The biased R9 290X reviews...

This really depresses me, here we are with nVidia asking for silly money £500+ for their top end single GPU cards and AMD come along with a compelling product that matches/beats on performance at a lower price point and we get reviews like these:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lZ3Z...GymyCWM2oTYTeg

Here Tom bangs on about the card's aesthetics for ages, gets the UK prices wrong without correcting until the 22nd minute into the video, and fails to acknowledge the pure bang per buck offers by the card. Yes the cooler and temperates could be better, but they will be with 3rd party models so it's a bit of mute point. He also bangs on about nvidia products for ages, going through their range of high end options, never once mentioning AMD's alternatives. At the end displayed to his left are 3 nVidia products stacked neatly in shot while he praises the green team, the R9 290X bearly in shot behind his corner logo in the video. How blatant do you need to make this?!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djvZa...E6Xw-yeJA0Tunw

Here LinusTechTips compare purely the overclocked states of the GTX780 and R9 290X, verbally admitting at one point that at stock the R9 290X bests the GTX780, but showing graphics stating the opposite. I mean seriously, who gives figures based purely on a single sample card that's overclocked. It's not representative of what an end user might be able to achieve, if they overclock at all.

Both reviews contradict the majority of main tech reports out there. I know you just have to accept it as personal opinion, but you can't help but wonder if they've been paid off by nVidia to down play the success of the 290X. Very depressing this kind of stuff is happening.

Obviously there's loads of nVidia fan boys in the comments, but really we're all consumers and should be on the same side - gunning for the company giving us the most compelling product(s) at the best prices. Why are reviewers being so blatantly biased? I'll never watch a review by Tom again, and that's a shame as he's generally been good when going into detail on other components - cooling equipment especially.

Totally agree with your comments. I usually enjoy Tom's product reviews but this time it seems his opinions just do not make sense.

I Suppose its one of the downsides of expecting people to review £1000s of hardware all the time. Maybe one of the HeXus reviewers can pipe in on the sample supply policies of the two relevant partners?

. I tend to pay very little attention to any of the subjective comments on reviews anyway. As far as comparing only ocd cards - I'm not too sure I have an issue with that. Noone is buying either a 780 or a 290X and leaving it at stock clocks, and the usual comparison in reviews of Stock vs. OC don't tend to include OC results for competitors cards, so you have to go faffing around for comparisons. This is particularly awkward when you want to compare 2 generations apart, as often the underlying test systems have changed if the benchmark games haven't.

Herulach: I do have some understanding of reviewing OC'd cards. But really, they should at least include the stock figures as well for reference. My main beef lies with Tom's blatant nvidia sales pitch in what should be an AMD review. He's almost as bad as Rory Cellan-Jones banging on about Apple products every chance he gets!

As they are reviewing a stock 290X they should have compared to the stock nVidia equivalent. Not sure what they are both playing at. Usually the reviews are extremely helpful and unbiased.

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Originally Posted by cptwhite_uk

Herulach: I do have some understanding of reviewing OC'd cards. But really, they should at least include the stock figures as well for reference. My main beef lies with Tom's blatant nvidia sales pitch in what should be an AMD review. He's almost as bad as Rory Cellan-Jones banging on about Apple products every chance he gets!

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I wasn't disagreeing, just voicing a personal bugbear about comparison between oc'd cards.

Tom Logan offers his own view point. He rates quietness and temperature highly and had banged on about the 7970 in the past (due to the games bundle) as his weapon of choice so by no means a green team fan boy.
His review is based upon 1440 and 1080 tests of which he points out are no better than a 780. I play at 1080 so reviews at 4k are meaningless to me.

The issue with the 290X is the temperature. At stock it was over 94c, this for me means that the headroom for overclocking is dangerous ground unless the fan and noise is maxed out.
I appreciate cool quite running, and it sounds like nVidia's is more efficient than AMD's.
The video was not filmed in one go. He finished it off yesterday reflecting the price information that was not available when he first received and tested the card.

