4 Weeks with Radeon R9 290X CrossFire @ [H]

[xoleras]

Well sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet...

I've got two 780Ti cards coming today...reading this kinda makes me think I should have just gone for the reference 290X cards.
.

I'd say you'd have to be pretty irrational to get the reference 290X CF over 780ti SLI with all metrics considered. The only advantage the 290X would have is literally cost and that hasn't been an advantage as of late due to the mining craze.

 

[Final8ty]

I'd say you'd have to be pretty irrational to get the reference 290X CF over 780ti SLI with all metrics considered. The only advantage the 290X would have is literally cost and that hasn't been an advantage as of late due to the mining craze.

Scan, the cheapest of each
290x £431.15. GTX 780 Ti £515.74

OcUK the cheapest of each
290x £469.99. GTX 780 Ti £549.95

You really are full of it.

 

[xoleras]

You really are full of it.

Like I said price is literally the only advantage the 290X can potentially have, everything else the 780ti does better by a large margin. Performance, acoustics, software, overclocking, etc. You can't buy something that is out of stock when non PC gaming miners buy the cards in lots of 100 at newegg and amazon.

 

[boxleitnerb]

I cannot understand how the author arrives at the opinion that 290X CF is better than Titan SLI (in Far Cry 3 which he mentions mainly). In the [H] review 290X CF does 43.3 fps avg, Titan SLI does 41.1 fps avg. That is basically the same. Titan would perform even better if the temp target were raised.
http://hardocp.com/article/2013/11/01/amd_radeon_r9_290x_crossfire_video_card_review/4

Almost same fps, even better min fps on Titan SLI and CF supposedly gives the better experience? Doubtful in my opinion.

 

[Final8ty]

Are you on the clock for AMD right now? Like I said price is literally the only advantage the 290X can potentially have, everything else the 780ti does better by a large margin.

You would of been ok before you edited your post to this.

I'd say you'd have to be pretty irrational to get the reference 290X CF over 780ti SLI with all metrics considered. The only advantage the 290X would have is literally cost and that hasn't been an advantage as of late due to the mining craze.

Which infers that they are now equal price give or take a few pounds.

 

[xoleras]

You would of been ok before you edited your post to this.

You can't buy something which is out of stock, besides, the 290X is creeping up in price every day when it is in stock. That's the point I was getting at. You can't buy something that isn't in stock when miners are buying those cards in lots of 100.

 

[Final8ty]

You can't buy something which is out of stock, besides, the 290X is creeping up in price every day when it is in stock. That's the point I was getting at. You can't buy something that isn't in stock when miners are buying those cards in lots of 100.

Besides which, even the overclocked 780 is faster than the 290X, so I don't even see the point in the 780ti. That's just me though.

Now you are moving goal posts to out of stock because price advantage and stock are 2 different things.
Just because the cheaper is out of stock does not mean that people can automatically afford the more expensive item that is in stock.

 

[xoleras]

Now you are moving goal posts to out of stock because price advantage and stock are 2 different things.

The 780ti is a better card, that was the main point. The only advantage the 290X has is price which is what I stated. In every other metric, it is worse - you can split hairs over "in stock" and price all day long, i'm not interested in continuing with that; i'm sure you know what I meant. Fact of the matter is these cards aren't in stock and they're also more expensive than they should be. Nobody in their right mind would buy a 290X at 620$ USD or a 290 at 500$ USD except a miner.

 

[Final8ty]

The 780ti is a better card, that was the main point. The only advantage the 290X has is price which is what I stated. In every other metric, it is worse - unless you want a hotter and louder card with AMD issues. You can split hairs over "in stock" and price all day long, i'm not interested in continuing with that; i'm sure you know what I meant. Fact of the matter is these cards aren't in stock and they're also more expensive than they should be. Nobody in their right mind would buy a 290X at 620$ USD or a 290 at 500$ USD except a miner.

