The biased R9 290X reviews...

[cptwhite_uk]

Scainer I do take the point of the temperature and noise issues. I appreciate TTL's opinion is heavily weighed towards these areas which he views as very important. However I'm not going to get into flame war with you. The points I had with his first video I have listed clearly in the opening post, all of which are valid as I did watch the entire (40min!) video, save skipping a few minutes here and there to cut around some of the waffle. The review does shoe horn in an nVidia comment wherever possible, or so it seems, and the nVidia product placement in the conclusion segment was highly dubious.

It might just be bad judgement on TTL's part, but on the whole he looks mightily biased, not so much for pointing out the 290X's shortcomings, but the way nVidia products and info are talk about / shown / praised for half the review!

[dodgydrains]

The point is it is a review and he is comparing it to the nVidia equivalent (780). Fair point though that it might look like bias toward nVidia but I have seen so many reviews by Tom and they are usually quite informative. Granted the guy does waffle on a bit and admits as such. It is difficult to review hundreds of product, but on balance I find him unbiased.

[george1979]

To be fair Tom has some decent points, he just takes a while getting to them! AMD could have done a better job on the launch. Its a great card, at a good price point (considering the recent sky high pricing) that will shake up the GPU market but it was a stupid decision not to allow 3rd parties like Asus and Gigabyte to build some at the same time. The temps are too high and all reviews are saying its a a bit noisy. That doesn't inspire confidence.

In any case the best thing about this is that it should drive prices down so me and the rest of the great unwashed who can't spend £400-£500 on a gfx card can get a tasty upgrade

[jigger]

The reviews are very imbalanced at best TBH. The new AMD card is faster than titan at less than half the price! AMD have just crushed the high end competition in style.
A sub £400 Titan and from looking at the r290 specs a sub £350 gtx780 and then you can look at things differently but as it stands nvidia are just to slow by half, literally.

[Biscuit]

I watched some of TTLs explanation and he made some very good points. He does go on... and on... and on... as usual... but its worth watching te first 10 mins or so.

[Scainer]

People seem to forget that the Titan is a restricted version of the GK110 architecture. It was released as a halo model rather than strictly a consumer product. The 780 is a further restricted model of which can match the performance of the Titan when overclocked (ie can generally also equal the 290X). The 780ti will be either an overclocked Titan rebranding, a super-overclocked 780, or the full fat GK110. Further to this a 770ti could be introduced as a cut down 780 (a card similar to this was originally hinted at when the architecture was released (all depends on 290 performance)).

The 290X is not ground breaking but what it does do it hopefully lower the price of the nVidia cards.

290X costs £450
280X costs £240 but is 30% slower

The 780 at stock seems to be about 10% slower than a 290X, but I expect the 290 to also be 15% slower and be about £350

If I was at nVidia I would reduce the 780 to £400 and introduce the 780ti at £500. If that did happen what would people then be saying about the R9 range?

[GeorgeStorm]

I actually watched Tom's review (don't normally like him), his points seemed fair enough.

He gave it the performance award because it does give a good level of performance for the money, but the issues he talks about are more than fair enough in my opinion. Once you start adding custom coolers the performance/pound will also decrease a bit which will make it less of a good buy.

I wasn't planning on buying it but I'm still disappointed.

[scaryjim]

... The 780ti will be either an overclocked Titan rebranding, a super-overclocked 780, or the full fat GK110. ...

Or a mid-point between the 780 and Titan i.e. 13/15 SMX enabled, which is what the latest rumours say. Plus presumably, being 780 branded, it'll have its double-precision throughput hobbled.

And if they do drop the 780 to £400 and bring in the 780Ti at £500, I doubt anyone will say anything about R9 - why talk about AMD cards on an nvidia release?

I suspect what most people would say is "fair play nvidia, took you long enough but your pricing finally makes sense". But we'll have to wait and see a) what the actual specs are, and b) what the actual performance is compared to the 290X. If they bring it in at £500 but it's only a few % faster than a 290X, then I don't think anyone will be impressed. If they bring it in at £500 and it's 10% faster than a 290X, that'll be more like it.

Don't forget that Hawaii is 20% smaller than GK110, so it's cheaper to make, and that AMD are using fully-enabled dies, so presumably are getting good yield off the early production runs. Nvidia struggled with yield on GK110, which is why it took so long for a GK110 part to be released to consumers: fortunately for them, GK104 was a good enough chip that they didn't need GK110 until recently. So how far they can drop prices depends on whether they're getting enough usable GK110 dies and how much it's costing them. Chances are AMD will always be able to undercut them if they need to - advantage of the smaller die.

