AMD, are you watching? "The GeForce GTX 780 doesn’t offer anything in additional performance over the 290" - yet it still gets a recommendation solely for its sane noise levels, despite being 100$ more expensive than the R9-290! Please don't tell me you could not have given that card a better cooler for less than 100$...
It's not necessarily the cooler itself that is the problem; what really makes it loud and hot is that AMD is letting the card get so loud and hot in order to push the performance it can give out, thus the low price and high performance.
No, the cooler is the problem. If you stick a decent aftermarket cooler like an Arctic Accelero Xtreme III on the R9-290, performance levels go up while noise goes way down to reasonable levels. Even the power consumption goes down slightly without the chip running at 95C all the time.
Replacing the cooler is a pain, but we should see Hawaii cards from AIB vendors before too long, which should fix the problem. Most AIBs already have good cooler designs that will work just fine with these chips.
Like you... I hope AMD is paying attention.. but they can't really be faulted here. It's been a common practice for both companies with their reference design coolers right up until the release of the Titan.
Thing is.. these reference designs have a tendency to stick around thru-out the life of a product... so it's a smart idea to put something special together in the cooling section incase the consumer happens to get one of those cards after partners start churning out their own cooling solutions.
I'd be far more likely to shell out extra for the 780 reference simply because of it's cooler (it is a selling point) and AMD has to take that into consideration moving forward..
If you're looking at a dual 290X, you'd probably be best off putting them in a watercooling setup (since you clearly have a large budget). You'll get great performance as they'll never throttle and they'll stay really cool while pumping out 4K gaming awesomeness.
Yes if you are going too spend over $3000 for a monitor and over $100 on video cards you might as well go for watercooling or at least aftermarket coolers for the video cards. I would also assume that you are running a 2011 board with a 4860X, PCI-e SSD, and a pony.
Dell just announced a pro-grade 4K monitor for $1399, with a consumer-grade variant to come soon after that for under $1000. And although no pricing has been announced yet, Asus and Planar have monitors in the pipeline based on the same 4K panel Seiki uses in their $500 TVs.
4K is going to be mainstream sooner than you think.
Can not make sense out of the "total price tag is $300 for roughly identical performance" phrase in the last sentence. Otherwise VERY helpful article. BTW, anywhere you know a similar review overlaid with features Linux drivers/Blender and such can take advantage of?
Interesting article. Seems to be leaving out some cards here. See sales all over for 7870 cards. I know they are being discontinued as well. But for $140 with rebate on Newegg right now for an ASUS version and based on the Anandtech bench does much better than a 650ti performance wise. And isn't the 650ti being discontinued too?
Yeah, I myself am between a 7870 for 150-155€ or a 270X for 185€. (Or a GTX650Ti for 130€,or a GTX660 for 165€..) I was already convinced that the 7870 was the better option though...
I was really eying the R9 290 as a gift for my brother, but in the end, I just couldn't go with it. I like the speed and price, but the noise and potential throttling bothers me. Well, it wouldn't affect me, as I would just put it under water, but he's not that technical. I ended up going with a 4GB Gigabyte GTX 770 as it was on sale for only $30 more than the 2GB models. While the VRAM is useless in most games, I figure he might enjoy it in Skyrim after enabling some of those fancy texture mods!
Nice article. I'd probably expand more on the older models being phased out since many of the new models are just upclocked rebrands, though.
The 7850 has been on sale for $100 and even the 7870 has been on sale for around $110 (after rebates, of course). Those represent massive savings compared to buying an R9 270X at nearly double the price.
Then you have the GTX 660 on sale for $130 this past weekend, not to mention it comes with the Splinter Cell/AC4 bundle. The GTX 670 went as low as $200 too.
Even the 7950 was on sale for around $170, and there was a 7970 for $200 that I was lucky enough to jump onto.
If you're more scrupulous in following the sales and target the "older" cards being cleared out of stock, there are some great deals to be had.