The only person who needs to give it a break is you, the 780ti is a good card, no one said otherwise and the only one splitting hairs is you because you brought up the stock not me which both examples i give for price reasons which was the real point have plenty of stock and still cheaper than the 780TI, but the best Value card is the 290 of the lot.

 

[fentzinator]

I really enjoyed the subjective and non-technical article! Hope you can do more of these types of articles. Maybe you could do an update in another 4 weeks after newer drivers come out. Wish I could have a beer with you but I'm under 4 feet(actually 52 inches and more coming) of snow in Buffalo, NY. Happy Holidays to all!

 

[Derangel]

I cannot understand how the author arrives at the opinion that 290X CF is better than Titan SLI (in Far Cry 3 which he mentions mainly). In the [H] review 290X CF does 43.3 fps avg, Titan SLI does 41.1 fps avg. That is basically the same. Titan would perform even better if the temp target were raised.
http://hardocp.com/article/2013/11/01/amd_radeon_r9_290x_crossfire_video_card_review/4

Almost same fps, even better min fps on Titan SLI and CF supposedly gives the better experience? Doubtful in my opinion.

If you had actually fully READ the article you would notice that Kyle very clearly explains how he came to his conclusions. You are literally going by nothing more than FPS, which is a very stupid metric to use by itself. Kyle very clearly stated that he felt that when using the 290Xs the game felt like it was playing better and was delivering a better experience to him. How a game feels when you play it trumps pure FPS every single time.

 

[samuelmorris]

Helpful article, especially to a prospective buyer. Thing is though, one point I wanted to raise about the heat scenario. 55% is as high as the cards go in uber mode as far as I understand it, and in that scenario, the cards still reach their 95ºC limit, they just don't throttle very much if at all, as that's pretty much the balancing point. This means that in a room warmer than the standard 21-22ºC you will see the cards start throttling even in uber mode, so to get proper performance from them, you'll need to manually set the fan speed or use a dubious third-party application like Afterburner. I went through this once my HD4870X2s started to age, as the auto fan speed wouldn't set the fan speed high enough. It's really infuriating to deal with because there will always be a time where you forget to check the OSD and the cards reach 110ºC odd and reboot your PC in the middle of an online competitive game or something. In a small room like mine, with the window open, two HD4870X2s (which as far as I can tell put out a similar amount of heat to two 290Xs, maybe slightly less) would raise the temperature to around 26-27ºC in winter, around 30-31ºC in summer. With the window closed, about 32ºC in winter, about 36-37ºC in summer. At those ambient temperatures, keeping the GPUs at decent temperatures took almost all of the fan speed.

At first purchase the HD4870X2s only needed 45-55% fan speed to keep them around the 80ºC mark. As they got older though the required fan speed got higher and higher, until at the point I replaced them with the HD6970s, it took about 90-95% fan speed to keep the temps around 86-87ºC in gaming.
My concern is that the same thing will happen with the 290Xs. They are right at the very edge of their cooling capability now. Once they get old, the TIM on the cooler starts to weaken and they get dusty, people will end up just setting the fan speed to 100% when they game to avoid the risks. I suspect there may well come a time when even that isn't enough and they will end up playing with regular 290 performance or worse due to downclocking, along with the 60-70dB noise levels of a 6000rpm fan (probably nearer 7000rpm by that time as fan speeds go up a bit with age).

Single GPU in a well-ventilated case this may not be too much an issue, but in crossfire I think these cards really only have about a 2 year lifespan. I've happily strung out my HD6970 Crossfire setup three years already without issue, because the cards don't have terrible coolers. I've noticed the cooling performance get poorer as they've aged, but there's plenty of headroom left. The only real reason I'd be upgrading them is to get proper support for 4K resolutions. This is not a luxury I would have with the 290 series. What I may end up doing is getting a single regular 290 to tide me over until the die shrink, and then buy a pair of whatever those cards end up being, 390s or something.

--

Heat issues aside, I think it's very interesting that the 'tangible' performance was better on the AMD platform. General opinions I've read over the past few years suggest that at a given frame rate, the nvidia setups usually tend to feel 'smoother'. Clearly in the titles being tested here at least, that's no longer the case, perhaps even the reverse.

