Review: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-r9-290x-hawaii-review,3650.html Thoughts? I would be tempted to pick this up if I did any serious PC gaming anymore.
Water cool it and crank that performance up? =] it sure sounds as a Titan competitor. I would wait till companies start coming out with FTW editions of it.
I hate Tom's so didnt even look at the review, but I am reading Anand's right now. here it is starting with the first test results page for anyone who wants to look at it as well: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7457/the-radeon-r9-290x-review/8 The stock cooler is always bad on modern cards, but especially bad on the 290X because it just sucks so much power and dumps a ton of heat out. Custom designs will do a lot better job.
So if you play Company of Heroes 2 and Metro: Last Light@ >1440p get an R9 290X. Otherwise buy a space heater and a GTX780?
WHUT ? I didn't even see that, fuck ! Hm, yeah, i think that if u buy a R9 u can game on 1080p for the rest of ur life without needing for an upgrade lol. Even tho my 660 TI does the job remarkably so far.
Yep, because Nvidia's next gen has been delayed due to really bad luck. Hynix had a fire that slowed production on the vram chips Nvidia uses and TSMC is having trouble getting their 20nm node working well. This pushed Nvidia's launch schedule of "Maxwell" generation cards back about 6 months. They have to release something to try and keep people from buying new AMD cards. Personally I think it is best to wait till after Christmas to buy any new GPU. By then we will know just how much performance gain AMD cards have in Frostbyte 3 engine games (and will have in Cryengine games such as Star Citizen). If the performance in the majority of the next gen games will greatly favor AMD then that is the way to go, but if Mantle doesnt deliver then Nvidia's next cards should be pretty beastly. The other small little extras you get with Nvidia cards are a nice bonus too if you choose to utilize them.
Still i doubt that nvidia will revamp its pricing policy... RAW power wise it'll be had to have a better bang for the buck. Even if i think that waiting for V1.1 of these cards would be better, with good cooler instead of the stock. Anyone saw a bench of the 290X based on builder (Asus xfx sapphire and the like) yet ?
By the way, anyone see any of these for sale ? They're like freaking OUT OF STOCK everywhere on the planet... Riot (or any other people saying "there is a moose aboot on the loose"), is there any good alternative to newegg.ca by any chance ? TIA folks
http://www.memoryexpress.com/Category/VideoCards Generally speaking I order 99% of my stuff through these guys since I can get local pickup here in Edmonton and they do price match.
Hm ASUS is re-releasing it with the directCU II in a few months, i wonder if it's worth waiting for it as it seems that the stock cooler for the R9 sucks. Thanks for the info Riot.
yes, custom designs are worth waiting for. The embargo on custom designs from the partners end next month.
Wow i've read customers reviews on the card and it's worth waiting for V2 for sure, everyone cringes about the heat and drivers problems... It's like Pirelli says "without control, power is nothing", like having a ducatti bike with dead tires lol.
Heat isnt the issue, people just dont understand the design. Not 5 generations ago both Nvidia and ATI/AMD had all their top cards running 90-95c. Graphics cards are always built to handle at least 100c temps. The 28nm process node from TSMC that the 290X uses has a max operating temp of 125 Celsius. SO yes a better cooler will give you lower temps and/or more overclock headroom, but the stock temperature of the card is fine since every component has been designed to run optimally at 95c.
Hm, the thing is that the card seems to crash when it reaches 95°C, maybe the drivers don't understand. Peeps get a lotta video crash playing BF4 for example. Also another major complaint tied to the heat is the fan noise and power consumption.