[R9 290X vs 780 Ti] HardOCP doesn't brown nose nVidia like all the other reviewers.

C

chanchan

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 14, 2005
Messages
482
Facts:

Geforce 780 Ti MSRP $700
AMD R9 290X $550

= 22% more expensive.

Facts:

Performance is very similar < 10%, I'm not sure in game play if we'd notice in general, the "feeling" should be the "same". This performance gap greatly decreases as we move into 4K/Surroundview/Eyefinity settings.

Facts:

The Geforce cards do run cooler and have better acoustic properties. I'm certain board partners (Asus/Powercolor/Gigabyte/XFX) will make versions with an Accelero based variant and Asus's own DirectCU. Which will actually remove these factors against AMD, but time will tell on this point.

What I think:

AMD offers basically the same experience for 22% less money ... yet all these reviewers are raging how the FEW frames over AMD suggests that this IS the card to have. Most of them don't even account for the price difference ... OR they will compare to Titan @ $1000, this $700 card that's faster is a such a better "value" ... grow a pair and do a proper review.

There are some sites that include the CF stomping the SLI ... but don't really hightlight those points enough ... it's like the assumption is "high end users will have a single card and 1 monitor at 2560x1440" ...

Makes me sad :(
 
Well you can also get a 100$ off shield and 3 games to boot. But I agree, the 699$ price tag is pretty steep. I would have ideally wanted MSRP to be around 599$ and no bundled software.
 
PcZac said:
Is that stock performance? What about OC performance?
Click to expand...

Yeah OC is where the Ti starts to pull away pretty hard vs. the stock cooled 290X. It's going to be a great battle to see custom vs. custom. Hopefully we get a taste of Mantle next week and see if 290X can take back the crown in games that use Mantle... Star Citizen IMO is a pretty big win for Mantle, but I just heard PhysX will be used as well. So a win for both sides.
 
Yeah what I like to see, but mostly air OC performance matters to me.
 
PcZac said:
Yeah what I like to see, but mostly air OC performance matters to me.
Click to expand...

I agree. I find it interesting that several reviews do show 780Ti overclocked performance, but they then compare those figures against cards that are not overclocked. I want to see how a well overclocked 780, 290, 290x, 780ti compare to get a bigger picture.

For instance, just looking at the 3dGuru review they have their 780Ti overclocked +200Mhz core and +948Mhz memory and get a Firestrike graphics score of 12748. My 780 Oc'd got a graphics score of 12104 when I tested the other day. That is not a huge difference.
 
most agree that $699 is ripoff but that will not stop some people from buying just like the noise will not stop some from buying a 290 or 290x.
 
The [H] definitely does video card reviews right; first place I look before buying. I would love to see some overclocking results from them soon though. I'd say 80%+ of the people reading their reviews will be overclocking.

And is this GPU competition not great right now or what? Exciting times in computer graphics hardware.
 
[H] keeps it real unlike Anandtech

Here's blatant double standards from Ryan Smith, Anandtech's Video Card reviewer:

From the GTX 580 launch (44.4db Idle - 57.1db Load).
Graphs alone cannot demonstrate just how much of a difference there is between the GTX 480 and GTX 580 &#8211; the GTX 580 is not whisper quiet, but at no point in our testing did it ever get &#8220;loud&#8221;.
Click to expand...


Now lets see what he just said about the R9 290 (39.5db Idle - 57.2db Load).
With the 290 AMD has thrown out any kind of reasonable noise parameters, instead choosing to chase performance and price above everything else. As a result at 57.2dB the 290 is the loudest single-GPU card in our current collection of results.
Click to expand...

What a joke.

Not to mention the fact that the 780ti SLI gets blown to bits by the R9 290s Crossfire performances and yet does not say anything remarkable about it.

Credit goes to Imouto for direct links
 
Last edited:
Wow the SLI vs CFX numbers tell the tale! Now just need some quieter coolers so the Beethoven crowd can stop complaining.
:)
 
for the longest time nvidia has been more expensive than ATI. In the last 15 years of gaming I cant ever recall nvidia being a better bang for your buck than ati was. Id rather pay a few bucks more and have a quality reseller to deal with like evga thats local and has great warranty/step up/ customer service. /fanboi
 
Tych-0 said:
The [H] definitely does video card reviews right; first place I look before buying. I would love to see some overclocking results from them soon though. I'd say 80%+ of the people reading their reviews will be overclocking.

And is this GPU competition not great right now or what? Exciting times in computer graphics hardware.
Click to expand...