 

[Derangel]

Helpful article, especially to a prospective buyer. Thing is though, one point I wanted to raise about the heat scenario. 55% is as high as the cards go in uber mode as far as I understand it, and in that scenario, the cards still reach their 95ºC limit, they just don't throttle very much if at all, as that's pretty much the balancing point. This means that in a room warmer than the standard 21-22ºC you will see the cards start throttling even in uber mode, so to get proper performance from them, you'll need to manually set the fan speed or use a dubious third-party application like Afterburner. I went through this once my HD4870X2s started to age, as the auto fan speed wouldn't set the fan speed high enough. It's really infuriating to deal with because there will always be a time where you forget to check the OSD and the cards reach 110ºC odd and reboot your PC in the middle of an online competitive game or something. In a small room like mine, with the window open, two HD4870X2s (which as far as I can tell put out a similar amount of heat to two 290Xs, maybe slightly less) would raise the temperature to around 26-27ºC in winter, around 30-31ºC in summer. With the window closed, about 32ºC in winter, about 36-37ºC in summer. At those ambient temperatures, keeping the GPUs at decent temperatures took almost all of the fan speed.

At first purchase the HD4870X2s only needed 45-55% fan speed to keep them around the 80ºC mark. As they got older though the required fan speed got higher and higher, until at the point I replaced them with the HD6970s, it took about 90-95% fan speed to keep the temps around 86-87ºC in gaming.
My concern is that the same thing will happen with the 290Xs. They are right at the very edge of their cooling capability now. Once they get old, the TIM on the cooler starts to weaken and they get dusty, people will end up just setting the fan speed to 100% when they game to avoid the risks. I suspect there may well come a time when even that isn't enough and they will end up playing with regular 290 performance or worse due to downclocking, along with the 60-70dB noise levels of a 6000rpm fan (probably nearer 7000rpm by that time as fan speeds go up a bit with age).

Single GPU in a well-ventilated case this may not be too much an issue, but in crossfire I think these cards really only have about a 2 year lifespan. I've happily strung out my HD6970 Crossfire setup three years already without issue, because the cards don't have terrible coolers. I've noticed the cooling performance get poorer as they've aged, but there's plenty of headroom left. The only real reason I'd be upgrading them is to get proper support for 4K resolutions. This is not a luxury I would have with the 290 series. What I may end up doing is getting a single regular 290 to tide me over until the die shrink, and then buy a pair of whatever those cards end up being, 390s or something.

--

Heat issues aside, I think it's very interesting that the 'tangible' performance was better on the AMD platform. General opinions I've read over the past few years suggest that at a given frame rate, the nvidia setups usually tend to feel 'smoother'. Clearly in the titles being tested here at least, that's no longer the case, perhaps even the reverse.

Afterburner isn't dubious. Its probably the most popular GPU overclocking utility.

As for smoothness in CFX: AMD fixed that issue across the board with the 290/290X. They will be releasing more CFX frame time fixes for other cards soon-ish (January?).

 

[samuelmorris]

I'm aware of Afterburner's popularity, but I still found it somewhat unreliable when I last used it to control fan speeds. Perhaps that's changed recently. I didn't actually make any negative comments about smoothness with crossfire enabled, the issues I have with HD6970s is simply not officially supporting 4K at all. They do actually work fine in games, but they're a bit laggy at the desktop, whereas my much lower-spec (but officially supported) HD7770 is not.

 

[Derangel]

I'm aware of Afterburner's popularity, but I still found it somewhat unreliable when I last used it to control fan speeds. Perhaps that's changed recently. I didn't actually make any negative comments about smoothness with crossfire enabled, the issues I have with HD6970s is simply not officially supporting 4K at all. They do actually work fine in games, but they're a bit laggy at the desktop, whereas my much lower-spec (but officially supported) HD7770 is not.

How long ago did you use it? Afterburner has been good for a while now. At least on the cards I've used it on.

