Reviews - AMD Radeon R9 290

[HEXUS]

Meet the 290X's cheaper brother.

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[HalloweenJack]

Tell scan to hurry up with there product pages - competitors are already live with pricing - £319 shipped @ ocuk


http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=GX-337-SP

and they are bundling games with it

[jnutt]

Too loud too hot. I'll stick with nVidia even though it may be more expensive.

[jimbouk]

Too loud too hot. I'll stick with nVidia even though it may be more expensive.

Hopefully partner boards will sort this one out soon. Cracking bang for buck but early adopters are let down by the reference cooler.

[raven1001]

Was the 290 run in uber mode or quiet?

Regarding the cooler, it will do me for a card knocking on titan performance for just over £300.

[MustardCutter]

Looks like Nvidia's cards could do with another price cut.
I do wonder though what performance the nvidia cards could put out if they were allowed to run at those temps and power. Not sure if this is kind of a cheap trick / easy route to performance by AMD. These 290 cards sure are tempting though...

[ajax2061]

performance at a affordable price omg I am tempted though may wait for non reference coolers

[raven1001]

Tell scan to hurry up with there product pages - competitors are already live with pricing - £319 shipped @ ocuk


http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...odid=GX-337-SP

and they are bundling games with it

Wow what a great deal from OCUK, they seem to be first all the time with new GPU releases.

[kingpotnoodle]

Too loud too hot. I'll stick with nVidia even though it may be more expensive.

Yeah agreed, the performance is all good and there is good performance per £ but it is totally ruined for me when the noise is excessive and the card runs so hot I wonder about it's longevity. I often play a lot of strategy or open world games with quiet times, I don't want to sit next to a hair-dryer... AMD need to get a better reference cooler, but probably their partners can sort this easily enough.

[HalloweenJack]

Wow what a great deal from OCUK, they seem to be first all the time with new GPU releases.

seems scan haven't got any stock this time around -


http://www.ebuyer.com/583810-sapphir...d-21227-00-40g


£10 CHEAPER than OCUK!!

taking bets it`ll be under £300 VERY SOON

[kalniel]

That is a lot of card for the money, at this time anyway. Seems AMD have managed to get a good performance/cost improvement year on year.

[sykobee]

It's tough to consider paying $100 more for an equivalent performance Nvidia card (which itself just had a $150 price cut - AMD have effectively cratered prices from $650 to $399 in the space of a couple of weeks for the same performance) just to save a few watts and decibels - and the latter issue will be fixed with third party coolers. It's not like the difference in power consumption or noise is massive either - it's not a choice between quiet and loud, it's a choice between loud and slightly louder.

[raven1001]

I think scan need to look at their 290 pricing.

[tealsuki]

I'm ALMOST sold on this, if it weren't for the tremendous wattage. Might stick with nvidia for a little while longer. If not to keep my power bill down a bit.

[CK_1985]

I wonder if AIB partners will be a bit peeved by this, since it eats into the headroom for making their 'pre-overclocked' cards? Either way I agree with previous comments that this architecture badly needs partner boards' custom cooling before it becomes properly tempting.

Another kick up the backside for NVidia though! I feel more price drops coming on

[016ive]

Is there any intention for you guys to get a retail 290x and review it? I'm asking because Chris At Tom's got lower results with a retail 290x than the sample 290x that was sent by AMD . Anyway, Great job AMD. Well done!