Looking at some of the synthetic benchmarks of the R9 290 over on OcUK,and the overclocks that Gibbo(member of staff) got over on there,I don't seem the point of the GTX780 and Geforce Titan at their current price points. The R9 290X matches or beats the Geforce Titan at half the price at higher single monitor and multi-monitor resolutions. With next generation games,pushing higher resolution textures,you can see where this is going to go. Non-reference cards should be shipping out in late November anyway,according to Tarinder.

The R9 290 is going to be under £400 and there seems to be an inkling of non-reference R9 290 cards being launched around the same time. The R9 290 is going to make the R9 290X look expensive and the GTX780 and Geforce Titan seriously expensive I suspect.

The R9 290X and R9 290 are going to push the price of the high end Nvidia cards down and has lead to a new SKU being launched. Perhaps,we can now go back to £400 to £500 pricing for the fastest cards instead of the piss taking £500+ for reference models this year.

Just been looking through many 1080 benchmarks (various sources) and it looks like AMD have in essence used the 780 as a reference/base point. It generally matches the stock 780 but blows it away with AMD favourable games which it then even surpasses the Titan.

One review I read focused at 1440 and averaged out the performance. The conclusion is that the Titan just edges it, but the 290X is about 9% better than a 780
The 780 non-reference are about 7% quicker than stock meaning its horses for courses, and the price war could be on.

Simply put, the 290X is far from perfect but puts the cat amongst the pigeons regarding the pricing structure of nVidia.
AMD have one card left in the price/performance of the 290, but nVidia have the ball in their court, a 780ti and the possibility of cutting prices.

Fan noise not an issue? I believe Fan speed is either 40% or 55% in uber mode, heat is at 94c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQhqOKKAq7o

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OHKWMgBhvA

New video in response to all the comments and complaints and and and

Just what I need Tom justifying his stand point for 33 minutes. Nah....

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Originally Posted by cptwhite_uk

Just what I need Tom justifying his stand point for 33 minutes. Nah....

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

To be fair I just can't be bothered to listen to him waffle on anymore, and he does like to waffle.

So you basically created a thread based on an uninformed opinion, cos you couldn't be bothered. Nice one!
I think he didn't need to justify his stand point, cos only AMD fan boys, or ignorant people who didn't understand or view it fully had bad things to say.
He also answered some of the nay sayers regarding the overclocking, but again you would actually need to listen to it.
In agreement with you, he did waffle about the aesthetics, but he was trying to make a point with regards to the price against a 780.

As a summary, he hates the stock cooler because it looks cheap and the card is hot and noisy. He really wants to see what water cooling will bring, he gave it a performance award but has reservations about the longevity of the card due to the high heat over a period of time, (he talked about RMAs).

I for one was waiting for the 290 (non-x) but with the heat issues and that mantle is not on the consoles, I'd love the 780ti to price match the 290X, and the 780 to drop a compete with the 290.

I had a quick flick through the TTL video myself, one thing I noticed was the stack of random Nvidia GPU boxes on display during the conclusion. Not exactly a big complaint but still, why? (Edit: I see OP spotted that too :P)

In general though, yeah I've noticed a few strange reviews like that, cherry-picking a few test areas and leaving out/glossing the parts where, at stock, the 290X handily beats the 780 at most titles, and the Titan in a good chunk of games, especially at higher resolutions (what this price band of card is likely to end up running). Not to mention the price/performance. Although it's worth mentioning a few etailers do seem to be severely price-gouging.

Temperature/noise/OC could be easily remedied with custom cooling. As I said in another thread, I've no idea why it's stock-only on release, as cooler performance is arguably the main problem people seem to have with this card; it could've made a better entrance TBH.

A few people do seem to be confusing temperature and heat though - just because it reaches a higher temperature doesn't mean it's producing more heat than Nvidia cards for instance. Heat production is directly related, and essentially equal, to power consumption.

Also, lowering the temperature with a better cooler should lower power consumption, as seen here: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Z...dition/27.html

Short version: Why no custom coolers!!!???!?!?

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Originally Posted by watercooled

Short version: Why no custom coolers!!!???!?!?

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Exactly, absolutely baffling. Tom mentions this as well, all the 290X needs is custom coolers from MSI/Gigabyte/Asus and it could be an epic card like the 780.