You mentioned that Nvidia is generally considered smoother. I was addressing that comment and explaining that AMD has vastly improved in that area.

 

[samuelmorris]

Fair enough - I wasn't actually referring to crossfire there though, just games performance in general.
It must have been about a year or so since I last tried Afterburner, as I say, the fan profiles on the HD6970s are good enough that it's not really necessary.

 

[fanboy]

I think we have not fully seen what the 290/290X was built for yet as GCN 1.1 has not ran Mantle and Nvidia may need Maxwell to keep up.

Mantle will deal blows to Intel and Nvidia at the same time as no one will need a high end Intel CPU or a high end video card that doesn't support Mantle.

 

[PNut12345]

I cannot understand how the author arrives at the opinion that 290X CF is better than Titan SLI (in Far Cry 3 which he mentions mainly). In the [H] review 290X CF does 43.3 fps avg, Titan SLI does 41.1 fps avg. That is basically the same. Titan would perform even better if the temp target were raised.
http://hardocp.com/article/2013/11/01/amd_radeon_r9_290x_crossfire_video_card_review/4

Almost same fps, even better min fps on Titan SLI and CF supposedly gives the better experience? Doubtful in my opinion.

You forgot to mention you can almost get 4 290Xs for the cost of 2 Titans...

 

[Derangel]

I think we have not fully seen what the 290/290X was built for yet as GCN 1.1 has not ran Mantle and Nvidia may need Maxwell to keep up.

Mantle will deal blows to Intel and Nvidia at the same time as no one will need a high end Intel CPU or a high end video card that doesn't support Mantle.

We'll see when it actually releases. People sure are putting a ton of faith on something that doesn't even have marketing benchmarks behind it yet, much less actual numbers and real world evaluations. Mantle could be amazing or it could be another PshyX, something neat but ultimately kind of pointless unless you already have a card that supports it.

 

[xoleras]

If you had actually fully READ the article you would notice that Kyle very clearly explains how he came to his conclusions. You are literally going by nothing more than FPS, which is a very stupid metric to use by itself. Kyle very clearly stated that he felt that when using the 290Xs the game felt like it was playing better and was delivering a better experience to him. How a game feels when you play it trumps pure FPS every single time.

I dunno. Frame time benchmarks at a ton of websites such as PCPer and guru3d still give the 780ti an edge over the 290X in terms of smoothness and frame time consistency as tested by frame capture. I can't see the Titan being far different than the 780ti in terms of frametime consistency. That said, I can appreciate the remarks made in the review.

Anyway, AMD has improved the CF290X in terms of frametime variance and it is pretty close to even with nvidia in that respect - I give them props for improving so much in that regard. As far as being better than NV, though? I dunno, might depend on game choice. The frametime captures at PCPer gave nvidia the edge, although drivers could have changed the situation since then.

 

[Geck0]

At first purchase the HD4870X2s only needed 45-55% fan speed to keep them around the 80ºC mark. As they got older though the required fan speed got higher and higher, until at the point I replaced them with the HD6970s, it took about 90-95% fan speed to keep the temps around 86-87ºC in gaming.
My concern is that the same thing will happen with the 290Xs. They are right at the very edge of their cooling capability now. Once they get old, the TIM on the cooler starts to weaken and they get dusty, people will end up just setting the fan speed to 100% when they game to avoid the risks. I suspect there may well come a time when even that isn't enough and they will end up playing with regular 290 performance or worse due to downclocking, along with the 60-70dB noise levels of a 6000rpm fan (probably nearer 7000rpm by that time as fan speeds go up a bit with age).

A complete non issue if you perform some simple and regular maintenence. You wouldn't go buy a new car because the radiator got clogged up with dust or a thermofan failed would you?

 

[NoOther]

I'm running at 7680x1600. Take it from me, you need three cards at the very least.

Yeah, so part of my question is based around whether I should get a third Titan, or switch over to 290s or 780 Tis.

