The Cause Of And Fix For Radeon R9 290X And 290 Inconsistency

[jimmysmitty]

Another example of AMD basically lying to us. I swear they knew about crossfire issues, but did nothing to fix them until someone noticed. And now they're lying about the performance of their new card, someone noticed, and now they'll "fix" it. But they knew.

The CF issues aside, they cannot know how their partners boards will perform. Remember even though its the same PCB and everything, each partner has their own BIOS which will act a bit differently to the drivers.

Currently the 13.11 v9 beta drivers are not able to change my HD7970 Vapor-Xs fan speed but the 13.10s were.

Shame on you AMD. Shame. Too much promise, too big of a GPU die, and an inadequate cooler. It just seems that all the changes since letting go of Dirk Meyer have lead to a less competitive and less honest company.

That was a mistake. Dirk was the one who started all the things that are now making AMD able to continue.

But the past is the past.

Hey Chris, thank you for the writeup. It brings up some interesting questions. Can you look into a few more details? Can you check and post the stock voltage along with the ASIC quality of each card? In addition, would you be willing to replace the thermal paste of each card and then rerunning the benchmarks in addition to providing pictures of the contact surface of each card?

Considering that there is still high variance between the two aftermarket cards after the fan calibration patch, with Asus being far inferior to Sapphire, there may be build quality concerns. For example, here are a couple images of 290X cooler, as you can see the build quality is lacking:

Sapphire is their main for making the reference PCBs and also tend to have better coolers than Asus. Not to say Asus makes bad cards but look at the R9-280X DCII vs the Toxic. The Toxic has the best thermals and also best clock speed.

AMD did this out of desperation to take the lead from nVIDIA, and in the hopes that you, the buyer, was as dumb as they hoped you'd be. Their own kick in the teeth comes in the form of the 290 making the 290X obsolete with it's $150 price difference with equal performance.

My last 5 cards have been AMD, but that doesn't make me blind to the truth.

This was a good read, Tom's. Thank you... we should all thank you.

you are a part of this show, 5 AMD cards!!!? really?!? you do not have even 1, desperately bla bla...get out of here dude... there was a slight problem with the fan RPM and now it is fixed, well tell you what, you are blind, you didn't even bother yourself to read the article, '' AMD was desperate 🙁, Nvidia is good performa, please buy Nvideo 🙁 please please...'' dude I own an r9-290 and this 400$ monster nukes gtx 780, ...''Blinda ganepora nvideo please 🙁 '' AMD did an excellent job nuking Nvidia's *** , the problem was a slender one, which was defined in the software/ driver, it is solved, now everything is fine, if you didn't understand this after reading this article ok read this one http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/170636-well-that-was-quick-amd-solves-r9-290-throttling-problem-with-a-new-driver , if you still can't understand, don't blame others, you are dumb

Who are you to say he hasn't bought AMD cards for the past 5?

What if I said I did? I can even list them all for you:

All Sapphire
9700 Pro
9800XT
X850XTX PE
HD2900Pro 1GB
HD4870 1GB
HD5870 1GB
HD7970 Dual-X (Now in wifes machine)
HD7870 Dual-X (was in Wifes machine)
HD7970 Vapor-X (Current with plans to go to R9-290X when they have a decent cooler)

Would you like to fight me on what I am saying? Tell me I haven't bought those GPUs and that I am a liar?

My last 5 cards have been AMD, but that doesn't make me blind to the truth.

What exactly is the truth? The 290 being faster than the GTX 780 at $100 less? The reference design fan speed issues are irrelevant for anyone waiting for a non-reference card and can easily be resolved by setting a custom fan profile? The amount of ignorance in this thread is astounding. It seems every mindless zombie flocks to this site and is incapable of obtaining information from multiple sources and drawing their own conclusions. Congratulations on joining that crowd

I am a power user that seeks SILENT pc's. I buy specific stuff to get there or as near as I can to silent.

If noise is such a factor for you, why get worked up by a reference cooler? Non-reference designs and water cooling have always provided better acoustics and this applies to products from both the red and green team...

I agree that it doesn't matter except that they do need better reference coolers. It just looks bad.

Keep it civilised please, gentlemen. You can disagree with a comment but remember the first rule - attack the post, not the poster.

