XFX Radeon R9 290 Double Dissipation Edition Review @ [H]

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FrgMstr

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XFX Radeon R9 290 Double Dissipation Edition Review - Today on our test bench we will pit the XFX Radeon R9 290 Double Dissipation Edition against a pair of green team cards to determine the king of the mid range. Prices have fallen a dramatically in recent weeks on AMD R9 290 GPU based video cards. Should you count these out in light of the new GeForce GTX 970? We will find out today.
 
As an owner of a pair a very similar XFXF R9 290x DD edition, I'd recommend anyone who's looking to go the GTX 970 route and save yourself a lot of headaches and heat.

Not only XFX refuses to recognize that the VRMs are poorly cooled in a single card config, let alone in a crossfire situation.
 
I just purchased one of these for my girlfriend for Xmas to replace her 7870. It's a really solid product. I haven't pushed the overclock too much yet but the card is well built, the cooler is very quiet and I got it for $269, which is an incredible price all things considered. Seeing how great of an overclock you got, I'll have to play around with the card some more to see what it is capable of. The heat output doesn't bother me, but the room does get noticeably warmer (we have two overclocked i7s and three R9 290/290X cards in our gaming room). Not a big deal, I live in Florida so the AC is always running regardless.
 
Bought one used on the forum for a very low price. I kind of regret not getting two for the price, lol. The card does run on the warm side, but I turned down the power limit -20%, voltage at default and core clock is up to 1080 without artifacts, 1090 with very minor artifacts. I do miss the NVIDIA software ease-of-use and features, but I basically just installed the drivers via device manager and used Afterburner for my overclocking and monitoring. The speed is definitely there and I think I can live with one for a while.
 
Once again I must ask: why, oh why no OC for Nvidia? It's not unheard of for [H] to do OC vs OC, so it always leaves me questioning for motives when you choose not to.
 
"The ASUS 760 GTX Striker was mugged for its lunch money by the XFX Radeon R9 290 Double Dissipation Edition and the ASUS 970 GTX STRIX DirectCU II. "

Had me crying laughing literally.
 
specops said:
Once again I must ask: why, oh why no OC for Nvidia? It's not unheard of for [H] to do OC vs OC, so it always leaves me questioning for motives when you choose not to.
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Once again I must tell you: Due to our process of using real world gaming for testing these cards, every card entry we add to the review process costs us considerable resources. It just is not simply possible for us to do every variation you are wanting to see.

I would suggest if you question our motives that you simply not use our site or view its contents.
 
I was able to get this card for $214.99 from Newegg during the Black Friday weekend sale. It's been a great card and a huge upgrade from the 6970 I had. It runs just as cool as the 6970 did, and really gave me a lot of extra horsepower. It's really noticeable in games. Well worth what I paid for it.
 
specops said:
Wow, brilliant, thanks for your input. It's not "every variation" I or the average [H] reader wants to see. It's the actual number one interest of any GPU enthusiast. If you continue in failing to see that, then yes, I suppose it is best not to use your site or view its contents. Have a good one!
Click to expand...
You can read the other reviews of their 970 products for overclocked results. They have a number of 970 and 980 reviews.
 
specops said:
Once again I must ask: why, oh why no OC for Nvidia? It's not unheard of for [H] to do OC vs OC, so it always leaves me questioning for motives when you choose not to.
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It's not going to matter soon as AMD used a different fab this time and the clock rates are going to be much higher for stock clocks .. Hawaii used a pos fab but Hawaii 2.0 reboot is going kick some azz (380X)..:D
 
I do need to warn people that certain chipsets with this video card has given a friend of mine trouble. mostly the AMD 700 seriess, no idea if the 970 series gives the problem, but certainly older chipsets. The problem he was having is after about 30min to an hour it would just reboot the PC, no errors or BSOD... He tried various RAM, power supply, even a different motherboard, reinstalled Windows 7, various Catalyst drivers.. the same thing would happen. So he brought his XFX 290 over to my PC which had a 990FX motherboard and it ran perfectly fine and very well, no problems. He ended up having to buy the same motherboard as me to get it working. So frankly there's either a chipset problem or a video card bios problem with some Radeon cards. It's really hard to say, but I thought people should be aware in case you get a similar problem with these cards.
 
The XFX manufacturing branch specializes in high-performance PC hardware with a focus on gaming products including AMD and NVIDIA graphics processing units and motherboards.
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You might want to update your boiler plate info on XFX.
 
According to my testing GPUz only reports VRM temps on AMD GPUs of Hawaii and upward. NVIDIA GPUs do not show the VRM temps in GPUz, 970 and 980 confirmed no VRM temps reported in GPUz
 
Buying a card like this is like buying the third best for a fair less than the first best. The EVGA GTX 970 can still be had for $329.99 and if you're inclined to spend $100 more then you can either get a card with a heavily customized PCB (think Zotac's implementation), or you can get one with the reference design that looks like the 980 from BestBuy (seems like they are the only ones selling that model.

As always, great in depth review.
 
