AMD Radeon R9 290 reviews

[KiSUAN]

Kind of a preview of what should probably be the result of a non ref version from HiS

Update: Based on your feedback, I took the IceQ X2 cooler off the HIS Radeon R9 280X and stuck it on our R9 290 sample. Cooling was dramatically improved. The FurMark stress test maxed out at 76 degrees while the card never exceeded 63 degrees in Crysis 3 and Battlefield 4. So it seems as expected the board partners will be able to solve the heat issues of the reference card.

http://www.techspot.com/review/736-a...290/page8.html

[Krizby87]

wow talk about crappy ref cooler :/, hopefully better cooled custom cards will appear soon .

[DeathReborn]

I think it is time AMD sacked whomever is responsible for the reference coolers of late and bring in some fresh ideas. Far too often the coolers are holding the true potential back, almost like Intel CPU coolers have done.

[Tim]

You really wont care that much in a couple of weeks when they will be available in better numbers with all those dual tripple fan coolers.

I would slightly disagree with that, yes it will be an improvement, but at this time we should really have coolers that exhaust the air out of the chassis, not expel it everywhere. People's cases get smaller and smaller, and these multifan designs dissipate heat everywhere. NVidia's cooler design is simply superior. If I'd get a 280 I'd be very tempted to have a separate WC loop but would have to get creative with radiator placement.

Seems like this time you can have your cake and eat it, but have slight indigestion following.

[tbone8ty]

I think the main reason is the plastic shroud. It echoes sound really well.

Titan cooler is made out of better materials.

[Olivon]

Initially, AMD had fan maxed @40% and it is in this configuration that we began our tests. Quickly, however, the results have proven to be very disappointing and frankly bad. If AMD contained some noise on paper, in practice during our tests in case, our sample quickly reached its limits ... and safe fan speed went up from 40 to 46%, then back down, went back ... What make unbearable card addition to disappointing performance.

Of course we shared our first impressions AMD, not chewing our words in the state we will advise our readers to flee this model! Faced with similar remarks a few colleagues and the price drop made ​​by Nvidia, AMD took a radical decision postpone the launch and try to rectify the situation. One good thing in our opinion.


Finally, the noise certainly increase significantly on paper, but in our case, there is no real difference: they spend a permanent oscillation between 43.2 and 46.7 dBA to 47.0 dBA fixed. Leaves not to offer silence, however, AMD has finally performance. A lesser evil is probably the best compromise that could happen for this AMD Radeon R9 290.

Our sample has maintained its maximum frequency accuracy in any game, but was generally below, reaching down 790 MHz in the most serious cases, which is significantly better than the 662 MHz met at the start!

http://www.hardware.fr/articles/910-...ses-watts.html

[tbone8ty]

Its not surprising as its pretty much the same cooler as the 7970 ref design. I sure hope they pay attention next generation

[Heinz68]

The R9 290 has better supply at Newegg, 4 are listed as "add to cart", while all R9 290X are on "auto-notify"

[Hornet331]

the 290s are in stock pretty much anywhere here.

http://geizhals.at/eu/?cat=gra16_512..._R9+290#xf_top

for ~350€ its a bargain.

reminds me a lot of the 5870, which i bought for 390€ back then (with WC).

[NapalmV5]

amazing performance for the 400$ mighty impressive!

4x of these at 1600$ bargain of the century!

[SubZero.it]

Are there any tests under water?

Sent from Nexus 5

[Heinz68]

Are there any tests under water?

Sent from Nexus 5

Can't find any official review, there are plenty of under water benches posted by real owners, but mainly R9 290X.
I found tnis post on another forum posted by 'youra6', R9 290 CFX OC - 3DMark 11 score P19689

youra6

R9 290 CFX @ 1100/1400mhz under water, stock volts
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/7456119

impressive. Imagine the score once I push this thing closer to 1300Mhz... Gonna run the test again; killing all my unneeded processes in the task manager.

[Zipelgas]

waited and waited for the 290/x to come out and be usable, after selling my 780, but finally gave up and bought the 780 again yesterday for 350€ was brand new.

[vario]

If anyone still has any doubt, this article clears the waters.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7501/a...fan-algorithms

[Tim]

Part of my motivation here is to make sure that we send the right message to AMD that we don’t want louder cards. I believe that message has been received loud and clear from what I understand. It’s very important to me that we don’t send the message to AMD or NVIDIA that it’s ok to engage in a loudness war in the pursuit of performance; we have seen a lot of progress in acoustics and cooler quality since the mid-to-late 2000’s, and we’d hate to see that progress regressed on. A good solution delivers both performance and great user experience, and I do believe it’s important that we argue for both (which is why we include performance, power and noise level data in our reviews).

Wholeheartedly agree.

On a side not, we need a third party cooler that exhausts out of the case asap.

[SubZero.it]

If anyone still has any doubt, this article clears the waters.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7501/a...fan-algorithms

Thanks! Great to see they solved the throttling performance with only a driver update...simply increasing fan speed in the end.
I'll wait for a MSI R290 Gaming.


Sent from Nexus 5

[Heinz68]

NordicHardware reports;
Asus top models of Radeon R9 290/290X gets most advanced circuit board so far.

Both cards to use the DirectCU II cooler, here is how the cooler looks on the R9 280X


Both cards on the market sometime in December.
Read more at NordicHardware here is Google translate

[SubZero.it]

NordicHardware reports;
Asus top models of Radeon R9 290/290X gets most advanced circuit board so far.

Both cards to use the DirectCU II cooler, here is how the cooler looks on the R9 280X


Both cards on the market sometime in December.
Read more at NordicHardware here is Google translate

Cool!
Is HIS still making special version that exhausts hot air outside of the case? Like the Ice-Q?

Sent from Nexus 5

[Sparky]

NordicHardware reports;
Asus top models of Radeon R9 290/290X gets most advanced circuit board so far.

Both cards to use the DirectCU II cooler, here is how the cooler looks on the R9 280X


Both cards on the market sometime in December.
Read more at NordicHardware here is Google translate

Why does that left fan look so weird

[yojimbo197]

Why does that left fan look so weird

It's probably just the angle of the shot. If the 290 CUII card uses the same fans as the 280, they are both 100mm fans.

[STEvil]

it looks weird because it is weird

[spursindonesia]

Why does that left fan look so weird

It's probably just the angle of the shot. If the 290 CUII card uses the same fans as the 280, they are both 100mm fans.

I think that's a different shaped fan compared to the right one (which was more conventionally designed), it's like a being influenced with turbine/blower type fan, perhaps because of its position at the outermost part facing the rear backplate that necessitate it to be able to exhaust the airflow somehow.

[Heinz68]

Why does that left fan look so weird

Probably to push some air out. This might not be exactly how the R9 290X/290 will look like, I did see some DirectCU II coolers with same fans.

From ASUS promo R9 280X page

CoolTech Fan
Proprietary CoolTech fan consists of a hybrid blade and bearing design, with inner radial blower and outer flower-type blades. These provide multi-directional airflow to accelerate heat removal and enable highly stable graphics performance.

Read much more and picture here

[STEvil]

"enable highly stable graphics performance"

I actually lol'd at the marketing speak. The fan design is a joke, the inner "blower" fins are tiny and just look pretty for the most part lol.

[Olivon]

It seems that's possible to flash 290 to 290X according to PCGH :

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/AMD-Ra...S-Mod-1097468/

It seems to work for some users.