Anandtech 290x review, 780 killer, Titan's Rival, for $549

[ofr057]

Umart in australia has the 290x listed as $700 , I am going to wait untill mantel is out and there's more aftermarket coolers

[mr moose]

Umart in australia has the 290x listed as $700 , I am going to wait untill mantel is out and there's more aftermarket coolers

 

Given the proximity of the 290 results to an overclocked 780 it may also worth waiting to see if the 780 drops in price and gets any improvement in drivers.

[beebskadoo]

You can always just grab a H220 and expand the loop to include the GPU... Fully watercooled systems are mostly for show but to achieve similar performance you don't need to fork out as much.

Or better yet, they should have given board partners access to the design in order to have Non reference coolers at launch, thus mitigating heat issues....

Why would I have to spend extra money to make the card perform within reason? 

[beebskadoo]

Given the proximity of the 290 results to an overclocked 780 it may also worth waiting to see if the 780 drops in price and gets any improvement in drivers.

The 290X at max OC (on the stock cooler) was bested by the 780 OC'd.

I suspect the 290 to perform a little less than a stock 780.

[mr moose]

The 290X at max OC (on the stock cooler) was bested by the 780 OC'd.

I suspect the 290 to perform a little less than a stock 780.

sorry I  left the x of the end. I meant 290x. 

[beebskadoo]

sorry I  left the x of the end. I meant 290x. 

Shame on you

[Lukiose]

Or better yet, they should have given board partners access to the design in order to have Non reference coolers at launch, thus mitigating heat issues....

Why would I have to spend extra money to make the card perform within reason? 

Throwing me such a question only bears no replies other than making yourself look like you're trying too hard to fire shots...

 

You don't have to, personally i won't be grabbing a 290X or any card for that matter until 20nm is out, since AMD has specified that the reference 290X is designed to run at 95c, has promised a full lifespan at those temperatures & the blower style cooler exhausts the heat out of your case, i personally don't find a problem with it. Nonetheless, aftermarket coolers would be great and i will wait and see.

 

What i don't understand is vehemently comparing a reference card on a sub-par stock cooler that was release 5 hours ago against aftermarket 780s that costs considerably more.

[mr moose]

What i don't understand is vehemently comparing a reference card on a sub-par stock cooler that was release 5 hours ago against aftermarket 780s that costs considerably more.

It has to be compared to something, what would you compare it to?

[Lukiose]

It has to be compared to something, what would you compare it to?

I mean it's definitely fine to compare it to something, but when people go all "95c omg my computer melts and my house turns into the surface of the sun!' despite it being a blower design & that AMD has stated that the card will have a standard lifespan despite running at such temperatures seems stupid to me.

 

It's not like early leaks have shown the 290X to 'Destroys Titan in performance!', but rather more of a 'Price/Performance' beast and it has pretty much lived up to the hype, especially when coming in at a pricepoint nobody expected.

 

The fact that it is sold out at several online retailers within a couple of hours is a testament that all the highly-pronounced heat issues aren't as much as a turnoff as it may seem, considering how cheap it is for it's performance relative to existing products.

[beebskadoo]

Throwing me such a question only bears no replies other than making yourself look like you're trying too hard to fire shots...

 

You don't have to, personally i won't be grabbing a 290X or any card for that matter until 20nm is out, since AMD has specified that the reference 290X is designed to run at 95c, has promised a full lifespan at those temperatures & the blower style cooler exhausts the heat out of your case, i personally don't find a problem with it. Nonetheless, aftermarket coolers would be great and i will wait and see.

 

What i don't understand is vehemently comparing a reference card on a sub-par stock cooler that was release 5 hours ago against aftermarket 780s that costs considerably more.

I'm not firing shots, I'm stating fact.

95C is too high, yeah the HW can handle it but what about the rest of the system? What about SFF builds? these temps are too high! Even setting the card into uber performance mode which has more aggressive fan profiles doesn't stop the card from hitting max temp.

Yeah you can set the temp target to 80 or 85 but you won't hit the GHZ mark that AMD set as the baseline...even though it's basically just the turbo.

I am saying that AMD needed to step up their game when it came to cooling these cards.

I wasn't necessarily making a comparison between a stock cooler and a non reference one, I was saying that they needed a better cooler out of the box because it's gonna be months (rumored) until non reference coolers launch.

I am pitting AMD up against Nvidia, I am holding AMD to their own standards that they have set for themselves, which I am disappointed to say that they fell short on this one

This chart is from PcPer.com.

It shows that after a short period of time when the card heats up, the clock speed drops drastically rather than staying level. This is due to the heating issues of the card. It simply can't handle itself... and that is why I am disappointed!