I'm curious about the 4GB 770's for 4k Gaming (I ask, as I just picked up a 4GB 770 OC2 to go with my 2560x1600 monitor). Is the delimiter the speed or the VRAM in the article's $k gaming opinion?
The limitation is speed (beyond a reasonable minimum VRAM limit). The reason for the 290X recommendation is that the R9 290X has a better scaling in Crossfire at 4K than NVidia's lineup, so even though the 290X individually is slower than the GTX 780Ti, when you have two cards AMD wins over NVidia. Of course, this is only applicable to the 290X; the 280X and below have horrible crossfire scaling at high resolution so it makes sense to go with NVidia for SLI for anything priced lower.
Guys, let me give this a spin - I recently consolidated my work office into my home office, which leaves me with 5 monitors that I want to use. 27" 1440p Overlord (2) Dell Ultrasharps at 1600x1200 optimal (2) Dell 1080p consumer models.
So I need 2 gpu cards just to handle the ports - when I game it tends to be only on the 1440p monitor (so far). Would you recommend 2 R2 270X in Crossfire or 2 GTX770 in SLI?
Since you're only gaming off of a single monitor, there are a few Tahiti cards that should be able to drive all 5 ports off of a single card. For example, the XFX 280X we reviewed in October had 2x miniDP, 2x DVI, and 1x HDMI.
At most, with 2 active DP-to-SLDVI adapters, you'd be able to hook up all of those monitors to that card. If any of those monitors have DisplayPort, then it will be even easier.
<quote>To utilize clock sharing and to drive 3 such monitors off of a single card, all 3 monitors must be timing-identical</quote>
But he doesn't have a set of three timing identical monitors, only sets of 2. Unless your original statement was wrong, he needs a MST hub and three active DP to DVI adapters to use a single card.
With the current price of MST hubs he might as well buy a second card, but that's a catch-22 because if you want to use any of the outputs from the second card, you can't enable Crossfire. So you have to have two profiles - one for gaming with Crossfire enabled and only three monitors enabled, and one for work with Crossfire disabled and all 5 monitors enabled.
At the budget end I would skip the 7770 and look for a 7790 on sale. I just picked one up for $90 with a $20 rebate. I don't see any that cheap right now, but I do see one with a better cooler than mine for $110 and a $40 rebate. The 7790 gets you the latest GCN architecture (with the audio dsp) and 30-80% more performance than a 7770 - http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/777?vs=776
I've been viewing reviews on this site for quite some time now. This whole write up is old news for those of us that tend to pay attention to the current state of tech. Why not jump out there and start feeding us information on your thoughts and feelings on current bleeding edge tech..... like the GTX 780 Ti Classified Kingpin. Just a thought.
R9 290 oc to 1100-1150 on average, which is like 200mhz + so yea, not really to far. Also its 100$ cheaper, has mor vram, and more memory transfer - sheer power.
I would add the Runner Up for 1080p as the Geforce GTX660 (non-TI). It is just a bit faster than the non-X 270, but still inside the 150W power budget.
Also it has a lot of custom coolers, specifically the Zotac one is smaller than even the 7770 and this makes it a great card for a really compact gaming PC.
realmente AMD y NVIDIA estan muy parejos claro con la ventaja en precio para AMD personalmente estoy impaciente por la próxima generación de tarjetas a 20 nm, me gustaría que AMD usara el poder de TrueAudio para el reconocimiento de voz.
I really do wish we could get some variation or something similar to EVGAs ACX cooler for the R9 290. Why not buck the trend EVGA? Make the 290x your first venture into AMD land. Or someone else (Gigabyte I'm looking at you) just make a high-end decent cooler for this beast of a card - please. Now! I would buy one of those in a heartbeat. But not this reference "furnace-jet airplane" version. My rooms hot and noisy enough already without adding a 90+C card in the mix that sounds like a jet.
