AMD R9 290X Review

[Jeff_s510]

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've read my mind and said it exactly how i wanted to.... AMD have given Nvidia no reason to step up there game.

 

[Silver Sparrow]

The written review was well worth the time to read and soak up. I wish the same effort was put into the video review (more a discussion than reviewing). For the first time ever (for me) the written review was more enjoyable and had less swearing... either way the info was plenty and clear. Cheers!

I feel a little 'bleh' afterwards however :frown: Too high expectations, I should have known better.

As for mantle isn't it for all of EA's latest Frostbite engine based games? [For me most importantly Dragon Age: Inquisition]

 

[SuB]

I'm not holding my breath on Mantle.. When they cornered the Dice guy at the nVidia event (the 3 person frank talk press conference thing) they basically laughed at it... Saying it's just ANOTHER thing people will have to program for and that it's daft to create yet ANOTHER api... Dice/EA were likely paid to utilize it (otherwise what's the point) considering how BF3 was heavy on nVidia and how the PhysX stuff suddenly went very quiet after it was mentioned a few times prior to the main advertising campaign started to gear up for BF4.. I think AMD came in with a big offer and asked them to program for Mantle...

This is of course all speculation, but to switch vendors between bf3 and bf4... makes you wonder doesn't it. Considering the engine has only really had cosmetic tweaks since bf3 and most of the promised tech in bf3 was dropped anyway..
meh, we'll see..

 

[looz]

The only important bit about Mantle is this twitter conversation.

 

[Greenback]

Not allowing aftermarket coolers from the go, seems to me like cutting off your nose to spite your face, With the price range this is at it's more for ppl who take pride in how their rig looks and given that have a preference towards the coolers on the Gpu. Given you could of been waiting 3 months for this to come out and now possibly wait another 2-4 months b4 amd allow 3rd party which is getting into next gen area I think they are saying go and buy NVidia with the cooler you want that goes with your build.
If I pay extra for an asus card I want ppl to look in my rig and know it with out having to ask Just my opinion

For those peed off at tom because his review doesn't match everyone else he says amd don't cherry pick what they send out so he could of got screwed over on the silicon lottery or less worried about upsetting the big name companies

 

[Silver Sparrow]

The only important bit about Mantle is this twitter conversation.

Thanks for that snippet looz.

 

[SieB]

Mantle has huge potential, but like people have said it's another thing for people to program for.
The thing is though, if it can offer the performance increase they say it can then it is something worth while and shouldn't be ignored. Why continue to use DX11 which holds performance back and offers less optimization?

G Sync is also good, but the thing with G Sync is you have to have a compatible monitor. So to be able to use G Sync you need to spend a couple of hundred quid just to be able to use it and most likely there will be a premium on monitors with G Sync. Also, not everyone games on a monitor, myself included, I game on a 47" HD TV.

Point is, the argument for Mantle being just another thing to program for can be compared to G Sync as another thing people need to buy.

Both have great potential, but I think Mantle is the better option to go for because not only is it free and will cost you nothing, it will (supposedly) give you increased performance and optimization in games.

 

[Tripp]

already done, got the 780 Classy on order

I ended up canceling my preorder this morning after toms damning reveiw

 

[barnsley]

Goddammit AMD. You can't design coolers, leave it to the pros. I wish they'd stop trying to be Nvidia with the cooler. If companies like artic will release coolers that'll fit it I'd be tempted as it'd be a massive upgrade for me. They better let companies put their own coolers in or they'll be loosing alot of customers.

AMD trying to be either Intel (those effing 9590/9370 CPUs) and now Nvidia? Gah please stop.

 

[MrKambo]

I ended up canceling my preorder this morning after toms damning reveiw

get the classy

 

[Zoot]

Lulz, everybody is up in arms about the cooler. True, it leaves a lot to be desired, but the after market non reference coolers will take care of that.

I might actually get one for Christmas (needless to say with an after market cooler) if the price ends up less than €500 like Fudzilla is saying today.

 

[Gurt11]

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.

The written review was well worth the time to read and soak up. I wish the same effort was put into the video review (more a discussion than reviewing). For the first time ever (for me) the written review was more enjoyable and had less swearing...

I felt kinda the same after I watched the video.
But maybe that's just the way it is. AMD did fook up the cooling on this thing. Saying it's ok that it runs on 95°C is no excuse to not even try and make it better and/or quiter.
But the performance ís there. This stock card, goes on par or over the stock 780. Plus it has the price advantage. (Certainly here on European mainland it seems)
More information on features like Mantle or TrueAdio ís to be desired in a review imo. I know mantle is not implemented yet, but even then, I don't think a lot of people know what exactly this is and what this cóuld possibly mean to the gaming market. Feel free to put a lot of question marks around it though.

Just to be clear: I would not advise anyone at this point in time to go and get a stock 290X if they have the funds for a GTX780. But I can understand why they feel the way they feel about the video review.

 

[Silver Sparrow]

The more I read about the 290X, the more AMD have done it again. Too early out of the gates with designing a card 'purely aimed' for 4K gaming. Can anyone give me £3k for a 4k monitor please? [1440p has hardly taken off!]

 

[Tripp]

get the classy

i want to water cool so it must be reference

 

[WYP]

AMD do need to try harder in the cooling department.

It's understandable that designing new coolers is an expensive process but those temps are awful, even if they say 95 degrees is ok for this card, 95 degrees is far beyond my comfort zone.

Hopefully the gpu vendors release these cards with some good coolers or water blocks soon.

I didn't find this review a good watch, while i understand that all data from benchmarking was on the website, i would have like at least some comparison of benchmark or game results in the video review.

 

[RealTeflon]

Mantle has huge potential, but like people have said it's another thing for people to program for.
The thing is though, if it can offer the performance increase they say it can then it is something worth while and shouldn't be ignored. Why continue to use DX11 which holds performance back and offers less optimization?

What sort of performance is lost going through the current DX11 APIs now? Are we loosing 3-5% or something significant like 20%+? How does one profile the API to find out the overhead?

Cheers

 

[barnsley]

I wonder what the 290 will be like?

 

[ShaunB-91]

I wonder what the 290 will be like?

Shizer.

 

[SieB]

What sort of performance is lost going through the current DX11 APIs now? Are we loosing 3-5% or something significant like 20%+? How does one profile the API to find out the overhead?

Cheers

I'm not sure on the exact figures but they have said mantle for BF4 is expected to bring around a 15-20% performance increase.

 

[barnsley]

Shizer.

we'll see I'm hoping that it'll be a toned down 290x but with better cooling options and at a cheaper price. That'll do me fine if that ends up being true although I am eventually getting more monitors so I'll need to dive into the relm of xfire/SLi so I'll be taking cooling/perfomance/noise above all.