Paul's Hardware has the 780ti beating the R9 290X in every benchmark when both cards are overclocked. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfAz...ujE50iYai8WgQ&feature=player_detailpage#t=335
 
With respect to noise, as has been mentioned in other (very long) threads, things have changed since the release of the GTX580. Nvidia has repeatedly set new bars for quieter, high performance solutions since. So, while the AMD cards are definitely a bargain, if you want a system that isn't uncomfortably loud, you're not going to be getting it with an AMD blower; and at every level of performance attained by overclocking, the Nvidia solutions will be quieter.

Now, that's not to say that the Nvidia solution will be quiet- just that they do have the better blowers, and that they've shown how effective exhausting air cooling can be done well.

As is always the case, open-air coolers will be able to provide better overclocking performance and lower noise levels for cards from both vendors, and when those are available we can come back and talk about price/performance/features again :).
 
Well one thing to note with noise is that spectrum counts as much as level. I can play for you two noises at precisely the same dBSPL, but one will be far more offensive than the other based on spectrum.

Not saying that is what is happening here, but it is possible. I've encountered really obnoxious fans before that sound very loud, because they have a lot of noise in the midrange where we hear the best.
 
Cool Vibrations said:
[H] keeps it real unlike Anandtech

Here's blatant double standards from Ryan Smith, Anandtech's Video Card reviewer:

From the GTX 580 launch (44.4db Idle - 57.1db Load).



Now lets see what he just said about the R9 290 (39.5db Idle - 57.2db Load).


What a joke.

Not to mention the fact that the 780ti SLI gets blown to bits by the R9 290s Crossfire performances and yet does not say anything remarkable about it.

Credit goes to Imouto for direct links
Click to expand...

Dude, as someone who has owned both a reference GTX 570 and an R9 290x there is a massive difference in noise. My GTX570 which uses the same cooler as the 580 is one of the quietest cards that I've ever owned.

If anything r9 290x is directly comparable to GTX480. It deserves the complaints for the noise issue. Its as bad as reviewers are saying if not worse.

Bitching and moaning about GTX480 is what got Nvidia to redesign their later reference coolers with silence in mind.
 
Cool Vibrations said:
[H] keeps it real unlike Anandtech

Here's blatant double standards from Ryan Smith, Anandtech's Video Card reviewer:

From the GTX 580 launch (44.4db Idle - 57.1db Load).



Now lets see what he just said about the R9 290 (39.5db Idle - 57.2db Load).


What a joke.

Not to mention the fact that the 780ti SLI gets blown to bits by the R9 290s Crossfire performances and yet does not say anything remarkable about it.

Credit goes to Imouto for direct links
Click to expand...

You have to remember the 580 review was a long time ago and was likely being compared to 480 which was much louder. Likely comparing to stock 7950/7970 and 770/780 with reference coolers. Which are all said to be quieter surprisingly.

I agree with others tho 780 ti should not be more than $100 over 780 and $50 over 290x. Worth $50 for significantly superior cooling and slightly more performance. Hell even $100 more than 290x would be worth it. Thatd be about 18% price for 8% more performance (tpu findings) and better cooling. It will all change when non reference coolers come tho
 
Last edited:
I do not feel bad at all for spending 760 for 2 290s and another 230 for water blocks.

It also helps that crossfire scaling on the 290 is nuts and I play at 7880x1440.
 
I liked Toms Hardware analysis of the R9 290 series, they will even further investigate the thermal throttling characteristics of the new cards. In their review they actually *replaced* the OEM cooler with an Accelero ..

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-r9-290-review-benchmark,3659-19.html

Clearly AMD *should* have had this as their reference design, much like their HD 7990 ... but it could have been last minute clock tweaks to be competitive with nVidia that made their current cooler sub-par.

I am waiting for partner board makers to come up with some nice *revised* R9 290, and I will definitely add this to my Christmas wish list :)

/sidenote I'm so glad AMD got frame pacing addressed!! *dusts off HD6990*

Can't stress how much I enjoy reading HardOCP's reviews, reminds me when I used to work in computer retail I always gave customers the truth bomb no matter how much it hurt the fanboys ;D
 
No he is comparing a card that runs at 80c with overclocking headroom to spare (GTX 580) to a card that tops out at 96c and still throttles to stay at those temps yet still hits 57db (r9 290x). What do you think is going to happen if you want to stop that card from throttling and/or run at a reasonable temp? Do you think thats still going to be comparable?

There is no way in hell that I would put up with the stock cooler on r9 290x and yes I own two. The fact of the matter is that those cards are fucking loud. They're among the loudest cards that I've ever used. On par with GTX480 and a little better than 4870x2.
 