At the moment I have an itchy finger on my temporary ban hammer

we want to...really....just read his posts..

I think hes referring to you...

I don't think that babbling and incorrect grammar will get you anywhere.

Point being said, the 290x was fixed and where is stands now is it's price point. However, the 780ti was released a few weeks ago, and look at it. I checked the consistency and its right. For $200 more than a 290X, you can get a 780ti and have ~ 15-20% better performance than the 290X. The cards kinda equal out with the 290x winning in uber mode, but the temperature, sound, fan speed, and voltage in hand, Nvidia did a good job by having a back up plan.

Expect the 780ti with the aftermarket coolers to rise in price to ~$750-$800, then let the price drop like it usually does. You'll (estimate) be paying ~$600 for a card that is better than any other single gpu. Heck, the 780 Ti even beats the 690 and 670 Dual-Sli setups, its just insane. With the 680 Dual-Sli setups though, they come to about on par with the 780 ti just losing, but its just insane, There's no way the 290X can beat something like that unless every game from now on runs on that low quality OpenGL or comes with a full water cooling solution. ^_^

No he was not, because I had not started that war, and you'd better mind your own business mate, first of all since when 200$ difference is a slender one!? if that is the case I would buy radeon hd 7990, which smokes gtx 780ti, because I noticed a price drop for hd 7990, now it is available for 690$ with 8 free games any how it makes a little sense to buy gtx 780ti, in either price range, AMD has a far better offering... I know it is hard for nvidia to keep up...and they are losing market shares, but we can't help it can we!?

Actually he was. I have the same exact feelings as he does right now.

is it important now!? aren't you supposed to be a moderator!? you want to start a war here? dude I don't need to remind you that you are supposed to extinguish the fire not set the whole place a fire... when I posted my thread his post was there, no way he had seen my thread.... he was or he wasn't...now what is it? you wanna defy me?

Yes I am a mod. And I haven't done anything except call you out for calling someone a liar, which unless you have the specs for all of his systems you cannot do.

You also called him dumb. That's pretty much moving towards personal insults.

I just absolutely love how the 400 series gets blasted for heat and noise when AMD has the same issue on their hands here. Suddenly the AMDrones are in full defense of AMDs heat issues making pathetic excuses.

Yeah it's pretty damn funny. This R9 series just seems entirely ill-conceived. The idea was great; the execution was poor. It would be fantastic if AMD got back on track in the GPU race. The fact that retail cards showed a ~15% variance from the press-card is just ridiculous. And now to compensate they have to violate 2 key selling points of the cards.

Although on the plus side, they fooled nVidia into thinking they had better equipment than they really did, forcing them to lower their ridiculous pricing. Now I get 770's SLI for X-mas. So thank you AMD! <3 <3

No the real monster form NVidia was the FX 5800 Ultra, aka the NVidia Blow Dryer.

Unless you are too young to remember that one, but that one was loud as hell.

 

[bigpinkdragon286]

In all of this noise surrounding the R9 290 and 290x, I think people are failing to realize, the release of the cards went just fine. The cards, despite the 15% variance in performance, were actually performing as they were supposed to. What the performance variance shows us is not a flaw in AMD's reference board design, chip, or even their driver programming, but the different characteristics of components being sourced by various board partners for inclusion in their products.

 

[Darkresurrection]

I just absolutely love how the 400 series gets blasted for heat and noise when AMD has the same issue on their hands here. Suddenly the AMDrones are in full defense of AMDs heat issues making pathetic excuses.

Yeah it's pretty damn funny. This R9 series just seems entirely ill-conceived. The idea was great; the execution was poor. It would be fantastic if AMD got back on track in the GPU race. The fact that retail cards showed a ~15% variance from the press-card is just ridiculous. And now to compensate they have to violate 2 key selling points of the cards.