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IanCutress - Monday, December 2, 2013 - link
Just awaiting the custom 290X designs really. A pair of 290X Lightnings or DirectCU models would be nice.MrSpadge - Monday, December 2, 2013 - link
AMD, are you watching? "The GeForce GTX 780 doesn’t offer anything in additional performance over the 290" - yet it still gets a recommendation solely for its sane noise levels, despite being 100$ more expensive than the R9-290! Please don't tell me you could not have given that card a better cooler for less than 100$...electroball09 - Monday, December 2, 2013 - link
It's not necessarily the cooler itself that is the problem; what really makes it loud and hot is that AMD is letting the card get so loud and hot in order to push the performance it can give out, thus the low price and high performance.Not This Guy - Monday, December 2, 2013 - link
No.AMD cheaped out on the cooler to undercut Nvidia on price/performance. The silicon isn't overclocked. AMD's cooler is just noisy.
With the fan set to 40% the 290X rarely throttles. The cooler works. It's just stupidly noisy.
r13j13r13 - Wednesday, December 4, 2013 - link
pero sin la precion de AMD los precios de NVIDIA se dispararían y te venderian una gtx760 a 1000 dolaresJDG1980 - Monday, December 2, 2013 - link
No, the cooler is the problem. If you stick a decent aftermarket cooler like an Arctic Accelero Xtreme III on the R9-290, performance levels go up while noise goes way down to reasonable levels. Even the power consumption goes down slightly without the chip running at 95C all the time.Replacing the cooler is a pain, but we should see Hawaii cards from AIB vendors before too long, which should fix the problem. Most AIBs already have good cooler designs that will work just fine with these chips.
just4U - Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - link
Like you... I hope AMD is paying attention.. but they can't really be faulted here. It's been a common practice for both companies with their reference design coolers right up until the release of the Titan.Thing is.. these reference designs have a tendency to stick around thru-out the life of a product... so it's a smart idea to put something special together in the cooling section incase the consumer happens to get one of those cards after partners start churning out their own cooling solutions.
I'd be far more likely to shell out extra for the 780 reference simply because of it's cooler (it is a selling point) and AMD has to take that into consideration moving forward..
r3loaded - Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - link
If you're looking at a dual 290X, you'd probably be best off putting them in a watercooling setup (since you clearly have a large budget). You'll get great performance as they'll never throttle and they'll stay really cool while pumping out 4K gaming awesomeness.lwatcdr - Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - link
Yes if you are going too spend over $3000 for a monitor and over $100 on video cards you might as well go for watercooling or at least aftermarket coolers for the video cards. I would also assume that you are running a 2011 board with a 4860X, PCI-e SSD, and a pony.JDG1980 - Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - link
Dell just announced a pro-grade 4K monitor for $1399, with a consumer-grade variant to come soon after that for under $1000. And although no pricing has been announced yet, Asus and Planar have monitors in the pipeline based on the same 4K panel Seiki uses in their $500 TVs.4K is going to be mainstream sooner than you think.
piiman - Saturday, December 7, 2013 - link
Let me know when they are $150.00 or less, that's when they'll be mainstream :-) . $3,000+ for a monitor is crazy!vdidenko - Monday, December 2, 2013 - link
Can not make sense out of the "total price tag is $300 for roughly identical performance" phrase in the last sentence. Otherwise VERY helpful article. BTW, anywhere you know a similar review overlaid with features Linux drivers/Blender and such can take advantage of?vdidenko - Monday, December 2, 2013 - link
... last paragraph ...DanNeely - Monday, December 2, 2013 - link
...is $300 *more* for ...multiple3 - Monday, December 2, 2013 - link
It should be "total price tag is $300 more for roughly identical performance".Stuka87 - Monday, December 2, 2013 - link
Pretty sure it should be $1300. As two 780Ti's would cost that much.crimson117 - Monday, December 2, 2013 - link
Thoughts on GTX 760? Can be had for $240-ish.Ryan Smith - Monday, December 2, 2013 - link
Interesting card, but the 270X averages within 5% for $40 less. Though NVIDIA has the better bundle.owbert - Monday, December 2, 2013 - link
Totally loving these buyers guides! Please consider releasing more in the future, perhaps every couple of months or monthly basis?!I am sure others would appreciate it as much. Anandtechs word is golden.