Last edited:
chanchan said:
Facts:

Geforce 780 Ti MSRP $700
AMD R9 290X $550

= 22% more expensive.

Facts:

Performance is very similar < 10%, I'm not sure in game play if we'd notice in general, the "feeling" should be the "same". This performance gap greatly decreases as we move into 4K/Surroundview/Eyefinity settings.

Facts:

The Geforce cards do run cooler and have better acoustic properties. I'm certain board partners (Asus/Powercolor/Gigabyte/XFX) will make versions with an Accelero based variant and Asus's own DirectCU. Which will actually remove these factors against AMD, but time will tell on this point.

What I think:

AMD offers basically the same experience for 22% less money ... yet all these reviewers are raging how the FEW frames over AMD suggests that this IS the card to have. Most of them don't even account for the price difference ... OR they will compare to Titan @ $1000, this $700 card that's faster is a such a better "value" ... grow a pair and do a proper review.

There are some sites that include the CF stomping the SLI ... but don't really hightlight those points enough ... it's like the assumption is "high end users will have a single card and 1 monitor at 2560x1440" ...

Makes me sad :(
Click to expand...

I'll pass on yellow reviewing. :D;)

In all honesty, people on here are big boy's and don't need these guys to hold our hands, we look at the benchmarks, check our wallets and take it from there. You're just fanboy who's upset over nothing.
 
BababooeyHTJ said:
No he is comparing a card that runs at 80c with overclocking headroom to spare (GTX 580) to a card that tops out at 96c and still throttles to stay at those temps yet still hits 57db (r9 290x). What do you think is going to happen if you want to stop that card from throttling and/or run at a reasonable temp? Do you think thats still going to be comparable?

There is no way in hell that I would put up with the stock cooler on r9 290x and yes I own two. The fact of the matter is that those cards are fucking loud. They're among the loudest cards that I've ever used. On par with GTX480 and a little better than 4870x2.
Click to expand...

Who cares. No one buying these cards on day one with a blower style heatsink gives a shit about how loud it is. Either they are going to watercool it. like myself, or they don't care how loud it is. There will be cards with third party coolers, just wait for it. AMD built these to a price point and to the bean counters the blower cooler met that price point.

Why are so many people so butthurt over the blower style cooler?
 
You have to remember the 580 review was a long time ago and was likely being compared to 480 which was much louder. Likely comparing to stock 7950/7970 and 770/780 with reference coolers. Which are all said to be quieter surprisingly
Click to expand...

I just do not agree with that. If the GTX580 has no issue to their ears then they should not have rated AMD so horribly for the same dB level. Its just dirty man really dirty on their part.
Makes you wonder who Nvidia pays to review sometimes. When AMD never can catch a break because whiners will only nit pick on something that can be changed and wont actually impact them once changed.
 
veedubfreak said:
Who cares. No one buying these cards on day one with a blower style heatsink gives a shit about how loud it is. Either they are going to watercool it. like myself, or they don't care how loud it is. There will be cards with third party coolers, just wait for it. AMD built these to a price point and to the bean counters the blower cooler met that price point.

Why are so many people so butthurt over the blower style cooler?
Click to expand...

Most people complaining never intended to buy one are just bashing it for forums. If you have a decent mid tower it becomes moot. The loudest card I ever had was the 4870x2 (61 Decibels) Crysis Vanilla at 90%-100% Fan blowing never bugged me with headphones on or off. Other fans in my well insulated Lian Li case helped to drown it out. If you got a high end video card and a pos case you are doing it wrong.

I'm a water block guy myself but nothing is gonna beat a 290x with decent non ref cooling like Asus directcu....just give it time and wait for Never Settle bundle. Drivers will mature and some big name games on Mantle (yes its cart before horse disclaimer) - but so far they got BF4, Thief, and Star Citizen sounds promising.
 
Last edited:
Why are so many people so butthurt over the blower style cooler?
Click to expand...

It's butthurt nvidia zealots grasping at whatever argument they can make to justify their purchases and put down AMD. Well either that, or I'm amazed how many people suddenly play games with absolutely no sound.

With headphones, I can't even hear the 290X's fan at 55% in a Corsair Air 540, and that is by no means a quiet case. And outside of gaming, the fan sits at 20% which isn't even audible.
 
AceCR42 said:
It's butthurt nvidia zealots grasping at whatever argument they can make to justify their purchases and put down AMD. Well either that, or I'm amazed how many people suddenly play games with absolutely no sound.

With headphones, I can't even hear the 290X's fan at 55% in a Corsair Air 540, and that is by no means a quiet case. And outside of gaming, the fan sits at 20% which isn't even audible.
Click to expand...

