What should I do?

[Kalmado]

So I'm having second thoughts about the 7990. It has played anything I throw at it at 1440p maxed out without issue. But man is it LOUD! It's hot too, but that's expected. As of right this minute the only replacement for the card would be either a Gtx 970 or a R9 290(x). The former pisses me off because of the vram issue and what not. The latter is much cheaper and I think it would be able to handle 1440p maxed without issue? But I've read and watched some videos that the 290 is loud as well and it does run hot. I've read a great cooling solution is to install the Gelid Icy Vision onto the R9 290, but that's an added cost. I know the 3xx series is around the corner, but I'm not a fan of buying brand new tech when it first hits the shelves. However, this is when used gpus may get sold for cheap by those that do buy the new cards and are looking to recoup some of the cost.

I'd love to hear thoughts on what I should do.

 

[Dayaks]

I'd personally wait for the 300 series reviews if you could. A single 290 could be a downgrade where crossfire works well. I am sure there has to be one or two 290/290x that are quieter with a custom cooler. Definitely quieter than a 7990. You're trying to cool two GPUs on one card.

If the noise is killing you that much you could undervolt and/or down clock a little. Might be able to undervolt and not lose performance. Could disable crossfire. Make sure the card is clean. Custom fan profile that doesn't ramp up until needed. Vsync on so less load on the card...

 

[Kalmado]

I did recently change the thermal compound, but it didn't make much of a difference temp wise so the fans still go crazy. I'm using a H440 case. I suppose I could attempt to go with a quieter case, but I have my doubts it would make any real difference. Water cooling isn't an option as I'd rather spend the money on a newer card. I suppose I could just get some headphones. The ones I currently have start to make your ears hurt after about 10 minutes (cheapo Lenovo ones).

To your comment about a single 290 being a downgrade, that was my thoughts too. It seems that or a 970 is truly a downgrade when looking at just performance. So for my specific situation I'm thinking it's kind of like this:

7990 - Best performance but heat/noise
290/970 - downgrade in performance but better heat/noise

Many people have talked about how dual gpu solutions are bad for gaming because of stuttering and what not. While I do not play brand new games I haven't experienced any of these issues. About the only thing that I've found weird with the 7990 (coming from a GTX 770 2gb) is when having the tv act as a second monitor to watch movies, the screen will go to black for 2-4 seconds one time at a random time and then it will work correctly. Also, while playing Far Cry 3 I noticed that when I start a quest with a NPC, when the screen goes to black for the transition to the cut scene the screen will flicker briefly, but this only happens at that time. When say I die and the screen goes to black to restart everything works normally. Makes me think it's something with the game?

 

[raghu78]

CF support in recent Nvidia Gameworks titles like AC Unity, Farcry 4, Dying Light, Evolve is zero. So I do not agree that a R9 290X is a downgrade from HD 7990. Only if CF works perfectly then you can say R9 290X is a downgrade from HD 7990. But as we are seeing CF is not working at all in many recent titles. Rome Total War Atilla is another example where CF is not working. So in many recent games the R9 290X is an upgrade over a HD 7990.