rcarroll05 - Monday, December 2, 2013 - link
Interesting article. Seems to be leaving out some cards here. See sales all over for 7870 cards. I know they are being discontinued as well. But for $140 with rebate on Newegg right now for an ASUS version and based on the Anandtech bench does much better than a 650ti performance wise. And isn't the 650ti being discontinued too?asendra - Monday, December 2, 2013 - link
Yeah, I myself am between a 7870 for 150-155€ or a 270X for 185€. (Or a GTX650Ti for 130€,or a GTX660 for 165€..)I was already convinced that the 7870 was the better option though...
Essence_of_War - Monday, December 2, 2013 - link
Is there a large community of people gaming at 1080i/1440i that I don't know about that requires that we specify our monitor resolutions w/ 'p'? :PAikouka - Monday, December 2, 2013 - link
I was really eying the R9 290 as a gift for my brother, but in the end, I just couldn't go with it. I like the speed and price, but the noise and potential throttling bothers me. Well, it wouldn't affect me, as I would just put it under water, but he's not that technical. I ended up going with a 4GB Gigabyte GTX 770 as it was on sale for only $30 more than the 2GB models. While the VRAM is useless in most games, I figure he might enjoy it in Skyrim after enabling some of those fancy texture mods!blackrook - Monday, December 2, 2013 - link
Nice article. I'd probably expand more on the older models being phased out since many of the new models are just upclocked rebrands, though.The 7850 has been on sale for $100 and even the 7870 has been on sale for around $110 (after rebates, of course). Those represent massive savings compared to buying an R9 270X at nearly double the price.
Then you have the GTX 660 on sale for $130 this past weekend, not to mention it comes with the Splinter Cell/AC4 bundle. The GTX 670 went as low as $200 too.
Even the 7950 was on sale for around $170, and there was a 7970 for $200 that I was lucky enough to jump onto.
If you're more scrupulous in following the sales and target the "older" cards being cleared out of stock, there are some great deals to be had.
Pyperkub - Monday, December 2, 2013 - link
I'm curious about the 4GB 770's for 4k Gaming (I ask, as I just picked up a 4GB 770 OC2 to go with my 2560x1600 monitor). Is the delimiter the speed or the VRAM in the article's $k gaming opinion?The Von Matrices - Monday, December 2, 2013 - link
The limitation is speed (beyond a reasonable minimum VRAM limit). The reason for the 290X recommendation is that the R9 290X has a better scaling in Crossfire at 4K than NVidia's lineup, so even though the 290X individually is slower than the GTX 780Ti, when you have two cards AMD wins over NVidia. Of course, this is only applicable to the 290X; the 280X and below have horrible crossfire scaling at high resolution so it makes sense to go with NVidia for SLI for anything priced lower.tehred - Monday, December 2, 2013 - link
Guys, let me give this a spin - I recently consolidated my work office into my home office, which leaves me with 5 monitors that I want to use.27" 1440p Overlord
(2) Dell Ultrasharps at 1600x1200 optimal
(2) Dell 1080p consumer models.
So I need 2 gpu cards just to handle the ports - when I game it tends to be only on the 1440p monitor (so far). Would you recommend 2 R2 270X in Crossfire or 2 GTX770 in SLI?
Ryan Smith - Monday, December 2, 2013 - link
Since you're only gaming off of a single monitor, there are a few Tahiti cards that should be able to drive all 5 ports off of a single card. For example, the XFX 280X we reviewed in October had 2x miniDP, 2x DVI, and 1x HDMI.http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
At most, with 2 active DP-to-SLDVI adapters, you'd be able to hook up all of those monitors to that card. If any of those monitors have DisplayPort, then it will be even easier.
The Von Matrices - Monday, December 2, 2013 - link
I thought you said in your 280X review:<quote>To utilize clock sharing and to drive 3 such monitors off of a single card, all 3 monitors must be timing-identical</quote>
But he doesn't have a set of three timing identical monitors, only sets of 2. Unless your original statement was wrong, he needs a MST hub and three active DP to DVI adapters to use a single card.