Sick case..building a 290 rig in this bad boy myself. The case is well built helps with the sound.
 
AceCR42 said:
It's butthurt nvidia zealots grasping at whatever argument they can make to justify their purchases and put down AMD. Well either that, or I'm amazed how many people suddenly play games with absolutely no sound.

With headphones, I can't even hear the 290X's fan at 55% in a Corsair Air 540, and that is by no means a quiet case. And outside of gaming, the fan sits at 20% which isn't even audible.
Click to expand...
got to love these generalizations as if anyone complaining cant possibly be objective.

here is a hint for you, many if not most of the complainers dont give a rat's behind who makes the card. I would and have made the same exact complaints about nvidia when they have had noisy hot and power hungry cards. if anything its hilarious to see people make the silly claims that the cards are not loud at all and you must personally have one or just dont know. I fell for that round of horseshit when I tried using a gtx470. that loud pos went back to newegg the real quick as the deal I got on it was not worth the racket. considering the 290 is even louder than the 470 then its not even a consideration for many until they have some non reference coolers.

as per usual around here, I am sure someone will take parts of my post out of context just to make sure its an nvidia vs amd contest.
 
cannondale06 said:
here is a hint for you, many if not most of the complainers dont give a rat's behind who makes the card.
Click to expand...

Couldn't disagree more. Also can flip your point and say people complaining don't have a card. Anyways I trust my own ears and what Brent says about fan being at 50% and tolerable (paraphrasing).
 
Last edited:
Something I've noticed on some other reviews. Testing is being done on the 290X at "Quiet Mode" versus the 780 Ti. Something to be aware of you may encounter in some other reviews.
 
unless I manually set my fan above like 55 percent or so I can't hear it over the rest of the fans in my case.

After hearing all the whining about the noise I was shocked that I can't even pick it out from the normal fan noise in my computer. And my case has all the ports on the front instead of the back, so I would notice it. Seems way overblown to me.

I set it too 100 percent to see how far I could clock it, got to 1150 stable I think, but holy shit I could hear it a couple rooms away with the door closed.
 
Linus basically came out and said he would not use a new card to game on that did not support gsync. He has put his cards on the table, even if mantle pushes the amd cards above the ti by a healthy margin he will NOT bother using them personally.
 
all the reviews I've read clearly give the 780Ti the performance crown but that's about it...almost everyone agrees that AMD has the price/performance crown...AMD is getting praised everywhere for the 200 series...Nvidia set out to capture the paper benchmark crown and they successfully did that...if AMD wanted to they could release another card with an intermittent core/memory bump and take the crown back...the back-and-forth would never end

wait till the after-market 290x/290 cards come to market... then we'll see AMD sitting pretty until Maxwell...Maxwell is really Nvidia's respone to AMD's Hawaii architecture but they couldn't release it in time so they settled for price cuts and the new Ti card
 
tybert7 said:
Linus basically came out and said he would not use a new card to game on that did not support gsync. He has put his cards on the table, even if mantle pushes the amd cards above the ti by a healthy margin he will NOT bother using them personally.
Click to expand...

And G-Sync has actually been demonstrated to work well and run on actual hardware, we still haven't seen any tangible results from Mantle.
 
I'm sure all the reviewers are brown nosing nvidia and hard ocp is the last bastion of objectivity.

Or, more likely, nvidia is still in the dominant market position. Nvidia has had the performance crown for all but 2 weeks in the past 9 months. I'm not saying AMD makes crap cards (they make good cards and they're clearly the best price/perforamnce) but to even pretend that amd is competition for nvidia is fucking mind blowing.

Amd releases a 'new' generation of cards 9 months late and then nvidia immediately releases the 'full' version of their old architecture and immediately takes back the performance crown. If amd was competitive in any way with nvidia then nvidia wouldn't be able to so easily and consistently dictate the price of high end graphics.

The amount of AMD fanboying on this entire site is mind boggling. I don't get how some of you can pretend you're being objective with the amount of excuses and bullshit you spew. The fact you think nvidia is being brown nosed in EVERY REVIEW except ONE is fucking absurd.


AMD fans and last of us fans are the worst fucking fans I've ever fucking seen.
 
orangekiwii said:
I'm sure all the reviewers are brown nosing nvidia and hard ocp is the last bastion of objectivity.

Or, more likely, nvidia is still in the dominant market position. Nvidia has had the performance crown for all but 2 weeks in the past 9 months. I'm not saying AMD makes crap cards (they make good cards and they're clearly the best price/perforamnce) but to even pretend that amd is competition for nvidia is fucking mind blowing.

