Worth getting a R9 290 ??

[MrNeil]

Is it worth getting ? The main worry for me after reading up on these cards they all seem to run at around 90c when gaming or under load.
I have seen a few good deals around now with the gold settle bundle which makes it a even more bank for buck card http://www.ebuyer.com/634809-powerco...-4gbd5-tdhe-oc
I have a powercolor 7950 pcs+ at the moment so is it really worth the upgrade ? But then again after picking up a new Radeon R9 270X for £70 i did not need to pass on my 7950 to my oldest boy and my youngest boy is in need of a card so this can be a great excuse to get this card
Cheers !

[watercooled]

It was the poor reference cooler which was allowing the 290 series to run that hot - it's really no different to other similar GPUs when paired with an aftermarket cooler. Sadly the reputation stuck despite this.

Is it worth the upgrade? It depends on what you're expecting really?

[starkyller]

You could spends like more £40 and get a gtx970. it's the new best price/performance ratio

[DaveBC]

I agree with Starkyller - you'll be better served saving/stretching the £30 for a 970 it'll run quicker with lower wattage and temps.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I like the GTX970 but its not worth spending £30 to £40 extra IMHO,unless you have a SFF rig,

If you look at the TPU figures for power consumption,there is a 57W to 78W difference in power consumption,with a reference R9 290.

This works out at a 31P to 41P a week difference if play 30 hours of games.

This is £16 to £22 a year,if play games every week for the whole year.

[MrJim]

I agree with Cat that it's probably not worth choosing the 970 purely on efficiency grounds. There are other things to consider when choosing between the green team & the red team: AMD have Mantle support, Trueaudio, Freesync, etc, whereas Nvidia have PhysX, G-Sync, etc. I did try a 290 card about 6 months ago (Gigabyte Windforce), but found it to be a bit noisy, and somewhat unstable too. I've had no such problems with the 970. In benchmark terms, the 970 performs slightly better than the 290 in most metrics, but also has a lot of overclocking headroom too.

[mikeo01]

I can only say good things about this card. I have it (Powercolor R9 290).

It runs hotter on demanding games (70-80c) but that is well under the 95c "recommended" temperature from AMD. VRMs stay at around 70c.

Pretty darn consistent card. Runs louder than my older R9 280X because well... It is faster.

Loud enough to be annoyed by? I highly doubt unless you are very sensitive to noise. It is only when the fans ramp up when the card is edging closer to the 90c mark (stays very consistent, about up to 50% until it hits >80).


Meh depends whether you want to fork out that much on a card.

Monitor in your specs current? You'd probably enjoy vsync on almost all games at 1080P (without AA etc) and have the card capped from trying to push out frames as fast as possible.


What games you looking to play? In all honesty a HD 7970/GTX770 is superb for 1080P, so is the 270X. The 290 is overkill but then again if you can find it cheaper I'd yes it is worth it

[deFiniLoGy]

I would go for a 970 and pass on the 290 to your brother

[coerce86]

I have an r290, with the current price drops (if you can find it around ~£200) then go for this.

It may however pay you to wait a couple months as I bet you'll be able to grab a decent gtx 970 for a better price (there's never any price cuts on new releases sadly). I'd definitely choose this over the r290 as the power draw is a lot lower, and you'll get better overclock room, and physx

(And as for Mantle it's going to slowly become more irrelevant with DX12 coming)

[dfour]

The

MSI R9 290 GAMING £214:98

Makes it 2 years of constant gaming use electricty cheaper than the cheapest 970 on ebuyer . Also quieter and almost 20 degrees cooler gaming than the stock 290 cooler.

Review

Just to dispel another myth if you look at the review HERE of the palit jetstream card (better than the cheaper one linked to in ebuyer) the temps while gaming are almost the same as the MSI 290 gaming. Also dont forget that the 9xx series will throttle down if it goes above 80 degrees as set by nvidia.

[MrNeil]

Decided to hold back till after Christmas now and maybe see what AMD will bring out ..
Though some deals now do seem tempting with there game bundles also added i just got my youngest boy a Club 3D 260X to keep him happy till next year which i may add is a very good sub £100 card indeed
Cheers for the feedback people !

[cliff22]

have you considered the Gtx 970? It's a great one

[Kovoet]

As long as it doesn't have a reference cooler they are ok. Still one of the best running a crossfire. They are going cheap now.