AMD Radeon R9 290X CrossFire Video Card Review @ [H]

supposedly yes, whether or not you can get faststart working is another question..

lol
 
Long time reader first time poster. I felt that I had to chime in since I have been running 3 290s in trifire for about a week now with no problems.

I am a long time Nvidia user running an SLI set up every gen since the 8800 gtx days. But this time I just could not pass up the incredible value of the R9 series. 3 290s cost less then 2 780 tis and perform much better , plus the extra GB of VRAM helps. I upgraded from 2 GTX 680 SLI. I was hesitant about going trifire and having driver issues and scaling issues but i figured that if 3 cards did work out i could easily sell one. But so far i am more then impressed !

I am running at a res of 2560x1600 , and man these things are fast , in BF 4 I am all max settings plus the resolution slider at 150% and maintain min of 60fps all the time , no matter what!!! Wow is this a sight to behold, best graphics in a game to-date with out a doubt.

Also for those wondering , they are HIS stock cards, yeah they do run very hot and noisy, but i sit about 15ft away from my rig so it doesn't bother me at all. I am running at an overclock of 1075mhz on all three cards. to prevent throttling i have to set the max fax speed to 80%. they max out at 90c under full load during many hours of stress testing, but they are rock stable at 1075mhz which puts it at about Titan level performance for a fraction of the cost =)

Microstutter, well i do not know what it was like before but AMD must be on the right track with framepacing casue in the games i am currently playing BF4, Metro Last Light, Far Cry 3 (some stutter still) , SWTOR, guild wars 2, all run just as good as they did in SLI. So as far as i am concerned the microstutter is a non issue in trifire. However i have not tested any older games.

So if you can deal with the heat and noise then these card are awesome value. If heat and noise is a big concern to you then yeah, stick with Nvidia for this round. Also another major factor that i hope pans out in Mantle, this is really change things in AMDs favor, but only time will tell.

I am out of town till this weekend for work, but when i get back i am going to do some tests with 2 and 3 cards for all those wondering about scaling performance, they are on asus x79 pro so running at
x16/x8/x8 on the pci-e bus.

cheers,
 
i wonder if x8 pci is dragging down trifire throughput due to bridgeless crossfire.

I know testing showed it wasnt an issue in crossfire, but i wonder about tri or quadfire.
 
ONE is loud at 80% but 3 at 80%?
yea not buying that one
must sound like a 747 on take off
 
pcjunkie said:
Does it bother you that somebody actually owns these cards and is being honest liking about them? He did acknowledge its shortcomings but I guess that is lost in fan boy land.
Click to expand...

no i just think hes lieing or doesnt really have the cards
again ONE card at 80% fan maybe but not 3
and and heat from 3 cards NO WAY its not throttling
 
pcjunkie said:
LOL...so I'm not calling someone a shill and I'm acting like a fan boy. Precious... :rolleyes:

And when did I say somebody couldn't say their piece. :confused:

Looks like it actually is bothering you and a couple others. I haven't looked in this thread for a while but its sad/pathetic to see people still shitting on anything positive. God forbid somebody actually like the product they buy.
Click to expand...

I like AMD GPUs for the most part and have some qualms with the 290 throttling issue, but with that being said - I've heard the 7970 at 80%. It....is not quiet. He did state "max" 80% fan which doesn't necessarily mean it will run at that speed 24/7, but when it is running at 80% fan - it will without a doubt be loud. Three cards times 80% manual fan? Come on man, i've used the AMD shroud cooler and I know this. There's no way anyone reasonably sane would call that "quiet".
 
People are so funny, i am not here to prove anything to anyone. I just thought i would share my experience with trifire as i tried to google some info prior to buying and there is no info about R9 cards in trifire.

Unless you have been to my house you have no clue how my set up is.

Also , i am no fan boy, like i said , long time Nvidia user who would only buy Nvidia cards cause i felt they were the best buy. I changed my mind with this gen.

Noise, ya as i stated in my post they are load, very load, if you don't like the noise then i would not recommend buying these cards.

80% max fan is where they do not throttle. anything lower then that yeah, they throttle. At stock settings they will throttle huge when at full load, like down to 700- 800mhz, but at 80% fan speed they stablize at 90C @ 1075mhz under full load and do not throttle.

Take it as you want,
 
pcjunkie and Nenu...

You 2 need to put each other on ignore and move on....debating is fine but when it gets personal people will get infracted or banned as needed
 
negachampa said:
People are so funny, i am not here to prove anything to anyone. I just thought i would share my experience with trifire as i tried to google some info prior to buying and there is no info about R9 cards in trifire.

Unless you have been to my house you have no clue how my set up is.

Also , i am no fan boy, like i said , long time Nvidia user who would only buy Nvidia cards cause i felt they were the best buy. I changed my mind with this gen.

Noise, ya as i stated in my post they are load, very load, if you don't like the noise then i would not recommend buying these cards.