Amd releases a 'new' generation of cards 9 months late and then nvidia immediately releases the 'full' version of their old architecture and immediately takes back the performance crown. If amd was competitive in any way with nvidia then nvidia wouldn't be able to so easily dictate the price of high end graphics.

The amount of AMD fanboying on this entire site is mind boggling. I don't get how some of you can pretend you're being objective with the amount of excuses and bullshit you spew. The fact you think nvidia is being brown nosed in EVERY REVIEW except ONE is fucking absurd.


AMD fans and last of us fans are the worst fucking fans I've ever fucking seen.
Click to expand...


What are you smoking ? They have the performance crown but the 780ti is what 5-7% faster at 1440p . AMD still has the crown at 4k higher resolutions. You sound really angry. Don't get too emotional about these ....but that's the beauty of the internet it doesn't matter what any of us write on these forums it will have no bearing on what people buy...people will vote with their wallet.
 
I could care less about the noise fans make. It bothers me more when my room turns into an oven in 10 minutes after playing a game. Good for the winter, bad for the summer.
 
AceCR42 said:
It's butthurt nvidia zealots grasping at whatever argument they can make to justify their purchases and put down AMD. Well either that, or I'm amazed how many people suddenly play games with absolutely no sound.

With headphones, I can't even hear the 290X's fan at 55% in a Corsair Air 540, and that is by no means a quiet case. And outside of gaming, the fan sits at 20% which isn't even audible.
Click to expand...

First of all, try and have an adult discussion. Secondly, not everyone games with headphones or plays just competitive fps games.

People made the same complaints with the reference cooler on GTX480 and Nvidia came a long way since. Sitting there and defending your purchase as it can do no wrong isn't good for anyone. This is an area that amd has really needed to improve upon for quite a while and with a card this power hungry its becoming very noticeable.

I have my cards water cooled. I avoided gaming in the time waiting for the blocks since these coolers are so annoying. I guess that makes me some sort of fanboy. :rolleyes:

cannondale06 said:
got to love these generalizations as if anyone complaining cant possibly be objective.

here is a hint for you, many if not most of the complainers dont give a rat's behind who makes the card. I would and have made the same exact complaints about nvidia when they have had noisy hot and power hungry cards. if anything its hilarious to see people make the silly claims that the cards are not loud at all and you must personally have one or just dont know. I fell for that round of horseshit when I tried using a gtx470. that loud pos went back to newegg the real quick as the deal I got on it was not worth the racket. considering the 290 is even louder than the 470 then its not even a consideration for many until they have some non reference coolers.

as per usual around here, I am sure someone will take parts of my post out of context just to make sure its an nvidia vs amd contest.
Click to expand...

Stop trying to make sense. :p Don't you know how the video card section works on this forum?

Seriously though, great post. I couldn't agree more.
 
We live in great times. I ran a GTX 260 for 5 years with that fan idling at > 70% while sleeping and 100% running any game. We've become techno "snobs", myself included, critiquing heat, power draw, and sound as if it's something we haven't dealt with for the past 20 years. We've only recently seen these addressed by both sides in the past couple years.

I ran my GTX 260 F@H when I wasn't gaming and the sound was like a turbine and I rode the heat past 90C daily for years. I'm not afraid of the spec sheet that claims what the product is rated to do like some. Despite going backwards a little, the R9-290(X) is the better deal and I would take it or wait for a third-party cooling solution. That price tag just is not justified by Nvidia. Not to mention think about this. February '13 Titan came out. Sold like crazy to a very very niche market. GTX 780 came out and sold like crazy for its Titan like performance @ $350 less (its selling point), again to the same very niche market. The GTX 780 Ti falls between that with the expected 5-10% performance gains and again this is the SAME niche market. All in the same year. Waiting has gotten you nothing. Price to performance ratio does not line up. The market is very saturated for Nvidia and you are going to have a hard time defending the argument buying anything other than a GTX 780 now with the $150 price cut.

Nvidia shot themselves in the foot and they know it. Good thing the Titan sold so well and the margins of profit were astronomical.
 
I have a 6950 currently and am badly itching for an upgrade. The 290 non x (waiting for aftermarket coolers) seems to be where I'm putting my money as long at they sit at that $400 price range.

Only thing that has me questioning the upgrade is the expected release of 20nm cards this summer. At a $400 dollar price range, do you think 20nm fabs will have a HUGE improvement over the 290? (temperature aside) I know it would be mostly speculation but have we seen huge improvements when jumping fabs?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top