[beebskadoo]

I mean it's definitely fine to compare it to something, but when people go all "95c omg my computer melts and my house turns into the surface of the sun!' despite it being a blower design & that AMD has stated that the card will have a standard lifespan despite running at such temperatures seems stupid to me.

 

It's not like early leaks have shown the 290X to 'Destroys Titan in performance!', but rather more of a 'Price/Performance' beast and it has pretty much lived up to the hype, especially when coming in at a pricepoint nobody expected.

 

The fact that it is sold out at several online retailers within a couple of hours is a testament that all the highly-pronounced heat issues aren't as much as a turnoff as it may seem, considering how cheap it is for it's performance relative to existing products.

the being sold out isn't indicative of anything. The 7970 was sold out for weeks due to low yields.

The early benchmarks did predict a 'massive' performance boost over the Titan. But that wasn't AMD's fault, they didn't leak the info.

[mr moose]

I mean it's definitely fine to compare it to something, but when people go all "95c omg my computer melts and my house turns into the surface of the sun!' despite it being a blower design & that AMD has stated that the card will have a standard lifespan despite running at such temperatures seems stupid to me.

 

It's not like early leaks have shown the 290X to 'Destroys Titan in performance!', but rather more of a 'Price/Performance' beast and it has pretty much lived up to the hype, especially when coming in at a pricepoint nobody expected.

 

The fact that it is sold out at several online retailers within a couple of hours is a testament that all the highly-pronounced heat issues aren't as much as a turnoff as it may seem, considering how cheap it is for it's performance relative to existing products.

Yes, it sold out here in Aus too.  I thought most peoples issue with the 95 degree temp was not so much about the cards longevity or heating up their rooms (although some will say that) I thought more concerned that there is no room left in the card for better performance. If it is running at 95 now, it's apparent safe level, then to improve on these figures it will have to run hotter, a not so safe level.

[Lukiose]

I'm not firing shots, I'm stating fact.

95C is too high, yeah the HW can handle it but what about the rest of the system? What about SFF builds? these temps are too high! Even setting the card into uber performance mode which has more aggressive fan profiles doesn't stop the card from hitting max temp.

Yeah you can set the temp target to 80 or 85 but you won't hit the GHZ mark that AMD set as the baseline...even though it's basically just the turbo.

I am saying that AMD needed to step up their game when it came to cooling these cards.

I wasn't necessarily making a comparison between a stock cooler and a non reference one, I was saying that they needed a better cooler out of the box because it's gonna be months (rumored) until non reference coolers launch.

I am pitting AMD up against Nvidia, I am holding AMD to their own standards that they have set for themselves, which I am disappointed to say that they fell short on this one

This chart is from PcPer.com.

It shows that after a short period of time when the card heats up, the clock speed drops drastically rather than staying level. This is due to the heating issues of the card. It simply can't handle itself... and that is why I am disappointed!

Nice, now that is what i wanted to see, because if the card does throttle at 95c [AMD stated it will be fine] then they're shooting themselves in the foot.

The heat issue should be fine since the stock cooler is a blower [Hot air exhausted out of case] but now that you have shown that the card throttles at 95c, then we may have some trouble holding AMD up to the 'similar lifespan at 95c' claim.

[beebskadoo]

Yes, it sold out here in Aus too.  I thought most peoples issue with the 95 degree temp was not so much about the cards longevity or heating up their rooms (although some will say that) I thought more concerned that there is no room left in the card for better performance. If it is running at 95 now, it's apparent safe level, then to improve on these figures it will have to run hotter, a not so safe level.

Did AUS get the BF4 Game bundle pre-orders?

North America didn't....

[mr moose]

Did AUS get the BF4 Game bundle pre-orders?

North America didn't....

gigabyte, powercolor and saphire are all I've seen so far

[beebskadoo]

Nice, now that is what i wanted to see, because if the card does throttle at 95c [AMD stated it will be fine] then they're shooting themselves in the foot.

The heat issue should be fine since the stock cooler is a blower [Hot air exhausted out of case] but now that you have shown that the card throttles at 95c, then we may have some trouble holding AMD up to the 'similar lifespan at 95c' claim.

They said that the throttling took place after roughly 5 minutes of gameplay. Which honestly might be one reason some reviews show a big performance boost. If they let the card heat up like PcPer.com did, than the graphs would show differently.

That's why I said 95C is unacceptable.

the GHZ mark is unattainable under load with the stock cooler!

And don't expect any overclocking with the stock cooler either...

