The only thing more fun that an XFX Double Dissipation R9 290X is two of them in Crossfire, which is exactly what [H]ard|OCP just tested. These cards sport the familiar custom cooler though they are not overclocked nor is [H] testing overclocking in this review though they will revisit this card in the future to do exactly that. This review is about the Crossfire performance of these cards straight out of the box and it is rather impressive. When [H] tested 4K performance they could feel the frame pacing improvements the new driver gives as well as seeing these cards outperform the SLI'd GTX 780 Ti cards in every test; though not always by a huge margin. The current selling price of these cards is about $100 above the MSRP but still come in cheaper than the current NVIDIA card; these particular cards really show off what Hawaii can be capable of.
"Take two custom XFX R9 290X Double Dissipation Edition video cards, enable CrossFire, and let your jaw hit the floor. We will test this combination against the competition in a triple-display Eyefinity setup as well as 4K Ultra HD display gaming. We will find out if custom cards hold any advantage over the reference designed R9 290X."
Here are some more Graphics Card articles from around the web:
- Sapphire Radeon R7 260X @ Phoronix
- Gigabyte R9 290 WindForce OC @ Kitguru
- XFX Radeon R9 280X Black Edition @ Benchmark Reviews
- XFX Radeon R9 290X Double Dissipation Review @ Hardware Canucks
- Gigabyte R9 290X WindForce OC 4GB @ eTeknix
- Sapphire Dual-X R9 270 Graphics Card Review @ Modders-Inc
- EK Waterblocks R280X Matrix Edition Full Cover Block Review @ Madshrimps
- 24-Way AMD Radeon vs. NVIDIA GeForce Linux Graphics Card Comparison @ Phoronix
- 25-Way Open-Source Linux Graphics Card Comparison @ Phoronix
- MSI GTX 760 Mini-ITX Gaming 2 GB @ techPowerUp
So a reference 290X Crossfire
So a reference 290X Crossfire out performs a reference 780 Ti SLI setup and the non-reference cooler just extends that.
Unless you overclock
Unless you overclock them:
Summary
The GeForce GTX 780 Ti is basically being held back a lot by its clock speed. There is a lot more potential inside the GeForce GTX 780 Ti once you overclock it. Overclocking it past 1.1GHz really unleashes the power of this GPU, and we see in these graphs.
The overclocked ASUS R9 290X DirectCU II OC is able to outperform the stock clocked GeForce GTX 780 Ti. However, once you overclock the GeForce GTX 780 Ti the GTX 780 Ti simply owns the R9 290X at these clock speeds.
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2014/01/13/asus_r9_290x_directcu_ii_oc_overclocking_review/5#.UutyBVrNtjE
I like the use of a very bad
I like the use of a very bad 290X sample to define OC potential. Sadly for your cause, most 290OC we see are around 1200, not 1100.
Anyway, 290X crossfire rapes Ti SLI for 200€ less, period.
Perhaps they didn’t want to
Perhaps they didn’t want to use it as a space heater and listen to a jet engine.
By the way I have 2x6870s, a 4870×2 and another 4870 so I am no fanboy, I just call it as I see it.
You must be cross-eyed then.
You must be cross-eyed then. Since you missed this part of the article.
“The XFX R9 290X Double Dissipation Edition video cards reach 85c after running games all day. This brings the thermal temps of the GPU around that of the GTX 780 Ti. At 85c we saw absolutely no throttling of clock speed at all.”
“XFX Double Dissipation Edition video cards the fans were literally quiet, even at near maximum fan speed. While playing games, we never noticed fan noise at all. There was no ramping up of fan speed heard while starting to game and leaving the system on all day.”
That’s not exactly your
That’s not exactly your standard R9 290X though is it? Even with such elaborate cooling it still ran slightly hotter and consumed 225W more power in a CFX configuration than regular GTX 780 Ti’s in SLI.
Put an elaborate cooler on the GTX 780 Ti and see what happens….
Do they sell those?
Do they sell those?
they do.
they do.
and the OC’d 780 Ti beat this
and the OC'd 780 Ti beat this 290X … https://pcper.com/news/Graphics-Cards/custom-air-cooling-enough-R9-290X
but that doesn't mean another 290X wouldn't win … these chips are just wildly variable. Looking forward to some watercooled card reviews
Brent Justice also posted
Brent Justice also posted this…
R.E. Ti power and performance I checked with real-time frequency being displayed in the games, the Ti cards were operating above their Boost clocks at first, and settled down to their Boost Clocks during all the game testing. Remember, we run these cards for at least 30 minutes before doing the performance testing. This means often the GPU Boost 2.0 cards operate at lower frequencies than some other sites, whom just bench them within the first 10 minutes of operating. We do this on both the AMD and NV cards. The Boost Clock was a consistent clock in every game under SLI. They did not throttle below the Base Clock at all. We saw higher Peaks in Power during the first few minutes of gaming, but we take our power readings after that 30 minutes of gaming, so it is generally lower than the initial first few minute peak power. We go for sustained long sessions of gaming, and report the performance and wattage then, at that point.
Looks like variation isn’t limited to one side once you let them warm up.
Don’t make the assumption
Don't make the assumption that he is the only one who figured that out and now tests for long periods of time. Of course now that this is common practice the accusations of being lazy with benchmarks and taking too long to produce reviews have started.
Well it’s a good thing u’r
Well it’s a good thing u’r not biased in any way. 1200Mhz is in no way a common OC speed for 290X. Hawaii is powerhungry, runs really hot, which is why it doesn’t clock as well as Nvidias GK110. The Kepler chip obviously has a much more energi efficient design. It draws less power/produces less heat (over a larger area which is easier to cool), and can therefore be clocked higher despite using almost 1 billion transistors more.
That’s great and all but what
That’s great and all but what I find impressive is that the r9 290x performs very close to the gtx 780 ti with 1 billion less transistors and a smaller die. In my opinion the gcn architecture is a little more evolved than kepler, nvidia was blasted over power consumption and heat by some with fermi which was a consequence of building an architecture for 3d graphics and compute. Obviously the roles are reversed this generation and their are plenty of people that didn’t care about power efficiency until nvidia built an efficient architecture, I bet most of the people praising keplers efficiency ran 2x 480’s in sli for a few years and are now bashing hawaii cause it runs too hot and draws too much power. Efficiency is nvidiots and nvidia’s new trump card.
The single fan 290x do run
The single fan 290x do run almost 10-20 degrees hotter than the 780ti but the new custom cooled two fan Black Edition 290x runs almost the same temps that the 780ti’s run… Which means its safe to say the are pretty close to each other in terms of overall equal cards…