Desktop Computers

brekk

brekk

Dancing Dino Superstar
<Bronze Donator>
2,191
1,746
OS was acting wonky just installed Windows 8 Pro and spent the last half hour making it like Windows 7. All prepared for the new video card. ^_^
 
Joeboo

Joeboo

Molten Core Raider
8,157
140
Amd 290 reviews flooding every site today, looks like a damn nice card

AnandTech Portal | The AMD Radeon R9 290 Review

Basically, it's a $400 card that outperforms Titan in a lot of situations in VERY high resolutions (3840x2160), then at more normal resolutions (1080p, 1440p) falls somewhere in-between the Nvidia 770 and 780 (yet usually closer to the 780 end of things)
 
Eomer

Eomer

Trakanon Raider
5,472
272
Nice to see some competition. I'll be curious to see how Nvidia responds. AMD hasn't really been pushing them all that hard for awhile now. I've got a 680 in my desktop and a 670 in my HTPC, so I'm in no rush to upgrade my GPUs, but I might be convinced with Nvidia's next release.
 
Joeboo

Joeboo

Molten Core Raider
8,157
140
Yeah, I'm still perfectly happy with my 660Ti, runs everything fine right now, but I'll probably upgrade next year, it'll be 2 years old next summer/fall. It will be interesting to see what $300 can get you a year from now(I'm hoping something on par with Titan/290x now)
 
M

Mire_sl

shitlord
270
3
Aww shit...I went and did something stupid...

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Leadsalad

Leadsalad

Cis-XYite-Nationalist
5,995
12,018
Went ahead and ordered a vanilla 290 (incoming Volcano island jokes about heat and stuff) to replace my 6950. That thing is one month shy of 3 years old now. GPU refresh cycles are getting ridiculous these days.
 
Joeboo

Joeboo

Molten Core Raider
8,157
140
AMD possibly pulling some benchmarking shenanigans with the 290/290X cards that they sent to the media for reviews

The Cause Of And Fix For Radeon R9 290X And 290 Inconsistency - The Difference Between My R9 290X And Yours

Basically, it looks like the cards they sent to reviewers, with the beta drivers that were included with them, pushed the cooling fans to speeds that retail cards can not reach, in order to run the review cards faster and get better performance.

Plotting out average performance shows us that the press-sampled R9 290 is 23% faster than our retail card
Click to expand...
It looks like AMD has just released new Catalyst drivers that bridge the gap some, but they better whip up some drivers quick that allow the retail cards to his the same fan speeds for cooling, or people are going to be pretty pissed that they can't get the same performance that reviewers got.

Clock rates certainly do come closer together, though. AMD's press board has zero trouble maintaining its 947 MHz peak clock rate. Meanwhile, the retail R9 290 from Sapphire averages 904 MHz. That's not quite as good, but it beats the hell out of the 726 MHz it was averaging right out of the box and the 891 MHz it managed after we manually goosed its fan to 50% PWM.
Click to expand...
Summary:
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.

Catalyst 13.11 Beta 9.2 makes Radeon R9 290X a little louder as it adds about 100 RPM to the "Quiet" mode we originally reviewed. The difference is noticeable, but I don't think gamers lacking headphones will be perturbed by the sound. But the R9 290 was already loud. So picking up an additional 100 RPM, even after AMD cranked the PWM from 40 to 47% prior to launch, is detrimental.

The bad news is that I really couldn't imagine buying an R9 290 equipped with AMD's reference cooler, particularly in light of today's update that adds even more fan speed and noise. The good news is that I have now have higher hopes for third-party 290s. With Catalyst 13.11 Beta 9.2, our Sapphire Radeon R9 290 is just as fast as Asus' Radeon R9 290X, tested on the previous page. If we could just get our hands on more aftermarket cooling solutions, I'm pretty sure we could chip away at the most compelling reasons not to buy these boards today.
Click to expand...
 