[beebskadoo]

gigabyte, powercolor and saphire are all I've seen so far

Yeah, until launch Newegg was saying 'Auto-Notify' under the game bundles, which it was rumored weren't going to be available in North America.

After the launch they took those cards off and only showed the cards without bundles.

AMD is shooting themselves in the foot with this one, though it could be because they already charge a decent amount more in the other markets that including a game might be viewed as a bargain.

Hard to tell though.

[nokturrduk84]

THEY JUST CAME BACK INTO STOCK!!  

ORDERED AND PAYED!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bye bye 5450.... You will NOT be missed.... 

Great choice. Congrats mate

[Sotti]

Hi guys,

 

From my point, I think the 780SC is the best you can get now. Some weeks ago I though the 290X would be clearly fast than mines but not now.

 

BTW, am I the only one thinking is a little bit stupid that uber mode?

 

I suffer the lack of vRAM in the 780 but I wouldn't change my 780SC SLI by 290X CF thinking in performance.

 

See you guys!

[RuecanOnRails]

I think people are way too concerned over the heat. The cards default fan profile is set to keep the card at 95.

GPU's are very resilient to heat, I'd be more interested in finding out what the max temp is before the card auto throttles, and/or shuts off. Safe  guards are put in place where temperatures won't damage a card unless you go out of your way to circumvent the safe guards. Who knows, might be able to run the card with a stable overclock at 110, with 112 being the throttle. The card will become unstable from the overclock generally before the heat causes issues.

 

Everyone who is freaking out over 95 seems somewhat silly to me. I've personally had overclocked GPU's which ran great at 100+ with 24/7 stability.

 

As much as I want this card, I will be waiting for after market coolers, just because I don't like enclosed blower coolers.

 

 

I'd also choose an AMD card over Nvidia this time around for a few reasons.

1. I believe Mantle and TrueAudio will add more to gaming than Nvidia's Non-Mantle and physx.

2. Price to performance seems much easier to swallow when upgrading hardware.

3. What I believe will be better linux support than Nvidia in the near future.

4. You can't mine Crypto-Currencies with Nvidia.

[beebskadoo]

I think people are way too concerned over the heat. The cards default fan profile is set to keep the card at 95.

GPU's are very resilient to heat, I'd be more interested in finding out what the max temp is before the card auto throttles, and/or shuts off. Safe  guards are put in place where temperatures won't damage a card unless you go out of your way to circumvent the safe guards. Who knows, might be able to run the card with a stable overclock at 110, with 112 being the throttle. The card will become unstable from the overclock generally before the heat causes issues.

 

Everyone who is freaking out over 95 seems somewhat silly to me. I've personally had overclocked GPU's which ran great at 100+ with 24/7 stability.

 

As much as I want this card, I will be waiting for after market coolers, just because I don't like enclosed blower coolers.

 

 

I'd also choose an AMD card over Nvidia this time around for a few reasons.

1. I believe Mantle and TrueAudio will add more to gaming than Nvidia's Non-Mantle and physx.

2. Price to performance seems much easier to swallow when upgrading hardware.

3. What I believe will be better linux support than Nvidia in the near future.

4. You can't mine Crypto-Currencies with Nvidia.

The card can't even stay at it's 1000Mhz rated clock speed due to the temp of the card....

It ramps down clock speed after it warms up.

[RuecanOnRails]

The card can't even stay at it's 1000Mhz rated clock speed due to the temp of the card....

It ramps down clock speed after it warms up.

 

 

Yes, it does that with the default temp set to 95. I'd like to see a more aggressive curve or scrap that all together and rely on safe guards to protect the hardware then push it to the thermal max. I've yet to see a single review which is willing to consistently push the card beyond the default 95 setting.

[beebskadoo]

Yes, it does that with the default temp set to 95. I'd like to see a more aggressive curve or scrap that all together and rely on safe guards to protect the hardware then push it to the thermal max. I've yet to see a single review which is willing to consistently push the card beyond the default 95 setting.

95 Is the max that is allowed in AMD's utility. That's It... that's the max

 

 

 'Fan speed is set to 40% maximum in "Quiet" mode and 55% in "Uber" mode, and in my testing I wasn't even able to reach that fan speed with my overclocking testing.' - Ryan from Pcper

The fans won't even ramp up to max...WHY!

[CwGoh]

I'm just hoping AMD has put an incompetent cooler on the 290X and the aftermarket ones allow it to overclock like hell, as the 7970 did.

[beebskadoo]

I'm just hoping AMD has put an incompetent cooler on the 290X and the aftermarket ones allow it to overclock like hell, as the 7970 did.

This is probably the case.