AMD R9 290X Review

If you don't like Tom's style of reviews, head to Linus Tech Tips, and you'll just get an unboxing. :lol: (No offense Linus).

Edit: Pahaha! the video posted behind me, full load of the fan nearly blew his screen off the wall. :')
 
Last edited:
BillyCool said:
Honestly, this is a terrible review (video) in my opinion.

1) You complained about the cooler being ugly. That is a personal preference, personally I like the way it looks and I dislike the one from nvidia. Yes the Titan one. Yes, it's not the same in terms of build quality, but that's not a reason to dislike a GPU in general. After all, at 550$ and with the performance you get, I think that's really not something to complain about.

2) You keep complaining about the 95 degree temperature but you seem to ignore the fact that it's configured by default to run at these temperatures. It's like nvidia's boost 2.0, they have set the maximum temperature to 95 degrees that the card just boost as high as it can reaching that number. Again, this is fully customizable so complaining about it is not sensible.

3) You compared it with an aftermarket 780 from MSI, advising us to buy that one of those instead, completely ignoring the fact that there will be aftermarket 290X with better optimised drivers that MIGHT perform better, cooler and quieter. How exactly is this a fair comparison?

4) You claim that because it runs so hot, it doesn't/can't overclock. Yet, you didn't even talk about how the new Powertune technology works or even cares to manually do something yourself. Also, no aftermarket cards are out yet so that statement is invalid.

5) You didn't talk about any of the technologies that come with the card, especially Mantle and TrueAudio or even specifications.


All in all, this is totally against AMD. You said that their cooler is "shit" (your word), that it's ugly, that it doesn't perform well or overclock. You didn't even respect the effort these guys put into this card considering their situation. On the contrary, for almost 10 minutes you kept advertising nvidia's reference cooler and even advised us to buy one of their cards. All that in a REVIEW.

A review is supposed to give us information about a product, it's pros and cons, features that come with it etc. What you did was mostly an unfair comparison video between 780 and 290X.
Click to expand...

you haven't watched the video have you.
a review is supposed to give you the facts so talking a lot about mantle is utterly pointless because there is no game utilizing it yet and still he even talked for a minute or two about it.
the cooler is shit, there is nothing to argue about it. it runs hot, takes ages to cool down and isn't as quiet as the nvidia one. it looks cheap because it is made of plastic and just because you seem to be into cheap materials doesn't mean the majority or even 50% agree with you.
the 95 degree limit you are talking about is absolutely nothing to be proud of because that means that a 780 performs the same but 15 degrees cooler and it's not rocket science to know that a card will die sooner if it runs hotter.
He did mention that he wants to try to overclock the card with an aftermarket cooler or a waterblock but THERE ARE NONE, so all he can do is tell us assumptions which again DO NOT BELONG IN A REVIEW. That is also the reason why he recommended the MSI gaming 780, there are no aftermarket coolers for the 290x and there will be none at release, so until there are aftermarket coolers you would be a maniac to buy one of these, no to mention that an aftermarket cooled 290x would come in at the same price as an MSI gaming 780 and still probably run hotter to still perform even.

So once again to sum it up for your hurt AMD loving butt:
The cooler is cheap, most people dislike the looks, it runs hot, it's nearly at the same price as a 780 while getting annihilated by the MSI Gaming 780, you don't know what a review is.

/edit
OH, it's 6 months late. Half a circle. In half a year nvidia will release the 8xx series which will utterly crush AMD once again. if that isn't a crushing defeat then i don't know what is.

/edit2
OHHHHH and he also compared the reference 290x with the reference 780 and the reference 780 cooler still crushed it and the performance was only the same!
 
Last edited:
Quite certain my cat's would be too scared to go near my computer even if it was nice and toasty with that card.... Absolutely crazy how loud that thing is, even at only 40%
 
stahp posting bad youtube links boys, use the proper flippin' tags!! we've reminded y'all about this for months now! Next person who posts one wrong is gettin' Pincered...
 
