AMD Radeon R9 290X?

[Mainer]

How is AMD Radeon R9 290X in regards to gaming? I've read it's a good part and puts out the quality of 1k parts.

Thoughts?

[dbudd424]

Depends what you are playing but overall they are a pretty solid card as long as you get one with a aftermarket cooler.

[Drunkenvalley]

Stock cooler is a vacuum cleaner, I'll tell you that much. Get something with an aftermarket cooler if you're going for one of the 290X cards. That said, its performance is supposed to be stellar. I just never used them for gaming yet, and I'm still doing the final touches to the waterloop I built with these cards...

[barrsftw]

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/ is a good all purpose site for benchmarks if you're interested in those types of things. According to the benchmarks, its one of the best cards on the market if you like AMD.

[Drunkenvalley]

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/ is a good all purpose site for benchmarks if you're interested in those types of things. According to the benchmarks, its one of the best cards on the market if you like AMD.

No. Don't use this site. It lacks the consistency between builds for half the benchmarks to make sense, and what's left is being thrown off by the first half.

Let's take the obvious example: The GTX 690 ranks lower than both the GTX 680 and the GTX 670. Meanwhile, the HD 7990 is ahead of the HD 7970, so something is clearly offkilter there to start with. Oh, and then the HD 8990 performs worse than the HD 7970 again, which doesn't make sense.

Trying to use Passmark's benchmarks as a reliable means of ranking performance is simply not a good idea.

[Deleted]

.... and I'm still doing the final touches to the waterloop I built with these cards...

That is probably the longest final touches i have ever seen!

[Drunkenvalley]

That is probably the longest final touches i have ever seen!

Hush you. Rig is pretty much operational, but trying to get the SATA data cables is a nightmare, and I don't have an SSD there to start with. /sigh

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Hardware wise it is an amazing card and will get great fps. It does run a little hot so get one where they put a better cooler on it (pretty much all of them anymore). The one flaw, I feel, AMD has is in driver support and software. But it isn't a make or break deal. Just expect an issue or two to pop up that wouldn't with the green team.

For a generic overview site of GPU to GPU I perfer this one: http://gpuboss.com/

It isn't perfect but it is rather unbiased compared to most that are paid off by either red or green team.

[Nellah]

I have yet to run into a driver issue with my R9 290 (and I play a LOT of games, from the highly commercial and optimized World of Warcraft to smaller indie games released on Steam) and the Sapphire Tri-X cooler keeps it cool and quiet. I highly recommend the 290 and 290X cards for anyone who is looking at a card in that price range.

[Deleted]

Yeah no driver issues here either, that I'm aware of (for a very long time). Both camps have issues here and there.