80% max fan is where they do not throttle. anything lower then that yeah, they throttle. At stock settings they will throttle huge when at full load, like down to 700- 800mhz, but at 80% fan speed they stablize at 90C @ 1075mhz under full load and do not throttle.

Take it as you want,
Click to expand...

back to my earlier question about potential PCIe bottleneck:

What kind of usage are you getting on each card at full bore?
 
In the demanding games i have installed , BF4 and Far Cry 3 , all three cards will run at or very close to 100% , less demading games, SWTOR, Guild Wars 2 , they vary from 50 - 60 % ish.

Soon as i am back this weekend i will start a new thread with comparisons of 2 and 3 cards to see what the scaling is. Lots of people have been asking for this info. Look for it on here and guru3d forums.

I am not sure how i can test PCI-E bottle neck, my board only runs at x16/x8 or x16/x8/x8
 
if you are getting close to 100% all on 3 cards, at full clocks, i doubt there is any PCIe bottlenecking...
 
My Crosshair V died so I tossed my HD 7950 in with my HD 7970 in my other computer for a little frankenfire. That computer has an OCed 3570K..

The last time I tried Crossfire was a good while ago. Back then outdoor areas in Skyrim hitched or "stuttered" noticeably at times. I didn't care for that one bit.

Now it's smooth. I ran around to all the problem areas I remembered just looking for trouble and I never found it. I was under the impression the frame pacing fix only impacted DX 11 and 10 however the difference in Skyrim is straight up remarkable and it's DX 9. In any case, whatever they did do or tune for that title works well.

I'm going to go experiment with other titles. I just started playing with it again a few hours ago.

I'm using the 13.11 Beta 8 driver.
 
makes you wonder if it might have been a PCIe issue...

DA2 on my new 290pro is like a brand new experience. solid 60fps, and smooth as a babys bottom...

i was lucky to get 50fps on my 7970OC, and it hitched a lot.
 
I think it's time to change testing methodology when manufacturer's start overclocking cards almost to the wall " outta the box". Yes, I understand one is supported and one is not "officially" (wink, wink) supported but since this is the information peeps visiting enthusiast forums want to see. Let the chips fall where they may but at least give users both sets of information....otherwise the effort put into preparing the review and the articles become irrelevant to the intended audience.
 
JackNaylorPE said:
I think it's time to change testing methodology when manufacturer's start overclocking cards almost to the wall " outta the box". Yes, I understand one is supported and one is not "officially" (wink, wink) supported but since this is the information peeps visiting enthusiast forums want to see. Let the chips fall where they may but at least give users both sets of information....otherwise the effort put into preparing the review and the articles become irrelevant to the intended audience.
Click to expand...

Who is overclocking cards almost to the wall?
 
negachampa said:
People are so funny, i am not here to prove anything to anyone. I just thought i would share my experience with trifire as i tried to google some info prior to buying and there is no info about R9 cards in trifire.

Unless you have been to my house you have no clue how my set up is.

Also , i am no fan boy, like i said , long time Nvidia user who would only buy Nvidia cards cause i felt they were the best buy. I changed my mind with this gen.

Noise, ya as i stated in my post they are load, very load, if you don't like the noise then i would not recommend buying these cards.

80% max fan is where they do not throttle. anything lower then that yeah, they throttle. At stock settings they will throttle huge when at full load, like down to 700- 800mhz, but at 80% fan speed they stablize at 90C @ 1075mhz under full load and do not throttle.

Take it as you want,
Click to expand...

I guess my question would be, what about stock clocks? How is your case ventilation? Are the cards butted up against each other or is there a large gap between each one? The fact that you say I have no clue how your setup is done means that I have those questions. You have tri fire and overclocked at that. How is your case temp? What about your ambient temps?
 
xoleras said:
I like AMD GPUs for the most part and have some qualms with the 290 throttling issue, but with that being said - I've heard the 7970 at 80%. It....is not quiet. He did state "max" 80% fan which doesn't necessarily mean it will run at that speed 24/7, but when it is running at 80% fan - it will without a doubt be loud. Three cards times 80% manual fan? Come on man, i've used the AMD shroud cooler and I know this. There's no way anyone reasonably sane would call that "quiet".
Click to expand...

Yes, but with one card and possibly 2, you do not need to run them at 80% with proper ventilation and a good case. My one XFX R9 290 does not throttle or overheat and I have not increased the fan speed at all. (Not noisy either to the point where I can here my hard drives over it.) I am probably going to increase it up to 55% from 47% when I do a touch of overclocking though.
 
The Mac said:
odd, the 7xxx did..
Click to expand...

Yeah, I am a little disappointed but not enough to return the card. :) They did say it will probably support it in the future but, it is up to the manufacturer. I have an Asrock board that supports Ultra Fast Boot when the card as UEFI support.
 
i have no intentions of updating to windows 8 anytime in the near future, so its a non issue for me.
 
