Hi folks,
So when I saw the release of the Radeon R9 290 (and X) series last year, I really excited for AMD and wanted to make the switch from my current GeForce GTX 680 before it lost all its resale value.
However, the 95oC under load combined with a noisy cooler put me off initially so I have been patiently waiting for the versions with aftermarket coolers to come along.
I have been scanning the web regularly and the news of these particular has been pretty scarce.
I saw some news that said end of November, then that the 290 cards would come before the 290X's....then December they'd come...virtually nothing.
There have been, however, a few bits of information popping up. As I've spent several hours digging over Xmas and the new year, I thought I'd share with you some of my observations and ramblings as follows:
MSI Radeon R9 290 Gaming Edition
The Gaming Edition has a backplate (which I'm a bit fan of) for both 290 and 290X editions apparently and features the 'Twin Frozr 4' cooler. Judging by the MSI R9 280X Twin Frozr I bought for another system, this should be a great card but I'm hoping the same quality translates over to the R9 290.
Best product information seems to be MSI's site:
http://www.msi.com/product/vga/R9-29....html#overview
Best photos of card / backplate here:
http://www.techpowerup.com/195809/ms...-pictured.html
If anyone has any more details / spotted a review - please let me know!
MSI Radeon R9 290 Lighting Edition
This got shown recently as CES (e.g. - http://www.anandtech.com/show/7625/m...tning-and-more) - features a triple slot / 'Tri Frozr' cooler - looks great but I'm guessing it'll be pretty pricy and not available for some time.
There were hints of this last year when the PCB was photographed:
http://videocardz.com/48270/msi-rade...g-pcb-pictured
Gigabyte Radeon R9 290 'Windforce'
I thought this might have been the killer R9 290 but I'm glad I didn't go with this in the end - this doesn't seem to be the same calibre as the elegant solution which features on the GeForce GTX 780Ti.
The best information I found was from the German version of Tomshardware here: http://www.tomshardware.de/t/grafikkarten/
The initial press samples had a bad contact with the 6 heat pipes on the card as they did not have the proper mounting solution in place that features on the retail cards. Interestingly, the site also re-visited this with a retail sample and found some improvement but not as much as I would have expected:
http://www.tomshardware.de/gigabyte-...te-241469.html
I'm somewhat disappointed that the retail cards continue to have temperatures in the 80oC region.
Apparently this issue paused the mass-production of the card whilst the mounting solution was investigated so I'm not sure if this'll have a knock-on effect on the availability of the cards.
ASUS Radeon R9-290 DirectCU II OC
On initial look this would seem to be the daddy on paper - highest clock speed, great components, backplate (yup - you've guessed it, I have a thing for backplates!), custom PCB etc..
Several reviews available (including foreign sites) but there is also a decent review here:
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages..._review,1.html
The temperatures stay just below 80oC from most reviews and noise levels seem fairly reasonable.
Just not sure if it really warrants the price premium - overclocking was a little disappointing compared with other cards; it seems circa 1150mhz is about the average and the Asus card doesn't appear to improve this by any great margin.
Sapphire R9 290 Tri-X
This card does have several reviews including some English ones (yay ) - e.g.:
http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphi...-r9-290-tri-x/
From what I have read, this is generally the best reviewed R9 290 custom card from all the sites I've seen to date in terms of temperatures, fan noise and consistency of performance (not beating the Asus card above but generally able to sustain performance better).
Definitely a good bet for anyone in the market for one of these custom cards but be warned that the cooler extends over the end of the rear of the card adding an additional 1.5" to the length (12" total).
XFX Radeon R9 290 Double Dispersion (DD) 1000M
Not loads of information on this one except for a Fudzilla preview here:
http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/33...000m-previewed
Fairly decent temperature and noise and its killer feature is a glow-in-the-dark XFX logo...woohoo!
I've read a few people's comments in blogs saying that XFX's RMA policy is pretty shocking though...not accepting legit requests etc...
Powercolor Radeon R9 290 PCS+
Not huge amounts of information on this other than it uses a triple-fan cooler design akin to the Sapphire card above.
Teaser screenshots here: http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/33...-graphics-card
Looks quite hawt.
Pricing / availability / value for money
Virtually zero availability! I cannot find any UK-based stores (other than OCuK and Scan) that have these even available for pre-order; very strange indeed!
It's very difficult to make an accurate assessment of if the £358-£379.99 is worth it for the money (as some GTX 780's are going around the same price and are fairly issue-free in comparison) - a fair premium over the reference cards (I was hoping for circa £330-£345 price-wise).
However, having said this, it isn't that bad when you consider the 'other three' effective options as I see them:
1) An Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme III - excellent cooler, probably better than the above solutions (except for VRM temperature) judging by the round-up here:
http://www.tomshardware.de/amd-radeo...te-241458.html (Chrome language translation FTW).
Good luck trying to find it at a decent price in the UK here though - I've searched all over the place!
Costs 100 euros when bought directly from Arctic Cooling themselves from their website - rip off!
2) Full block watercooling / custom loop - £80-90 for the just the waterblock itself...ouch; and I thought £50 for a full block back in the 8800 GTX days was expensive! Definitely an option with this card given the amount of heat it generates
3) A closed loop cooling solution with GPU adaptor (e.g. NZXT Kraken) - good example here:
http://www.legitreviews.com/nzxt-kra...r9-290x_130344
Probably less expensive than the custom loop but much more expensive than a custom air-cooled R9 290.
Let me know your thoughts, information that you may have seen (especially the MSI cards )


LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks
Reply With Quote