 

[WorldExclusive]

Yeah, so part of my question is based around whether I should get a third Titan, or switch over to 290s or 780 Tis.

They're all within +/-% of each other, Titan being the slower of the three.
780 Ti would be the best solution now but the 290s still have lots of room for improvement.

 

[samuelmorris]

A complete non issue if you perform some simple and regular maintenence. You wouldn't go buy a new car because the radiator got clogged up with dust or a thermofan failed would you?

Dust is a given, but there's no getting around the fact that unless the cards were re-TIM'ed the cooling performance deteriorates even when thoroughly cleaned. Unlike cars, PCs are not regularly 'serviced' so the only way of doing this would be to do it yourself, or pay an inordinate amount for someone else to do it. Sadly, PCs are cheap enough such that labour costs often completely void some operations as not worthwhile.

 

[Dan_D]

They're all within +/-% of each other, Titan being the slower of the three.
780 Ti would be the best solution now but the 290s still have lots of room for improvement.

I'd sell both Titan's and go with three R290X's or three 780Ti's. I've had horrid luck with CrossfireX and AMD cards in general in the last couple generations so those were a non-starter for me. I saw them running fine in Kyle's machine a couple weeks back, but I'm rarely so lucky.

 

[undercoverDrunk]

I'd sell both Titan's and go with three R290X's or three 780Ti's.

You should be able to recoup costs decently as people are still grabbing titans for compute. I'd sell sooner than later as mining is at a premium at the moment

 

[magoo]

This is a nice article.
But its just one guy running a couple of games.
I have two boxes sitting right next to each other.
One is an X79 with GTX 780 SLi and the other is Z87 running 290X in CF.
I use landscape three monitor.
The performance is essentially identical.
Youd be hard pressed in a pepsi challenge.
I overclock both boxes identically with Afterburner which works flawlessly in the current beta on my CF.
The 290X fans do go higher than 55%. And Im sorry but they are loud. You can hear them over a games soungtrack. Especially when they ramp up to 75%.
I don't notice them being that hot. Not nearly as bad as the 480 GTX was.
I think right now in the games I play, these two systems are dead-ass even.....in equally applied settings.

 

[FearTheCow]

This is a nice article.
But its just one guy running a couple of games.
I have two boxes sitting right next to each other.
One is an X79 with GTX 780 SLi and the other is Z87 running 290X in CF.
I use landscape three monitor.
The performance is essentially identical.
Youd be hard pressed in a pepsi challenge.
I overclock both boxes identically with Afterburner which works flawlessly in the current beta on my CF.
The 290X fans do go higher than 55%. And Im sorry but they are loud. You can hear them over a games soungtrack. Especially when they ramp up to 75%.
I don't notice them being that hot. Not nearly as bad as the 480 GTX was.
I think right now in the games I play, these two systems are dead-ass even.....in equally applied settings.

I'm just going to point out that in order for the 290x fans to spin faster then 55% you have to use a custom fan profile, which means that the noise issue is of your own creation.

 

[magoo]

I'm just going to point out that in order for the 290x fans to spin faster then 55% you have to use a custom fan profile, which means that the noise issue is of your own creation.

Well that isn't true at all.
I have my afterburner set to auto.
My fans have run up to 75% normally.

Yes, if you set "uber" but don't shove the fan slider to 100%, the default limit is 55%, but that will not keep the core cool and it will throttle performance.

The fans will do what they please if you set the Overdrive slider to 100%.

 

[Fooshnik]

The problem with this not just that the cards have no supply of fresh air, but the back of the cards are also about 90C, so you're trying to cool a card below 95C with air that is essentially that temperature. The only way this would ever work well is water cooled, or something similar to a mining rig with risers so you you have 3" or so between cards. I think aftermarket vendors are going to have to work a miracle for trifire to work well in a closed case.

