News AMD denies cherry-picking R9 290, 290X review cards

so nothing like titan`s slowing down when they get hot then.....

 

Toms hardware ran the real world tests most of us have asked for since launch. The downclock is significant it would seem on retail boards due to the core temp been so high. A custom cooler would fix this but this puts AMDs stock cooler in even more bad light.

Still don't understand why AMD did not give us a real cooler.

 

They are running them right on the limit. The chip is locked to it's 95 degree temp at all times and performance is completely dependent on cooling. You run at 40% fan speed and it's much slower then 55%.

Not surprising then that the hotter running chips are substantially slower for a fan speed then the cooler running ones. Equally quality of cooling in your case would have a similar difference. As would several months of dust. As would playing in the summer vs the winter.

Not surprising that reviewers got cherry picked samples - I bet they always do for nvidia and AMD - it's just in this case it makes a huge difference because AMD messed up and didn't put a cooler on the card that can really cool it at anything less then jet engine noise levels.

 

I know there's always been a variance in the overclocking ability of parts (the silicon lottery I believe it's called) but to have two 'identical' items that at stock have such a different performance is totally unacceptable.

Imagine that you and a friend bought a car advertised to do 50mpg - his did 50mpg and yours only did 35mpg - you'd send yours back...

 

I'd send mine back if it was down in the 700mhz - 800mhz range.

 

That's right - you can only really compare competing products at their guaranteed clocks. While it's true that one type of GPU may generally overclock better than another, you cannot guarantee that speed.

If AMD cannot produce cards that will run at stated clocks, their value and appeal is drastically reduced. I've been very critical of AMD's new cards' power consumption and operating temperature, but I didn't want this to become an embarrassment for them; and it has the potential to become just that.

What I'm struggling with is, if they were fully aware of this issue, why not bite the bullet and delay while developing a new cooler, or target them against the 770s and cripple the GPU enough the manage the heat with the current cooler and then launch a flagship product with a redesigned cooler to steal the performance crown?

 

It's based on a single press sample versus two retail samples. No other review site has found anything similar. This isn't news, it's a way to generate hits.

 

Don't know of anyone on bit tech looking at either card( 290x 290) similar story is repeated across a lot of forums. Not seen a user review of one yet on any of the forums I regularly vist.

Cherry picking review samples would not be the first time it's happened in the pc sector. Most likely you will see other review sites test this themselves. Assuming they can find a card to buy.

 

As far as I can tell, no other review site has bothered to compare their review samples with retail cards. Although, Bit-tech's follow up article on the 290X did pick up on the thermal throttling and resultant performance drop-off.

Tom's Hardware incorporated their additional testing in their review - and added a potential caveat to the title, based on testing results. This will naturally attract more interest, but that doesn't make this a manufactured click-bait article.

 

A quick glance and things like this come up:

Toms have based their conclusions on a couple of retail samples vs one press sample, which says it all. They haven't bothered to allow AMD to test the cards to verify anything, but just publish what amounts to 'our press sample works, our two retail samples have problems as far as we can see, so all retail cards have problems'.

 

Rumor's are saying it was originally meant to target the 770, but with Nvidia's recent price cuts they may have pushed it to go against the 780 and Titan. It wouldn't have looked good if the 290 matched the 770 now its some £50 cheaper.

 

That may be true but in that case they would have to either:

(a) been sent a stonking press sample (possible but theirs seems to be in line with others' press samples)

or

(b) they've bought / received two duff retail samples (unlikely but possible)

It'll be interesting to see real people's findings but I wouldn't want to splash out on one thinking that it may perform worse than I've seen in reviews...

 

The 280X already matches (and often beats) the 770, plus has better memory specs.

 

OK, who are Webbo and Gibbo, and do they provide proof comparative testing? They may have a point, but all I see so far is a copypasta forum post so I couldn't possibly accept it at face value.

 

All the things I've seen from 290x owners on ocuk forums suggest this problem doesn't exist. Throttling can happen on quiet mode, but not to a large extent - but that's reported in the reviews too. The problem is toms haven't done a real investigation, it's just FUD.

Gibbo's the boss at ocuk, and w3bbo does reviews for techspot.

 

http://www.sweclockers.com/artikel/...der-for-golden-samples-sweclockers-undersoker

There you go.

 

Tom's is full of BS.

Can we have names of the "retail" cards tested at Tom's?

Because people who got the 290X and put MK26 on them, they are flying, while running cool and quiet.

Too many sour grapes from Nvidia side it seems.

 

ANY 280X beats a GTX770, as the 7970Ghz did. And the 280X Toxic beats a GTX780.