Hey guys, anyone with Far Cry 3 having problems? I saw it was reviewed here to be very smooth and nice, so I tried to play it with my 290 CF setup and the performance is absolutely awful. Negative scaling with two cards, 40-50fps at lowest possible settings in DX9 mode at 1080p. A single card can run about 90fps at the same settings, while my old ass GTX 580 can lock in 120fps at lowest possible settings. I've tried 3 different drivers, the 9.2 beta, 13.11 WHQL and the newest 9.4 beta with no change.
 
running crossfire 290x's and i still see smaller stutter and fps drops as i always have with AMD. I noticed in this review that the reviewers have said they no longer see any microstutter that amd has been plagued with for years. Im not sure if its because Im running in portrait eyefinity and they are in landscape. maybe ill flip my monitors around to try it out.
 
siccmade 11 said:
running crossfire 290x's and i still see smaller stutter and fps drops as i always have with AMD. I noticed in this review that the reviewers have said they no longer see any microstutter that amd has been plagued with for years. Im not sure if its because Im running in portrait eyefinity and they are in landscape. maybe ill flip my monitors around to try it out.
Click to expand...

I could be mistaken but I thought I read Vega was having issues with portrait eyefinity as well.
 
correct he is. AMD refuses to acknowledge the fact eyefinity and crossfire and beyond broken in portrait
 
negachampa said:
Long time reader first time poster. I felt that I had to chime in since I have been running 3 290s in trifire for about a week now with no problems.

I am a long time Nvidia user running an SLI set up every gen since the 8800 gtx days. But this time I just could not pass up the incredible value of the R9 series. 3 290s cost less then 2 780 tis and perform much better , plus the extra GB of VRAM helps. I upgraded from 2 GTX 680 SLI. I was hesitant about going trifire and having driver issues and scaling issues but i figured that if 3 cards did work out i could easily sell one. But so far i am more then impressed !

I am running at a res of 2560x1600 , and man these things are fast , in BF 4 I am all max settings plus the resolution slider at 150% and maintain min of 60fps all the time , no matter what!!! Wow is this a sight to behold, best graphics in a game to-date with out a doubt.

Also for those wondering , they are HIS stock cards, yeah they do run very hot and noisy, but i sit about 15ft away from my rig so it doesn't bother me at all. I am running at an overclock of 1075mhz on all three cards. to prevent throttling i have to set the max fax speed to 80%. they max out at 90c under full load during many hours of stress testing, but they are rock stable at 1075mhz which puts it at about Titan level performance for a fraction of the cost =)

Microstutter, well i do not know what it was like before but AMD must be on the right track with framepacing casue in the games i am currently playing BF4, Metro Last Light, Far Cry 3 (some stutter still) , SWTOR, guild wars 2, all run just as good as they did in SLI. So as far as i am concerned the microstutter is a non issue in trifire. However i have not tested any older games.

So if you can deal with the heat and noise then these card are awesome value. If heat and noise is a big concern to you then yeah, stick with Nvidia for this round. Also another major factor that i hope pans out in Mantle, this is really change things in AMDs favor, but only time will tell.

I am out of town till this weekend for work, but when i get back i am going to do some tests with 2 and 3 cards for all those wondering about scaling performance, they are on asus x79 pro so running at
x16/x8/x8 on the pci-e bus.

cheers,
Click to expand...

I really appreciated your post, so thank you for coming out of the shadows ;)

I currently run GTX680 4GB SLI, and am about to upgrade to the 290s as well, but am not sure how many to get.

I have acquired two more 30" so could run Eyefinity 7680x1600. I suppose even four 290 won't run most AAA games at max settings.
 
Lith1um said:
My Corsair H100i is louder than both of my 290x's in crossfire put together.
Click to expand...
Aren't H100i's supposed to be louder? I have a custom water loop (360mm Black Ice Extreme + 3x 1700rpm Gentle Typhoons) and my 290Xs are louder than my loop. Noticeably louder. It's not really obnoxious but you will definitely hear them.
 
I can't see how the h100i is louder than the 290X. Say...what.... I use an H100 loop and it's basically very silent.

Unless he put custom push/pull fans on his rad. Then it could be possible depending on what type of 120mm fans are in use. In stock form the H100 is pretty quiet. Far quieter than any AMD ref GPU at 55% fan... I can't see the H100i being different? Louder than 290X crossfire errr...sounds hard to believe. But could be possible if different / custom 120mm fans are used I suppose. In stock form it definitely is quiet in my use. Shrug.
 
xoleras said:
I can't see how the h100i is louder than the 290X. Say...what.... I use an H100 loop and it's basically very silent.

Unless he put custom push/pull fans on his rad. Then it could be possible depending on what type of 120mm fans are in use. In stock form the H100 is pretty quiet. Far quieter than any AMD ref GPU at 55% fan... I can't see the H100i being different? Louder than 290X crossfire errr...sounds hard to believe. But could be possible if different / custom 120mm fans are used I suppose. In stock form it definitely is quiet in my use. Shrug.
Click to expand...

Depending on the fan speed the H100i can get really loud.
 
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