 

[siccmade 11]

I game at the same resolution (3600x1920) unfortunately bezel correction with portrait + CFX = instant crash in every game I own. After some digging around and contacting AMD I learned that this combination was not going to work and has been a problem for years now. Having removed the bezels from my HPZRW24's eyefinity looks ridiculous without bezel correction. I ended up selling one of the 290x's and now am running one 290x under water at 1250/1500 with bezel correction. I can honestly say that every game is much smoother with one card than two. It could be that i'm still on PCIe 2.0 but I wasn't going to upgrade to 3.0 if AMD cant fix bezel correction in portrait. My previous card was a 690gtx and that was the smoothest dual gpu configuration i've experienced even though it was a single PCB but the pathetic 2gb of vram forced me to upgrade!

 

[Geck0]

Dust is a given, but there's no getting around the fact that unless the cards were re-TIM'ed the cooling performance deteriorates even when thoroughly cleaned. Unlike cars, PCs are not regularly 'serviced' so the only way of doing this would be to do it yourself, or pay an inordinate amount for someone else to do it. Sadly, PCs are cheap enough such that labour costs often completely void some operations as not worthwhile.

Please, give up already. If you are buying a card like this and are going to keep it for long enough to have the TIM break down you'd have already done the exercise as either maint. or done it as part of a cooler swap.

PC's owned by people that pay for top tier GPU's are probably serviced and modified more frequently than cars. Either you have stumbled into a strange forum or you are constructing an argument based on bullshite.

I've been registered here 14 days but mate I started reading when I owned a K6 running a voodoo banshee.

If you let your cards get full of crap and dry out it's your business, I'm just saying it's not what normally happens with people that spend good money on these things.

 

[Geck0]

By far not as impressive as the custom box's around, but it is quick.

...... Are you seriously complaining about your GPU's overheating?

Really????

 

[Syphon Filter]

So...

Regarding the noise debate, I'd like to make some comments.

I'll start by saying I've been without a gaming machine for 8-years. That's right, 8-years. During this time my gaming was almost exclusively on my XBox 360 (bar the odd game on my rMBP).

That effectively means that for the entire last console-generation I was without a PC (my last "rig" died right around the time the XBox 360 came out). That's a fucking eternity so I think I have a slightly different perspective to some of you guys.

I've just thrown together (just yesterday) a machine based on the following components (abridged version):

Corsair Carbide Series Air 540 High Airflow ATX Cube Case - Qty: 1
Corsair Hydro Series H100i Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler - Qty: 1
Asus MAXIMUS VI FORMULA Z87 Socket 1150 HDMI ATX Motherboard - Qty: 1
Intel Core i7 4770K 3.50GHz Socket 1150 8MB Cache Retail Boxed Processor - Qty: 1
EVGA GTX 780 Ti SC 3GB GDDR5 Dual DVI HDMI DisplayPort PCI-E Graphics Card - Qty: 2

I was going to go with two reference 290X cards but I got put off by the noise/heat stories. So then I tried waiting for the AIB cards but then got bored/fed up...hence the 2x 780Ti. After all the fuss of how noisy the 290X cards are and now much better the reference nvidia cooler is etc. I was expecting this build to be nice and quiet.

The reality is I am actually rather surprised by how noisy this build is! I find it quite noticeable and even with headphones on (Astro A40s) I can still sometimes be distracted by it (especially when the fans rev up). I simply cannot imagine what it would be like with 2x 290X cards in it when gaming in Uber mode or overclocked (i.e. over 55% fan profile to prevent throttling). I don't know if I'm being overly sensitive to the sound or what but frankly, anything that is too much louder than what I have would do my head in.

Obviously some of the noise is down to case fans etc. but even so, the build as a whole is rather loud and I'm somewhat surprised.

If the 290X is a few dB over the GTX cards then I'm kinda glad I went with the the nvidia option. The only thing that does concern me is VRAM but as of now it's running games great so I'm pretty happy overall. I'm hoping this machine will cope with whatever I throw at it for the next 12-18 months.

TLDR:

No machine for a long time, decided to build. Wanted 2x 290X, ended up with 2x 780Ti. Surprised how noisy the 780Tis are, cannot imagine dealing with anything louder.

