etc. but the cooler is only good for stock speeds. It buckles with even a small overclock.

 

Yeah the PCB is good and and 3rd party cooler with G10 make this card very potent I think. Actually I had to think about you because I know you have an R9 290 from Asus .

 

This is pretty much what happened to the Vapor-X card I had. Constant black-screens and the only fix was to change many things using MSI Afterburner.

 

Try a Gigabyte or go with the solution that Briggsy has .

[Zauski]

Yeah the PCB is good and and 3rd party cooler with G10 make this card very potent I think. Actually I had to think about you because I know you have an R9 290 from Asus .

 

 

Try a Gigabyte or go with the solution that Briggsy has .

 

Forgot to mention but it's probably obvious - I'll only be playing in 1080p.

 

If I were to go with Briggsy's solution (sounds like a math equation), I'd have to have the card running on air for at least a month before I can dump a G10 on it, simply because I still have other things to upgrade (getting my i5 next month). On Amazon there is a 290 Tri-X for £5 more, though. And there's an XFX 290X for £20 more

[Najuno]

Forgot to mention but it's probably obvious - I'll only be playing in 1080p.

 

If I were to go with Briggsy's solution (sounds like a math equation), I'd have to have the card running on air for at least a month before I can dump a G10 on it, simply because I still have other things to upgrade (getting my i5 next month). On Amazon there is a 290 Tri-X for £5 more, though. And there's an XFX 290X for £20 more

Actually the XFX 290 was rated by people like Tony from TTL a really good GPU, and 20 pounds more hey that´s a good value for a top of the line card R9 290X .

 

The cooling design and the PCB are the same on the R9 290X like on the R9 290 from XFX. Please do NOT buy any reference R9 290(X) cards .

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Si_eX9FlBQQ

 

I really hope you mean XFX´s aftermarket cooler .