Marmac

Marmac

Molten Core Raider
1,467
101
Mire helped me with this build and gets upset when I ask too many questions lol...but finally got that last Enermax fan to match the rest of the fans. That was really annoying the fuck outta me! My red led strip arrived dead so scrap that idea for now...no thanks to Mire lol...Also added two 320GB HD in raid. Will eventually swap those for a 1TB HD. System is finally complete...well it's never complete but you know what I mean!
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Will eventually do crossfire with another R9 280X.

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jeydax

jeydax

Death and Taxes
1,394
862
I wish I could get my wiring to be that clean looking.

I'm in the process of vetting out a new configuration since the GPU battle seems to be over (for now). $2k or under budget - I have a MicroCenter very close I could use (CPU/Motherboard bundle is $466.62 after tax for example). I have a 1900x1200 (Dell 24") monitor, so that is what I will be gaming at. I know this rig is definitely way overkill for what I'll be doing (BF4, LoL, CS:GO, very occasionally WoW, HD Movies, etc). Open to suggestions on the parts, though.

DZlVesN.jpg


Link:Intel Core i7-4770K, EVGA GeForce GTX 780 Ti, NZXT Phantom 530 CA-PH530-B1 Black - Jeydax-Future - jeydaxs Saved Part List - PCPartPicker
 
Marmac

Marmac

Molten Core Raider
1,467
101
With todays new cases it's very easy to have clean looking wiring. Also check out NCIX.com or Newegg.com for pricing. Sometimes they have crazy sales.

jeydax_sl said:
I wish I could get my wiring to be that clean looking.

I'm in the process of vetting out a new configuration since the GPU battle seems to be over (for now). $2k or under budget - I have a MicroCenter very close I could use (CPU/Motherboard bundle is $466.62 after tax for example). I have a 1900x1200 (Dell 24") monitor, so that is what I will be gaming at. I know this rig is definitely way overkill for what I'll be doing (BF4, LoL, CS:GO, very occasionally WoW, HD Movies, etc). Open to suggestions on the parts, though.

DZlVesN.jpg


Link:Intel Core i7-4770K, EVGA GeForce GTX 780 Ti, NZXT Phantom 530 CA-PH530-B1 Black - Jeydax-Future - jeydaxs Saved Part List - PCPartPicker
Click to expand...
 
Joeboo

Joeboo

Molten Core Raider
8,157
140
I can't really come up with anything significantly better on any of those parts for comparable prices. My only suggestion is to sit on it for 2 weeks and wait and see what kind of deals Cyber Monday brings. You might be able to knock several hundred dollars off of those parts by the end of the month.
 
jeydax

jeydax

Death and Taxes
1,394
862
gogusrl_sl said:
If you're spending 2k on a computer, please get a better cooler. Take a look at Noctua or Thermalright (Choose A CPU Cooler - PCPartPicker). Everything else looks good.
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I've used the 212 EVO in a couple builds now with great results, but fair enough. The Noctua NH-D14 SE2011 looks to get high praises all around.

Marmac_sl said:
With todays new cases it's very easy to have clean looking wiring. Also check out NCIX.com or Newegg.com for pricing. Sometimes they have crazy sales.
Click to expand...
PCPartPicker watches all of the sites and will alert you of the best pricing. NewEgg is obviously one of my top choices in the U.S. here.

joeboo_sl said:
I can't really come up with anything significantly better on any of those parts for comparable prices. My only suggestion is to sit on it for 2 weeks and wait and see what kind of deals Cyber Monday brings. You might be able to knock several hundred dollars off of those parts by the end of the month.
Click to expand...
Yup, that is my plan. I've been keeping an eye out for killer deals as the pop up.
 
jeydax

jeydax

Death and Taxes
1,394
862
I was not a fan of the NZXT Phantom 410 which I have in my current build. The rubber that covers the wiring holes fell out quite easily and I just didn't really like it that much. It is a pretty big "midsize" case from my experience. I guess I don't care about looks, or size - if it is a huge case, so be it. So I'm going to switch from NZXT this time.

Do you guys have any case suggestions? I would prefer the case to be under $150. At some point in the future I may add a second 780 Ti, so keep that in mind (and I'm aware I'll likely need a bigger PSU for that).
 
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