 

[pandora's box]

Well that depends don't it. I have 3 XFX R9 290's not even 290X.s in Tripple Crossfire on the X58 Asus Rampage Extreme III with a 970 at 4.2GZ with 24GB of DDR3 1600 with a OCZ vertex 3 240 and the new creative labs Z series sound card.

It will crash in minutes running stock as it overheats and comes to a halt. My CPU is water cooled through the H100 venting straight up. I have a massive amount of airflow through the case. However the gap between cards in a triple setup is very small. The 47% fan speed max is just not enough to keep the cards stable. So I set it to allow the fans to go to 100% if need be with the Catalyst override. Still not stable. Overheated crashed the cards. Then I set each card to try and maintain 70C instead of 85C and allow 100% on the fans. This finally worked. The machine is stable (besides battlefield 4's ongoing issues (even BF4 is now only crashing on map loads) it is great.) I've played through WoW for hours, FFXIV AAR for hours and BF4 for hours and TombRaider. It is finally stable. They were not even close to stable out of the box with the fan speed limited. So the "Even with the fans at full speed they arn't as loud as... is BS because full speed was only 47%." My fans now spin faster then 47%. However they do not spin at 100% which is amazingly loud and on par with the FX Nvidia's. They spin at about 65-75% sometimes and its loud. 470's at 100% loud? No not quite, but just barely less. So folks there is Crossfire with SPACE between the cards and there is Tri-Fire or Quad-Fire etc with no space. Be warned that these cards will not react as kindly as reviewed here in a triple or quadfire setup.

I dabbled with 3 290's. I found I needed about 75% fan speed on them to maintain the 947mhz clock speed at all times. Loud is an understatement. If you're setting a 70C temp limit, I bet you're cards are throttling down to insanely low speeds, I'd wager 750-800MHz. You'd probably get about the same performance out of a 2 way crossfire setup over your current setup due to throttling. You really need to clean up your case and improve airflow. If your intent on keeping the 290's, I'd invest in a better motherboard too. One that would allow you to run two of the 290's sandwiched together and the third having a gap between the two other cards.

Don't blame AMD for you're poor case choice and airflow.

So...

Regarding the noise debate, I'd like to make some comments.

I'll start by saying I've been without a gaming machine for 8-years. That's right, 8-years. During this time my gaming was almost exclusively on my XBox 360 (bar the odd game on my rMBP).

That effectively means that for the entire last console-generation I was without a PC (my last "rig" died right around the time the XBox 360 came out). That's a fucking eternity so I think I have a slightly different perspective to some of you guys.

I've just thrown together (just yesterday) a machine based on the following components (abridged version):

Corsair Carbide Series Air 540 High Airflow ATX Cube Case - Qty: 1
Corsair Hydro Series H100i Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler - Qty: 1
Asus MAXIMUS VI FORMULA Z87 Socket 1150 HDMI ATX Motherboard - Qty: 1
Intel Core i7 4770K 3.50GHz Socket 1150 8MB Cache Retail Boxed Processor - Qty: 1
EVGA GTX 780 Ti SC 3GB GDDR5 Dual DVI HDMI DisplayPort PCI-E Graphics Card - Qty: 2

I was going to go with two reference 290X cards but I got put off by the noise/heat stories. So then I tried waiting for the AIB cards but then got bored/fed up...hence the 2x 780Ti. After all the fuss of how noisy the 290X cards are and now much better the reference nvidia cooler is etc. I was expecting this build to be nice and quiet.

The reality is I am actually rather surprised by how noisy this build is! I find it quite noticeable and even with headphones on (Astro A40s) I can still sometimes be distracted by it (especially when the fans rev up). I simply cannot imagine what it would be like with 2x 290X cards in it when gaming in Uber mode or overclocked (i.e. over 55% fan profile to prevent throttling). I don't know if I'm being overly sensitive to the sound or what but frankly, anything that is too much louder than what I have would do my head in.