Although on the plus side, they fooled nVidia into thinking they had better equipment than they really did, forcing them to lower their ridiculous pricing. Now I get 770's SLI for X-mas. So thank you AMD! <3 <3

15%!!? that's 3% difference, not 15%...The problem was not with the board, it was with then fan speed, I don't think it is funny, your calculation was however :lol: do we have a math teacher here? bro AMD had mentioned the variance of 3% and yeah everone has got to bow before AMD and thank this company, Nvidia fans or AMD fans

 

[-jack-]

I think this topic is really funny.... I ask two questions so that you can find how ridiculous the whole article is
1: was it a hardware defect or a software one!?
2: has it changed anything?
the answer to 1 is a software problem, because they fixed it via a new driver the answer to 2 is no, it is the card it was supposed to be, 3% variance is also very natural for any card on earth, I don't know about Jupiter though

 

[jimmysmitty]

I think this topic is really funny.... I ask two questions so that you can find how ridiculous the whole article is
1: was it a hardware defect or a software one!?
2: has it changed anything?
the answer to 1 is a software problem, because they fixed it via a new driver the answer to 2 is no, it is the card it was supposed to be, 3% variance is also very natural for any card on earth, I don't know about Jupiter though

Did you just create a new account to post again?

And the article is not ridiculous. It was a valid point they addressed with AMD and AMD addressed it after seeing it.

And it was not the performance difference in games, it was about the clock speed variation. The press board was over 900MHz at all times, the retails were between 700-800MHz which is a huge drop in clock speed.15% or more than the press board.

You can't give performance of a GPU and then the retail acts differently. That's false advertising.

 

[de5_Roy]

Did you just create a new account to post again?

*rolling on the floor laughing*

 

[-jack-]

I think this topic is really funny.... I ask two questions so that you can find how ridiculous the whole article is
1: was it a hardware defect or a software one!?
2: has it changed anything?
the answer to 1 is a software problem, because they fixed it via a new driver the answer to 2 is no, it is the card it was supposed to be, 3% variance is also very natural for any card on earth, I don't know about Jupiter though

Did you just create a new account to post again?

And the article is not ridiculous. It was a valid point they addressed with AMD and AMD addressed it after seeing it.

And it was not the performance difference in games, it was about the clock speed variation. The press board was over 900MHz at all times, the retails were between 700-800MHz which is a huge drop in clock speed.15% or more than the press board.

You can't give performance of a GPU and then the retail acts differently. That's false advertising.

tomshardware itself says after implementing the the software the difference is down to 3%, read the final statement of tomshardware Am I at least satisfied that whatever oversight resulted in retail cards shipping out at varying degrees of lower performance is being actively addressed by the team at AMD? Yes; now gamers are getting the performance that got them so excited when these cards first launched. so you are telling me tomshardware is telling lies, about your first question, I just signed up, I am not a member of your site, I prefer to be on overclockers.com, and thanks for your hospitality

 

[Mousemonkey]

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/74131-chiphell-post-saying-nvidia-temporarily-suspended-shipments-of-780ti/

rumors rumors 😛

Nah. There is a problem with some galaxy pcb. Not entire nvidia line up. Even the op from the original source got banned from spreading false accusations.

Tips: The Author has been banned or deleted ***

Techpowerup also noticed that and they see that was just a post from some fanboi.

I think this topic is really funny.... I ask two questions so that you can find how ridiculous the whole article is
1: was it a hardware defect or a software one!?
2: has it changed anything?
the answer to 1 is a software problem, because they fixed it via a new driver the answer to 2 is no, it is the card it was supposed to be, 3% variance is also very natural for any card on earth, I don't know about Jupiter though

Did you just create a new account to post again?

And the article is not ridiculous. It was a valid point they addressed with AMD and AMD addressed it after seeing it.

And it was not the performance difference in games, it was about the clock speed variation. The press board was over 900MHz at all times, the retails were between 700-800MHz which is a huge drop in clock speed.15% or more than the press board.

You can't give performance of a GPU and then the retail acts differently. That's false advertising.

tomshardware itself says after implementing the the software the difference is down to 3%, read the final statement of tomshardware Am I at least satisfied that whatever oversight resulted in retail cards shipping out at varying degrees of lower performance is being actively addressed by the team at AMD? Yes; now gamers are getting the performance that got them so excited when these cards first launched. so you are telling me tomshardware is telling lies, about your first question, I just signed up, I am not a member of your site, I prefer to be on overclockers.com, and thanks for your hospitality

Of course you did.