Igg said:
As an owner of a pair a very similar XFXF R9 290x DD edition, I'd recommend anyone who's looking to go the GTX 970 route and save yourself a lot of headaches and heat.

Not only XFX refuses to recognize that the VRMs are poorly cooled in a single card config, let alone in a crossfire situation.
Click to expand...

What are nVidia's VRM temps like?

Brent_Justice said:
According to my testing GPUz only reports VRM temps on AMD GPUs of Hawaii and upward. NVIDIA GPUs do not show the VRM temps in GPUz, 970 and 980 confirmed no VRM temps reported in GPUz
Click to expand...

Which is why I asked the question above. nVidia is smart. They don't give people the info, they can't complain. Besides, it's not unheard of for the wrong temps to be reported (accidentally?). That's why some sites have gone to using thermal imaging.
 
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Relayer said:
What are nVidia's VRM temps like?



Which is why I asked the question above. nVidia is smart. They don't give people the info, they can't complain. Besides, it's not unheard of for the wrong temps to be reported (accidentally?). That's why some sites have gone to using thermal imaging.
Click to expand...


Good point. But if I had to guess, I would say they are lower than the 290s temps. I would guess that because there is a lot less power going through the vrms on the 970/980s. But you never know. They could be poorly cooled and running at 90+c.
 
trick0502 said:
Under gaming load from gpuz. The same way you would do the gpu load temps.
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I don't have a problem showing that, but GPUz does not report on all cards so it would be a bit uneven in reporting.
 
As requested.....

Stock Speeds
xfx290stockVRM.png


OC Speeds
xfx290OCVRM.png
 
wow the VRM1 temps on OC are really high. this is where it makes a huge difference to buy a tri-x or vapor-x or lightning which have much better core and VRM cooling. the VRM cooling on the XFX DD is poor. you need a case with very good airflow to maintain VRM1 temps at <100c .

http://www.legitreviews.com/xfx-radeon-r9-290-double-dissipation-video-card-review_138612/12

https://translate.google.com/transl...radeon-r9-290-290x-roundup-test/3/&edit-text=

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/r9-290x-lightning-performance-review,3782-7.html

still the R9 290 is a excellent buy at USD 270 :)

www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121842
www.amazon.com/Asus-R9290-DC2OC-4GD5-ASUS-Graphics-Cards/dp/B00HWQUI02/
 
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
testicle said:
I was able to get this card for $214.99 from Newegg during the Black Friday weekend sale. It's been a great card and a huge upgrade from the 6970 I had. It runs just as cool as the 6970 did, and really gave me a lot of extra horsepower. It's really noticeable in games. Well worth what I paid for it.
Click to expand...

man if I see one of these that low again its gonna take a miracle to resist the urge to upgrade and kick the 7970 down to my htpc. Must resist the temptation, the 390's are just around the corner :confused:
 
124c at oc?!?!?! oh snap. i think the they can run up to 125c, but that isnt leaving yourself a lot of head room.
 
Awww, this thing is so good.

I have buyers remorse.

I'm super happy with my 290x, but I could have saved a bundle with this guy, and probably not hit the ceiling on either in any reasonable regard until an upgrade for either was relevant :(.
 
Relayer said:
What are nVidia's VRM temps like?



Which is why I asked the question above. nVidia is smart. They don't give people the info, they can't complain. Besides, it's not unheard of for the wrong temps to be reported (accidentally?). That's why some sites have gone to using thermal imaging.
Click to expand...

Guru3D does thermal imaging for all cards they review so you can look up the VRM temps there.
 
trick0502 said:
124c at oc?!?!?! oh snap. i think the they can run up to 125c, but that isnt leaving yourself a lot of head room.
Click to expand...

Not an overclockers card for sure. A super awesome budget card though...hiding an enthusiast card within that is just above the tier for a chip that has been out for a while now and didn't seem to have very much legroom. This is all spades out the gate.

We've pretty much checked all the trumps of this card in the above?

If you want a card you can overclock...should probably get a high-bin premium card, rather than targeting the brand new budget/performance refresh sweeping the breath out of the 'sub 200' tier.

This kills anything priced in class, warrantless temp arguments withstanding.
 
Kyle,

On page 6, the last line which says"Overclocking the XFX Radeon R9 285 Black Edition resulted in a 17.2% performance increase" Shouldn't it say R9 290 Double Dissipation?
 
Crysis 3 : In Crysis 3, the XFX Radeon R9 290 Double Dissipation Edition and ASUS ROG Striker GTX 760 were playable at 2560x1600 with SMAA 4, 16X AF and system spec set to high. The ASUS GeForce GTX 970 STRIX DirectCU II required resolution to be reduced to 1920x1080

Did you mean that the 970 was playable at the higher resolution?
 
I own a 290 DD and the high vrm temps have concerned me for a while now. I was told that revisions were made to the VRM cooling so I RMA'd my first card only to receive one with even worse temps in return. I'll put a link to a gallery of my disassembled 290 below for anyone interested in the VRM cooling or lack thereof. The actual GPU cooling is ok but they really missed the mark with the VRMs.

Gallery:http://m.imgur.com/a/0QPR8#
 
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