AMD Radeon R9 290 reviews

[tajoh111]

They said the 290x was loud. The fan %pct range he provided for the 290 where the fan got loud also sounds about where AMD cards in the past have been.

http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=...5&postcount=52

Also I believe they test these on an open bench setup.

I don't remember anything about noise being a problem in the original 290x review, he suggesting turning on 100% profile so the card doesn't throttle. Plus the open bench helps the fan stay quieter in a way. Basically by constantly pulling in fresh air(not hot stale air in a case) from a open environment, the card stays cooler and requires less fan speed. The smaller more enclosed the space something is, the higher it fan needs move to compensate for the warm air it is using to cool the heatsink.

tahoj111
It should be happy day for every graphic card buyer regardles what color they prefer or if they can remain neutral. Have lil fan and relax, let the AMD engineer do the work, hope they know better than you what are they doing. Let reviewers run the reviews looks to me most know what are they talking about.

I can assure you from all the forums I read, people know what are they buying and most are getting much better performance than the reviews because they know what has to be done as most of as do. Now I'm talking about the R9 290X, the R9 290 owners are probably going to be even more happy.

This isn't about engineering as I am sure the card runs fine as long as the temperatures are cooler than 95Cs. Its a marketing question more than anything and AMD trying to put as positive a light on their cards as possibly while hoping people ignore other things.

They are testing if you give customers enough performance, will customer ignore noise warnings. Do customer care that these cards are being pushed to their limits for overclocking headroom. I.e if you pushed gtx 780 as hard as these cards, I am sure you would get a card faster than this and with Nvidia's cooler, it wouldn't be this noisy.

I have given this card praise for its value and been pretty negative of Nvidia recently if you read my post history.

If customers continue to ignore the heat and noise issue, it will just get worse and worse. From what i remember, x950's have been the sweet spot for performance and noise. This pushes in the opposite direction. If we continue to ignore the issue, it will just get worse and worse and worse. If both sides become like this and we get cards that have great performance because they are pushed to the max, but are so unbearably loud that everyone has to underclock or lower their fan profile, it has the potential to ruin consistency of cards and review performance.

I think the 290 can be a good card, a very good card, but i wouldn't touch a reference design and I am pretty sure this sentiment is shared more than a few reviewers.