[Scainer]

nVidia said the 780ti would be the greatest card they have ever produced, but the rumours at first thought it was going to be a 770ti using a GK110, we will wait and see.
Logically thinking, I expect the Titan to disappear for now.

15 SMX units = 2,880 (***MHz) New Titan or a future move to introduce Maxwell?
14 SMX units = 2,688 (876MHz) Titan
12 SMX units = 2,304 (902MHz) 780

The GK110 can be overclocked to 1100MHz+. This provides many options, so its really just about the price/performance point.
Overclocked 780's at around 1000MHz offer 98% of the Titan/290X performance, so at a guess I can see the 780ti being an overclocked Titan (954MHz) but the cost is the sticking point and with that we must thank AMD for making it competitive again.

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/6gb-z...hz-cores-2688-

I believe the Zotac amp edition offers about 10% improvements, so priced with the AMD structure this would be worth about £550 rather than the current £790. interesting times?

[Bigchrome]

Watched the "AMD 290X vs Titan vs 780 TTL's Thoughts" video where TTL explains his reasoning behind recommending the 780 over the 290X and, despite the fact that he does waffle on, he talks a lot of sense. Really, from a practical point of view and for the majority of users the 290X, and the 780 (or it's non-reference versions) effectively trade blows.

Then with the inclusion of the cooler, quieter and more aesthetically pleasing heatsink on the 780 it really does become a matter of whether you have just that little bit more money to spend, which driver ecosystem you're more comfortable with and whether you're willing to pay a little more for (as I view it) the surety that Nvidia card will play ball with all your games.

[scaryjim]

nVidia said the 780ti would be the greatest card they have ever produced ...

true, although I struggle to see how they can really claim that without making it faster than Titan, which means Titan has to go, and it's faster replacement has to be a lot cheaper. A faster-clocked Titan with 3GB of RAM and dp crippled might make sense as a 780 Ti. I can't see them going for a full GK110 core as they can't afford another halo product like Titan - they need to sell plenty of these for as near £500 as possible *and* make it faster than Titan. When fully functioning GK110 dies can be used for several-thousand dollar professional cards, I can't see them also pouring them in to $649 consumer cards.

Ultimately, what we definitely know about 780 Ti is that it'll use GK110, it should be faster than Titan, and it shouldn't cost more than, say, $699, but probably more like $649. Then we'll just be waiting to see what AMDs partners can do with custom 290X designs

And of course, the GTX690 / 7990 are still pretty much the fastest cards out there, albeit multi-GPU solutions ... so for a real shake up we need something to topple those...

[Agent]

I think this is part of a wider problem: Modern reviews (certainly video ones) are full of 'fluff'.

Ultimately a GPU can be made to produce some simple RAW data. What temperate does it run at compared to other cards? How much power does it use? What is its cost? What are the FPS amounts over various games?

A table with this information in is sufficient enough for 90% of people to make a decision, unless they prefer a specific brand anyway. Sure, tack on any important information at the same time, but we're not takling about pages of content here.

If you want to tell me about it's aesthetics - include a picture

Maybe it's just me, but I'm just fed up with modern reviews in general. I find myself having to wade through pages of opinion / minutes of talk before I actually get to anything interesting. Even the 'conclusions' on some reviews have been horrendous recently.

[jigger]

I believe the Zotac amp edition offers about 10% improvements, so priced with the AMD structure this would be worth about £550 rather than the current £790. interesting times?

A GTX Titan is not going to be competitive until the price is under £429 and by the time a GTX 780 ti card is released the r290 will probably cost less than RRP, included a decent games bundle and have the usual multitude of third party coolers.

Titan is prety much redundant unless nvidia are selling them on a £500+ profit margin. It's all about how good the GTX780ti will be now, and how close it can get to the R290 in price.

[jigger]

I think this is part of a wider problem: Modern reviews (certainly video ones) are full of 'fluff'.

Ultimately a GPU can be made to produce some simple RAW data. What temperate does it run at compared to other cards? How much power does it use? What is its cost? What are the FPS amounts over various games?

A table with this information in is sufficient enough for 90% of people to make a decision, unless they prefer a specific brand anyway. Sure, tack on any important information at the same time, but we're not takling about pages of content here.

If you want to tell me about it's aesthetics - include a picture

Maybe it's just me, but I'm just fed up with modern reviews in general. I find myself having to wade through pages of opinion / minutes of talk before I actually get to anything interesting. Even the 'conclusions' on some reviews have been horrendous recently.

I don't think it's just you mate. Hexus and Techpowerup are probably the best review sites for facts.

[cptwhite_uk]

Agent, that's what you call a marketing opportunity for Hexus

[james111333]

Tom is an unbiased reviewer usually, he did previously slate nVidia for similar things.

But he has turned into a bit of a d1ck, fame lol