 

[anthony8989]

I just absolutely love how the 400 series gets blasted for heat and noise when AMD has the same issue on their hands here. Suddenly the AMDrones are in full defense of AMDs heat issues making pathetic excuses.

Yeah it's pretty damn funny. This R9 series just seems entirely ill-conceived. The idea was great; the execution was poor. It would be fantastic if AMD got back on track in the GPU race. The fact that retail cards showed a ~15% variance from the press-card is just ridiculous. And now to compensate they have to violate 2 key selling points of the cards.

Although on the plus side, they fooled nVidia into thinking they had better equipment than they really did, forcing them to lower their ridiculous pricing. Now I get 770's SLI for X-mas. So thank you AMD! <3 <3

15%!!? that's 3% difference, not 15%...The problem was not with the board, it was with then fan speed, I don't think it is funny, your calculation was however :lol: do we have a math teacher here? bro AMD had mentioned the variance of 3% and yeah everone has got to bow before AMD and thank this company, Nvidia fans or AMD fans

Hey buddy - It DID in fact show a 15% variance. The AMD solution brought it down to 3% on average, does that mean it never happened? No it does not. What's ridiculous is how AMD allowed this bullsh*t to take place. They let tech sites report bogus benchmarks knowing full-well there would be a huge discrepancy. And if it was not intentional, then it was incompetence.

 

[bigpinkdragon286]

Moderators, please observe your own advice and stay on topic. Your authority should not be taken as a pass for good etiquette. Unless reading comprehension escapes me, Saga's warning did not specifically address a particular poster but instead was issued to all.

 

[jimmysmitty]

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/74131-chiphell-post-saying-nvidia-temporarily-suspended-shipments-of-780ti/

rumors rumors 😛

Nah. There is a problem with some galaxy pcb. Not entire nvidia line up. Even the op from the original source got banned from spreading false accusations.

Tips: The Author has been banned or deleted ***

Techpowerup also noticed that and they see that was just a post from some fanboi.

I think this topic is really funny.... I ask two questions so that you can find how ridiculous the whole article is
1: was it a hardware defect or a software one!?
2: has it changed anything?
the answer to 1 is a software problem, because they fixed it via a new driver the answer to 2 is no, it is the card it was supposed to be, 3% variance is also very natural for any card on earth, I don't know about Jupiter though

Did you just create a new account to post again?

And the article is not ridiculous. It was a valid point they addressed with AMD and AMD addressed it after seeing it.

And it was not the performance difference in games, it was about the clock speed variation. The press board was over 900MHz at all times, the retails were between 700-800MHz which is a huge drop in clock speed.15% or more than the press board.

You can't give performance of a GPU and then the retail acts differently. That's false advertising.

tomshardware itself says after implementing the the software the difference is down to 3%, read the final statement of tomshardware Am I at least satisfied that whatever oversight resulted in retail cards shipping out at varying degrees of lower performance is being actively addressed by the team at AMD? Yes; now gamers are getting the performance that got them so excited when these cards first launched. so you are telling me tomshardware is telling lies, about your first question, I just signed up, I am not a member of your site, I prefer to be on overclockers.com, and thanks for your hospitality

Of course you did.

You feel the same thing I do MM?

I just absolutely love how the 400 series gets blasted for heat and noise when AMD has the same issue on their hands here. Suddenly the AMDrones are in full defense of AMDs heat issues making pathetic excuses.

Yeah it's pretty damn funny. This R9 series just seems entirely ill-conceived. The idea was great; the execution was poor. It would be fantastic if AMD got back on track in the GPU race. The fact that retail cards showed a ~15% variance from the press-card is just ridiculous. And now to compensate they have to violate 2 key selling points of the cards.

Although on the plus side, they fooled nVidia into thinking they had better equipment than they really did, forcing them to lower their ridiculous pricing. Now I get 770's SLI for X-mas. So thank you AMD! <3 <3

15%!!? that's 3% difference, not 15%...The problem was not with the board, it was with then fan speed, I don't think it is funny, your calculation was however :lol: do we have a math teacher here? bro AMD had mentioned the variance of 3% and yeah everone has got to bow before AMD and thank this company, Nvidia fans or AMD fans

Hey buddy - It DID in fact show a 15% variance. The AMD solution brought it down to 3% on average, does that mean it never happened? No it does not. What's ridiculous is how AMD allowed this bullsh*t to take place. They let tech sites report bogus benchmarks knowing full-well there would be a huge discrepancy. And if it was not intentional, then it was incompetence.