I originally tried to post it as an URL but it got forcibly embedded! :-P Anyway, cheers for fixing it up.
 
Right, Tom thanks for the review as usual cut-throat no bullshit stuff!! I like the way you do it now as well, no showing scores in the video.

Its amazing how in 40 minutes you seemed to have upset the entire internet :lol:

I think, I made a wrong decision getting this! I don't like noise :(
 
SuB said:
stahp posting bad youtube links boys, use the proper flippin' tags!! we've reminded y'all about this for months now! Next person who posts one wrong is gettin' Pincered...
Click to expand...

i don't see that happening until you either put in a button in the reply section or autoconvert youtube links to the proper tag.

MrKambo said:
Right, Tom thanks for the review as usual cut-throat no bullshit stuff!! I like the way you do it now as well, no showing scores in the video.

Its amazing how in 40 minutes you seemed to have upset the entire internet :lol:

I think, I made a wrong decision getting this! I don't like noise :(
Click to expand...

did you preorder one? you mad man, never preorder anything.
 
MrKambo said:
Right, Tom thanks for the review as usual cut-throat no bullshit stuff!! I like the way you do it now as well, no showing scores in the video.

Its amazing how in 40 minutes you seemed to have upset the entire internet :lol:

I think, I made a wrong decision getting this! I don't like noise :(
Click to expand...

In all fairness we did TRY to politely hint you in the other direction :P

SeekaX said:
i don't see that happening until you either put in a button in the reply section or autoconvert youtube links to the proper tag.
Click to expand...

Aye I'm looking into it, if people post a url the forum seems to have a mind of it's own!! Some bad code from the people who set it up before I got my mits on it and put in the new shiny proper youtube tags.. I'll fix that at some point
 
SuB said:
In all fairness we did TRY to politely hint you in the other direction :P
Click to expand...

yeah i realise that now, but dont you ever just wanna take a chance on the underdog hoping kicks seven different shades of shit out of its competitor!

that was me 5am this morning :lol:

ill sort this out now i reckon
 
I love to support the underdog ( I mean lets be honest, if I didn't I'd be helping different forums/websites than this one :P as it kinda started as an underdog in my eyes but has grown to much better things ) . But there's a difference between supporting and making a mistake :P

I'm sure you'll be able to slap a waterblock on it and get your money's worth.
 
ShaunB-91 said:
Not fair. :(
Click to expand...

ive been waiting months for new cards lol! thats the best one i can get for my money, and its on sale be silly not too

SuB said:
I love to support the underdog ( I mean lets be honest, if I didn't I'd be helping different forums/websites than this one :P as it kinda started as an underdog in my eyes but has grown to much better things ) . But there's a difference between supporting and making a mistake :P

I'm sure you'll be able to slap a waterblock on it and get your money's worth.
Click to expand...

i know what you're saying! well i admit, even when being hinted in the other direction i made a mistake, sue me :p
 
Oh dear... oh dear, oh dear, oh dear :lol:

Man, AMD messed up on cooling :( Those temps are a joke, how AMD can release a card with a bad as a cooler as the one on the 290x is shocking.
Price and performance is great, if only they had slapped a good cooler on the 290x it would have been a perfect card.

We will have to wait and see if aftermarket coolers can save the 290x, thing is though, aftermarkets will only make the card more expensive.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

WYP
Lian Li LANCOOL 207 PC Case Review
Replies
0
Views
364
WYP
WYP
tinytomlogan
AMD Radeon RX 7800 XT Review
Replies
0
Views
642
tinytomlogan
tinytomlogan
J
New Zen6/Zen6c details ?🙄
Replies
1
Views
202
Dicehunter
Dicehunter
WYP
xTool P2 CO2 Laser Cutter Review
Replies
0
Views
2K
WYP
WYP
WYP
ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Dark Hero Review
Replies
0
Views
670
WYP
WYP
Back
Top