With the current price of MST hubs he might as well buy a second card, but that's a catch-22 because if you want to use any of the outputs from the second card, you can't enable Crossfire. So you have to have two profiles - one for gaming with Crossfire enabled and only three monitors enabled, and one for work with Crossfire disabled and all 5 monitors enabled.
Ryan Smith - Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - link
D'oh!You're right of course. I forgot to take into consideration that the monitors were dissimilar.
MySchizoBuddy - Monday, December 2, 2013 - link
how about a buyers guide for compute professionalsYtterbium - Monday, December 2, 2013 - link
I'd say for compute, AMD camp 7970Ghz Ed if you can still find one or a 280X Toxic. nVidia camp Titan is the only card worth considering?eddman - Monday, December 2, 2013 - link
Why not some 770s too. These three seem to be some pretty good deals.http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
dylan522p - Monday, December 2, 2013 - link
Why the hell did you guys reccomend the 270x? 270 is a 270x but downclocked. No CUs disabled.bludragon - Monday, December 2, 2013 - link
At the budget end I would skip the 7770 and look for a 7790 on sale. I just picked one up for $90 with a $20 rebate. I don't see any that cheap right now, but I do see one with a better cooler than mine for $110 and a $40 rebate. The 7790 gets you the latest GCN architecture (with the audio dsp) and 30-80% more performance than a 7770 - http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/777?vs=776DMCalloway - Monday, December 2, 2013 - link
I've been viewing reviews on this site for quite some time now. This whole write up is old news for those of us that tend to pay attention to the current state of tech. Why not jump out there and start feeding us information on your thoughts and feelings on current bleeding edge tech..... like the GTX 780 Ti Classified Kingpin. Just a thought.Jodiuh - Monday, December 2, 2013 - link
The 780 OCs like crazy tho. I'm up 300 MHz over stock. AFAIK, the 290 does no such thing.psyside1 - Wednesday, December 4, 2013 - link
R9 290 oc to 1100-1150 on average, which is like 200mhz + so yea, not really to far. Also its 100$ cheaper, has mor vram, and more memory transfer - sheer power.marc1000 - Tuesday, December 3, 2013 - link
I would add the Runner Up for 1080p as the Geforce GTX660 (non-TI). It is just a bit faster than the non-X 270, but still inside the 150W power budget.Also it has a lot of custom coolers, specifically the Zotac one is smaller than even the 7770 and this makes it a great card for a really compact gaming PC.
r13j13r13 - Wednesday, December 4, 2013 - link
realmente AMD y NVIDIA estan muy parejos claro con la ventaja en precio para AMD personalmente estoy impaciente por la próxima generación de tarjetas a 20 nm, me gustaría que AMD usara el poder de TrueAudio para el reconocimiento de voz.iTheGM - Friday, December 6, 2013 - link
So what you're saying is that a mash-up of a 290 with a Titan-style cooler for something like $440 dollars would simply run the high-end table...?All right vendors, make this happen and I'll throw my money at you.
beck2448 - Saturday, December 7, 2013 - link
The Gigabyte 780 ti OC Windforce is 15% faster than stock 780ti and overclocks another 10% while remaining cool and quiet. This is a real beast.Toadster - Monday, December 9, 2013 - link
What about low profile cards? any ranking/rating going on? lots of SFF PC's being built...hapkiman - Monday, December 16, 2013 - link
I really do wish we could get some variation or something similar to EVGAs ACX cooler for the R9 290. Why not buck the trend EVGA? Make the 290x your first venture into AMD land. Or someone else (Gigabyte I'm looking at you) just make a high-end decent cooler for this beast of a card - please. Now! I would buy one of those in a heartbeat. But not this reference "furnace-jet airplane" version. My rooms hot and noisy enough already without adding a 90+C card in the mix that sounds like a jet.