I will defend AMD here, as I said before, the manufactures have the liberty on certain parts for the GPUs and as well the BIOS is proprietary to their own cards so it can cause discrepancies with drivers.

Not much they can do to control that but they acted fast which is what counts.

Still the stock cooler is laughable at best, as are most.

Moderators, please observe your own advice and stay on topic. Your authority should not be taken as a pass for good etiquette. Unless reading comprehension escapes me, Saga's warning did not specifically address a particular poster but instead was issued to all.

It did not but he is consistently name calling and flaming others when they are simply justifying the original post. He is even calling out THG itself.

I personally do not like the way he is posting but have not use that against him just called him out when wrong, even as a mod I can still do that so long as I don't go "derp, you are a dumb @#$, derp".

 

[Mousemonkey]

You feel the same thing I do MM?

Yes bro, I do.

 

[Darkresurrection]

The world does not go round with speculations, can you really prove these baseless allegations!? It's a shame to be a member of this website, you expect people to show approval for articles written here, and if one spoke up, moderators would attack, if two spoke up, moderators would incriminate them, probity is the best weapon of the civilised , I am speaking about truth like it or not,, this issue is solved well, like it or not, R9-290 has astounding performance for its price, like it or not,... you don't like it!? I can't help it really, but you can't charge people, you can't use obscenities towards them, who insulted who!? Read those posts again, anyhow you don't like my defending AMD here, I am not surprised anyhow.

 

[littleleo]

I guess we should all go sign up on overclockers.com and post as Jack does there.

 

[eddieroolz]

Defending any company is fine; however making false counter-claims to discredit any poster who don't agree with you is not acceptable. You have been warned multiple times already - I highly recommend you take a break.

 

[t41nt3d]

Ugh so much crap and issues, amd really bumrushed these two cards, just like the 7990.

I'll stick with the 780TI, thanks.

And don't come to me complaining about costs, or having a go about it, because honestly money isn't an issue so why would I care?

 

[jimmysmitty]

The world does not go round with speculations, can you really prove these baseless allegations!? It's a shame to be a member of this website, you expect people to show approval for articles written here, and if one spoke up, moderators would attack, if two spoke up, moderators would incriminate them, probity is the best weapon of the civilised , I am speaking about truth like it or not,, this issue is solved well, like it or not, R9-290 has astounding performance for its price, like it or not,... you don't like it!? I can't help it really, but you can't charge people, you can't use obscenities towards them, who insulted who!? Read those posts again, anyhow you don't like my defending AMD here, I am not surprised anyhow.

No one is saying anything bad about AMD. Hell I plan on a aftermarket cooled R9-290 series GPU next as long as my current HD7970s second fan does not die out one me first.

But the point is you are attacking the article, as if it has personally wronged you, when all it was is to point out what the issue was and inform people. You don't keep things like this in the dark, much like the issue with the GTX480 when THG reported on it.

As well, the posts are very similar in nature, both the grammar and the way you post. Not to mention as Mods we have access to tools that tell us more than you or anyone else see.

 

[anthony8989]

Ugh so much crap and issues, amd really bumrushed these two cards, just like the 7990.

I'll stick with the 780TI, thanks.

And don't come to me complaining about costs, or having a go about it, because honestly money isn't an issue so why would I care?

That reference cooler is a damn master-piece compared to AMD's 290x. The Titan, 780, and GTX 690 are the only reference designed coolers that I would take over board partners. They are well engineered and crafted with quality in mind - because the price-point demands it. It's a concept that escapes the AMD advocates here.

