FRONTPAGE AMD R9 290 Graphics Card Review

Wait until tomorrow for possible info on a (small) inclusion that might be construed as a bundle if i could possibly talk about it, which I can't.

As far as wide availability, they're available now but I have no idea whether partner cards will be available by the holiday season. I'd imagine they WANT them available by then, but have no actual info on whether they WILL have them by then.

hokiealumnus said:

Wait until tomorrow for possible info on a (small) inclusion that might be construed as a bundle if i could possibly talk about it, which I can't.

As far as wide availability, they're available now but I have no idea whether partner cards will be available by the holiday season. I'd imagine they WANT them available by then, but have no actual info on whether they WILL have them by then.

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Thanks again! If the bundle is ok that just adds value. If one could pick up a 290X for $150 more - that may actually be a better deal.

It is nice that AMD/ATI does this at the right time of the year AND delivered the goods performance wise! $400 and (overclocked) beats a Titan in some benchmarks!

That's just what one wants for the holidays!

Over on AMD's tech support forums there are a lot of reported gaming problems w/AMD's R290 drivers right now. It might be worth it too wait until AMD sorts out the R290 driver issues.

Surprising because its just a improved GCN and almost the same old architecture. But AMD + driver was never a good match, so such issues have to be expected at every single new hardware.


Wouldnt be that big of a deal in term Nvidia was sleeping, but Nvidia just released a new "super driver" including up to 50% performance boost for some games and of course the newly released 780 TI, so the competition isnt sleeping. So i recommend to sort that stuff out soon, Radeon hardware is still top notch but i suggest to work even harder than ever, so the same issue we had at the 7970 release wont happen another time...

Ivy said:

Surprising because its just a improved GCN and almost the same old architecture. But AMD + driver was never a good match, so such issues have to be expected at every single new hardware.


Wouldnt be that big of a deal in term Nvidia was sleeping, but Nvidia just released a new "super driver" including up to 50% performance boost for some games and of course the newly released 780 TI, so the competition isnt sleeping. So i recommend to sort that stuff out soon, Radeon hardware is still top notch but i suggest to work even harder than ever, so the same issue we had at the 7970 release wont happen another time...

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Team Green probably have a lot more resources to throw at driver development compared to team Red. But fingers crossed team Red pull through! I'd show my support to Red sooner, but I'm awaiting for non-reference variants to be unleashed (which should of been a day one thing IMO) annnd for money.

magellan said:

Over on AMD's tech support forums there are a lot of reported gaming problems w/AMD's R290 drivers right now. It might be worth it too wait until AMD sorts out the R290 driver issues.

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Is that actually an inordinate amount though? I mean, I can go look at Nvidia forums and see people having the same problems with the latest and previous drivers... but we don't report that...

Though not many people have them here, I have not heard a large amount (any?) of complaints. Also, another, much larger forum I frequent has an 'owners club' thread as well with nary a complaint on games.

I've never bought newly released GPU's that aren't developments of existing designs, so I don't really know if that's an inordinate amount of complaints -- but when I read about peeps being unable to play more than a handful of games, that seems like a problem.

Not that I've got much time to game, but I recently put this back in a system and will try to reproduce the problem. I don't believe it's extremely widespread, but AMD has apparently acknowledged the issue on forums and has narrowed it down to GDDR5 training. This is unsurprising since it's their first 512 bit memory controller; growing pains are inevitable and this doesn't show itself in testing, just extended playing of the type not typically seen in reviewing. I'll throw some games at it (probably after Thanksgiving unfortunately...our office is also our guest room) and see what happens.

And if you have any games you want me to throw at my 290X let me know, I haven't had any problems with the games I've played so far on it.

Thanks! I basically plan on playing BF4, with a little Metro: LL thrown in.

AMD has always, since I can remember from my "run and get the latest card" days, had issues with drivers after release, it gets better a couple of months later, that is just a fact imo. Nvidia is by no means perfect with drivers but far better at it, might be architecture related rather than development resources.

Brolloks said:

AMD has always, since I can remember from my "run and get the latest card" days, had issues with drivers after release, it gets better a couple of months later, that is just a fact imo. Nvidia is by no means perfect with drivers but far better at it, might be architecture related rather than development resources.

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It seems to be that both Nvidia and AMD/ATI have driver issues. From what I have read is that a "minor" number of users seem to be having "some" issues.

Which usually makes me wonder what type of problems, what games and how often?

Brolloks you are most likely right - just seems that it takes a while for things to get straightened out.

Nvidia is more stable with driver development, thats just a fact. But it doesnt mean that Nvidia is free of issues, of course not.

watchthisspace said:

Team Green probably have a lot more resources to throw at driver development compared to team Red.

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It may be true for the past but with both next gen consoles at theyr back, AMD may now be able to get a lot of dev support considering countless software matters, so i may consider the possible R+D head to head with Nvidia soon. Although the console devs still need to warm up, that stuff just recently been released, but im pretty sure the console knowledge will be of advantage to AMD. So i just say "never give up". GCN is the most beasty architecture AMD ever created but a beast is always hard to tame... thats how a beast is behaving. Well sure, the new 512 bit bus is another "beast factor", something AMD never used in the past and it is another challenge in order to tame. Its surely not a question of performance, its a question how to get it under control, thats something AMD rarely experienced in the past.


Most important stuff is the CF fix for Radeon and that one seems to work pretty good now, its surely a key factor able to bring AMD into real competition with Nvidia.


Btw: Nope. 290X at OC isnt behind of a 780 TI OC but it got higher heat issues when no "super cooler" used. The 290X is made for experts, "usual" people wont make them evolve into "beast mode" but once the card is properly cooled (so we wont experience throttle) and clocked, it may easely keep up with the 780 TI. The problem with those new flagships is truly, "how to tame"; that says it all. Certainly, Nvidia is feeling the competition because they used a Tesla GPU in order to "boost" theyr 780 TI, as far as i know its the same chip such as the server Tesla GPU... so Nvidia is kinda giving all they got.

Agreed on many of the comments above. I've noted over the years that both camps seem to have regular updates to their drivers, even affecting older hardware model numbers. No different with MBs, LAN chips, etc.