CryoVenom

gs274

gs274

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jul 5, 2005
Messages
1,426
Since there is virtually no information on this card aside from the previews, I thought I would share some pics of the one that showed up on my door today.

VisionTek R9 290 CryoVenom, $550...
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Hey, thanks for posting! If you could keep the thread updated with your temps that would be great. Might finally take q plunge into watercooling ...
 
I plan on putting up temps and some benchmarks. Even with the recent price increase to $600, I don't think you can beat the value in this.
 
For $550 that is a pretty damn good deal. Even if they were selling at MSRP, water blocks often run over $100, so that's impressive. Is the PCB customized at all or is it reference with a waterblock?
 
It appears to be reference but, binned by visiontek with the custom EK block and back-plate. So, msrp is, "was" supposed to be $399, add water block and back-plate ($146.98 at frozencpu) and it's almost like getting one before the miners ate them all and drove prices through the roof. The checklist in pic 4 has power, core clock and memory clock speeds they have certified it to run. This one is running at 1127 MHz with the memory at 1475 MHz.
 
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did you order this card from the visiontek website? didn't think they would actually sell it at $550. totally wrong about that, but apparently they've already increased the msrp to $600 for the next batch.
 
Yes, this came from a website order and it was $559.12 with ground shipping. I missed them having it in stock a couple of weeks ago so I signed up for the stock notification. Their inventory notification for this actually let me know about 4 days in advance when and what time it would come available again. I parked my wife in front of the computer, with my debit card, while I was in class to make sure I got one.

I'll be installing and leak testing tonight so, should be able to put some temps up later tomorrow.
 
Yes... I am about to complain about that SN sticker ruining the super clean look of one of those EK backplates. Otherwise, awesome card!
 
If I remember correctly the heatsink is CNC machined to cover the GPU, VRM's & memory. I just got 2 Asus 290x DCU2 cards this week for $580 each but I am jealous. I haven't even taken them out of the Shipping box yet. I actually wanted 2 290's rather than 290X cards. I gave Visiontek my email because these are too good to pass up especially being single slot cards. I wonder if I send them my cards if they will put blocks on them? Hmmmmmm................
 
This is a dual slot card, they have that double stacked dvi so they can't be made into single slot.

Got it installed and leak tested. I've hit it with a few benchmarks and can't get it to break a sweat yet.

PCMark8, highest temp
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Heaven, 2560x1440 Extreme setting, highest temp
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Playing Battlefield 4 with the 14.1b1.3 driver @ 2560x1440 is showing the same thing.
 
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Hell of a deal for $550, if you can find it at that price. I can say putting my two 290's on water is making a night and day difference. Silent operation under load is wonderful, and temps rarely go past 50 C even with bumped voltage and overclocks.... its crazy, and totally worth the investment.
 
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After more than 2 months of fighting with this thing, it's on its way back to visiontek attached to a charge-back. After the initial setup the card required periodic but consistent down-clocking from it's rated specs which the cryovenom team was never able or seemingly willing to address. In the end, the card refused to work with any of the mantle drivers installed and had to be run at vitually stock 290 settings. Visiontek initially offered a refund if I didn't want to work with them on the issue, I chose to work with them to isolate the problem and resolve it.

When the rma was inescapable, they initially offered to proceed with an advance rma (this is a production machine as well as a gamer, it can't be down for 2+ weeks). The advance rma fell through when they were unable to process visa debit card for $20 shipping fee apparently, there they could charge the purchase price but not the rma shipping(no, I do not use credit cards tyvm). They then reneged on their original offer for a refund as we had gone outside of their 15 day return period. The bank agreed with me, since this was a documented continuous issue that had originated near the day of receipt, and issued a charge-back.

I'm going to try my luck with a 780 ti for replacement.
 
Yikes, not quite the followup I expected but glad the CC company sided with you.
 
gs274 said:
After more than 2 months of fighting with this thing, it's on its way back to visiontek attached to a charge-back. After the initial setup the card required periodic but consistent down-clocking from it's rated specs which the cryovenom team was never able or seemingly willing to address. In the end, the card refused to work with any of the mantle drivers installed and had to be run at vitually stock 290 settings. Visiontek initially offered a refund if I didn't want to work with them on the issue, I chose to work with them to isolate the problem and resolve it.

When the rma was inescapable, they initially offered to proceed with an advance rma (this is a production machine as well as a gamer, it can't be down for 2+ weeks). The advance rma fell through when they were unable to process visa debit card for $20 shipping fee apparently, there they could charge the purchase price but not the rma shipping(no, I do not use credit cards tyvm). They then reneged on their original offer for a refund as we had gone outside of their 15 day return period. The bank agreed with me, since this was a documented continuous issue that had originated near the day of receipt, and issued a charge-back.

I'm going to try my luck with a 780 ti for replacement.
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If you had done a simple Google search, you would have found that it most likely had nothing to do with the card. The problem with the downclocking was related to the AMD provided 14.1/2/3 drivers. All three of those drives would not keep the PowerTune settings at anything about stock, so even an O/C of ~20Mhz would throttle the card down to 600~800Mhz at times. I drove myself crazy trying to keep my 290 (specs in sig) running at it's stable O/C of 1.2Ghz..I went back to 13.12, no problem. As soon as AMD released the 14.4 drivers, everything works: OC, Mantle, everything.
 
This was an issue consistent across all of the last 6 driver revisions (only because I didn't want to go back further), initially starting with the 13.12. It had nothing to do with the card "holding" it's o/c, it had to do with the card crashing games while being o/c'd. In the end the 14.4 driver, if anything, made the card unusable.
 
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