 

[Darkresurrection]

Eddie you know it, it is just a slogan, do me a favor go to that post and see who called who dumb for the first time, you see my saying dumb, but you do not see his calling all r9-290 owners dumb, please go look yourself, this is injustice, I don't need to quarrerl with anyone, what I am saying is that this topic is misleading, r9-290 and 290x are both providing consumers with the performance they should, do you think I am quarrerling for myself!? No way, I have my own r9-290 and damn it is a solid gpu, it really rocks, I say this for those guys who want to buy r9-290 and now have become doubtful after not reading this article, because the article was comprehensive and it states the problem is solved, but some of the posts here " AMD is a liar" the card is giving you what it is supposed to give you, they had made a mistake and it is solved now. Nonethelesss it was really nice experience on toms, sorry guys if I were went over board good bye

 

[anthony8989]

I will defend AMD here, as I said before, the manufactures have the liberty on certain parts for the GPUs and as well the BIOS is proprietary to their own cards so it can cause discrepancies with drivers.

Not much they can do to control that but they acted fast which is what counts.

Still the stock cooler is laughable at best, as are most.

Yeah Jimmy, I understand. But back to the base of my statement, before I was attacked by the other guy - AMD implemented this generation of GPU's pretty poorly in my opinion. And for $500++ I would hope that a piece of hardware wouldn't come with these kinds of issues. Now card owners have a GPU that is so highly strung that if the temperature in their room rises by 3-5 degrees Celsius (I'm Canadian) their card will lose performance or turn into a jet engine.

 

[anthony8989]

AMD lost my loyalty when my dual 7790's stuttered so hard in modded Skyrim and Dead Space 3 I couldn't even play the games with both cards. And then I find out the damn things supported Crossfire without the stupid bridge, like 6 months after I bought the cards and sold them. Forgot to thank AMD for that great little secret.

 

[t41nt3d]

Ugh so much crap and issues, amd really bumrushed these two cards, just like the 7990.

I'll stick with the 780TI, thanks.

And don't come to me complaining about costs, or having a go about it, because honestly money isn't an issue so why would I care?

That reference cooler is a damn master-piece compared to AMD's 290x. The Titan, 780, and GTX 690 are the only reference designed coolers that I would take over board partners. They are well engineered and crafted with quality in mind - because the price-point demands it. It's a concept that escapes the AMD advocates here.

Oh, I agree with you 100%. I actually like the 700 Series stock coolers, it's why I've brought that for my 780TI ever since I had it with my recently sold Titan.

Don't get me wrong, the 290/290X would be beasty cards if AMD actually put some effort into creating good cooling solutions and didn't rush them out just to have something to fight with Nvidia's most expensive. I could only see getting their cards with WC or quality aftermarket coolers, which means I'd have to wait awhile for them to come out, I don't have that issue with Nvidia which is great because I'm impatience lol.

 

[slomo4sho]

Yes I am a mod.

Jimmy, as a mod, I wish you showed better forum etiquette and actually edited out quotation cascade and set an example for the rest of those exhibit the same behavior.

AMD lost my loyalty when my dual 7790's stuttered so hard in modded Skyrim and Dead Space 3 I couldn't even play the games with both cards.

Not sure why anyone would buy two 7790s instead of a single 7950 to begin with... I bet you also had the 1GB versions of the 7790s while you were running modded Skyrim... Ignorance is bliss.

 

[anthony8989]

Not sure why anyone would buy two 7790s instead of a single 7950 to begin with... I bet you also had the 1GB versions of the 7790s while you were running modded Skyrim... Ignorance is bliss.

At the time in my region the HD 7950 was $329 or higher, I got the 7790's one at a time over the course of 2 months . The first was $139.99 and the second was $129.99. I also sold the free games the second time around for $20. I game at 1080p x 2 monitors. The second monitor is for Facebook, browsing, and other monitoring etc. So 1 GB of VRM was enough.

Please don't call me ignorant in the future, you did not have enough facts to do so.

 

[jimmysmitty]

slomo4sho, I will admit that I am lazy that way. Sometimes I have a quick comment to someone and don't want to take the time to fish gut it.

I guess I could in the future.

In my opinion, the whole article is a good find by THG and glad they got with AMD to introduce a fix so quickly. Even with the issues in the past AMD has had, that's a good thing. Now all we need is for them to produce better drivers consistently (I love CCC vs nView) and they will be a much more competitive company against NVidia.

Also, we need non reference cooled versions ASAP. A lot of people were expecting them for the 290s since the 280s got them so fast but forget that the 280 is the exact same chips as a HD7970/7950 so they had all the parts pretty much designed and ready to go.