Obviously some of the noise is down to case fans etc. but even so, the build as a whole is rather loud and I'm somewhat surprised.

If the 290X is a few dB over the GTX cards then I'm kinda glad I went with the the nvidia option. The only thing that does concern me is VRAM but as of now it's running games great so I'm pretty happy overall. I'm hoping this machine will cope with whatever I throw at it for the next 12-18 months.

TLDR:

No machine for a long time, decided to build. Wanted 2x 290X, ended up with 2x 780Ti. Surprised how noisy the 780Tis are, cannot imagine dealing with anything louder.

To reduce fan noise you can turn on Adaptive Vsync in the Nvidia control panel. This will lock your frame rate at your monitors refresh rate, thus keeping GPU workload down and thus less fan noise.

Personally, I find 780 Ti SLI to be quiet, in comparison to the 3 290's I had before and the 2 7970's I had before that. The only time 780 Ti becomes loud is when you start overclocking them, fans will quickly ramp up to about 85-95% to keep temps under control.

 

[FearTheCow]

I dabbled with 3 290's. I found I needed about 75% fan speed on them to maintain the 947mhz clock speed at all times. Loud is an understatement. If you're setting a 70C temp limit, I bet you're cards are throttling down to insanely low speeds, I'd wager 750-800MHz. You'd probably get about the same performance out of a 2 way crossfire setup over your current setup due to throttling. You really need to clean up your case and improve airflow. If your intent on keeping the 290's, I'd invest in a better motherboard too. One that would allow you to run two of the 290's sandwiched together and the third having a gap between the two other cards.

Don't blame AMD for you're poor case choice and airflow.



To reduce fan noise you can turn on Adaptive Vsync in the Nvidia control panel. This will lock your frame rate at your monitors refresh rate, thus keeping GPU workload down and thus less fan noise.

Personally, I find 780 Ti SLI to be quiet, in comparison to the 3 290's I had before and the 2 7970's I had before that. The only time 780 Ti becomes loud is when you start overclocking them, fans will quickly ramp up to about 85-95% to keep temps under control.

Doesn't the AIR 540 also have fairly loud front intake fans? I am willing to bet he is hearing those more then anything.

 

[buttons]

I have three R9 290s in crossfire on an X58 asus sabertooth board. I am really disappointed by their noise (66% fan speed 83C) and heat output. i thought one of them would heat my bedroom but three of them dont even make a dent in my temps. oh well, at least im getting 2500kh mining coins

 

[ebduncan]

Truth is regardless if its a 290x/290 or a 780/780ti they consume over 250 watts of electric. They are being cooled by relatively small coolers forced to fit into a dual slot configuration sometimes 3 slot. Point being you cannot really complain about noise, that's alot of heat being cooled by a small cooler.

Look at those giant cpu air coolers. They cool a cpu which puts out less heat than the GPU's do.

The only true way for a quiet computer is water cooling. Yes it is an investment. However when your playing your favorite games and your computer is only making 20db of noise you know then and there it was worth it.

 

[pandora's box]

Truth is regardless if its a 290x/290 or a 780/780ti they consume over 250 watts of electric. They are being cooled by relatively small coolers forced to fit into a dual slot configuration sometimes 3 slot. Point being you cannot really complain about noise, that's alot of heat being cooled by a small cooler.

Look at those giant cpu air coolers. They cool a cpu which puts out less heat than the GPU's do.

The only true way for a quiet computer is water cooling. Yes it is an investment. However when your playing your favorite games and your computer is only making 20db of noise you know then and there it was worth it.

QFT. Honestly, I'm debating buying 2 of those Arctic Cooling Accelero Hybrids. I don't want to go custom water cooling as I take my PC to lan parties fairly often, last thing I need is the system leaking.

 

[PandaZ3]

You might want to try different fans for the H100i, as the stock ones ramp up the noise rather quickly to me, but it could be my 7990 card too. I think it is the stock H100i fans though and I have two quiter Corsar fans to put in there, I'm just too lazy to get it done.