Hardware AMD Radeon R9 290 Review

Epic performance for the price, but too hot and too hungry.

 

So the heat vanished ? You'll have to explain that to me, then I'm going to trademark the material and build cars that doesn't heat up during summer. I'm going to be pretty rich.

How does heater works ? You heat a surface and it irradiates, thus heating the air, no ?

How does cooler works ? Could it be water, heatpipe or just bare alu heatsink ... you take the heat / wasted energy from the heating point and you take it far away with liquid / air. The heat doesn't vanished.

GTX780 thermal under load :



R9-290 thermal under load :



R9-290X thermal under load :



Take the same GPU, same speed, same load one with an efficient cooler another one with an inefficient one. If you have, let's say, a difference of 30°C inside the core temp it means that the efficient cooler took 30°C OFF the GPU die, transmitting it somewhere. For sure it WON'T heat up your room, but the area around the case (prolly under your desk) will rapidly heat up during load (just like an hairdrier won't heat your room but will heat a small area around itself).

EDIT: Higher core temp --> higher heat around the chip, just look at the thermal imagery I posted.

 

I'm basing it on benchmarks of power consumption. I don't just make things up...



Real gaming power use and maxed out stress testing always produce hugely different results.

 

Those averages in that benchmark were taken running Crysis 2.

 

Techspot records much lower power use (300W full system) for Crysis 3, same resolution but even higher settings. With the Titan it pulls 298W, but no 780 figure is provided. The 290 slightly outperforms the Titan though.

The main point I'm making is that the heat produced isn't related to the core temp. It's not going to heat up the case, it's not going to heat up the room - any more than a similarly powered blower card, that is.

 

Core temp does not = heat produced by a card.

My friend had his 480s under water and the room when those cards were under load was boiling. they were all sub 60c under water. The difference between his 480s and my 580s under water was huge. In the summer months I could game quiet happily. He could not without some form of Air con. All the gpus were within the same temperature bracket.

Not just blower cards that heat up rooms much to popular thinking. Even under water that heat has to go someplace ( to the rads basically) Those rads have fans on which remove heat which goes into the room shockingly enough.

new process would indicate this card is sub 28nm its not so dont talk nonesence. 7970 was 28nm.

Its some new architexture but both have hit the limits of 28nm if this was released in the summer I wonder if peoples oppinions would change. Not everyone has a thermal limited room to run the cards in. On a warm summers day these cards would surely downclock themselves at record pace.

780ti will be no better in this regard either.

AMD have made 2 good cards at a good price, Question is will anyone buy one not saw anyone on this site looking at either card. I know someone wants 3 780ti.

When 680 and 7970 were released was threads on both with people buying them at launch. Not saw that level of popularity for either the 780 / 780ti or the 290x 290.

Seen alot of vocal support but I wonder if any of those vocal people will actually be owners of the cards they seem to support. As someone once said we speak with our wallets.

Me personally waiting on 20nm tech and maxwell most likely.

 

The PCB exceeds 90°C in some area, and more than half of its surface is above 80°C .... do you really think it won't acts as a little heater ?

 

No, since if you just stick a big cooler on it which lowers those recorded temps, it'll still be giving out the same amount of heat. Use a quieter cooler with lower core temps that exhausts into the case instead and all of the heat will go into the case, rather than out of the back.

 

Quite right - the core temp is not the same as the heat the card releases to atmosphere. However higher core temp does mean more heat released.

TPU points against were:
Extremely Noisy
High temperatures
High power consumption

The scent of the GeForce FX 5800 Ultra is strong in this one!

 

£310 for the same (OC'd) performance of a Titan! Yes please!

 

I agree on that ... same amount of heat, just that it goes somewhere else (air instead of core)

From the back thermal view, the card doesn't exhaust hot air. It's mainly the PCB and components that are heating. Even if AMD says it is OK, I wouldn't gamble on that.

 

they also said the same about the GTX 480....


didn't stop people buying it.

 

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


holy ****

AMD are literally waiting for the GTX780Ti before coming out and releasing the AIB`s to slap it down oO

 

the press - retail difference looks pretty bad on amd's part...
I just ordered a 290 and prolimatech cooler so that should keep the card running full blast, however i'll be p1ssed if the retail 290's run much slower than press editions.

 

Don't care about the stock cooler. Mine is in the mail! This thing matches blows with a 780 priced $150 more and beats it at higer resolutions and that's before Mantle comes into play. Plus it really kills the 780 in BF4. The price is fantastic and I don't feel like waiting for more expensive aftermarket cooler versions.

 

Man what's the fuss about?

I bought a stock 7970 at launch. I overclocked it to 1000mhz, it got hot. Consistently in the high 80s with the fan on 100%. The noise drove me bloody crazy, that's the price you pay for a top end ferrari card.

I also had a GTX 470. It was very hot and very, very loud.

If AMD were charging Fermi prices for this thing I could understand. I mean Fermi was fast, powerful, hot and loud and used loads of power. It was also expensive, making it completely unattractive. Yet people still bought it.

This card costs less at its launch than the 5870 did for god's sake, and it's three years or more after the fact and people are complaining?

I think we should be bloody grateful here that AMD don't hire the same brain dead monkeys to price up their products that Nvidia do. I mean seriously, the f*ck?

 

Indeedydoodly man. Seriously, I doff my cap to AMD.