Gigabyte Radeon R9-290X WindForce 3X OC review

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Final Words & Conclusion

Final Words & Conclusion

You know, the Gigabyte R9 290X WindForce 3X OC edition graphics card is a truly excellent product. It is silent, cools nicely and simply is a performance product. Let me also make clear that this is the 'final' fixed version of the card.

So what was the storm in a glass of water ?
I first want to talk and explain something though as there are hovering some ghost stories on the web. The initial press-samples had a bit of an issue with an improper heatsink, not bringing enough cooling performance to the product. This story got uncovered at Tom's Hardware and got a bit out of hand. Basically the surface area of the GPU block needs more surface area and needed to be a hint thicker, Gigabyte ordered these cooler but simply received the version that diverted from the specifications. The second this was discovered Gigabyte halted the production line and replaced the coolers. From what we have learned, the pre-production run that was send out to some partners and media that where defective was merely a batch of 30 cards, the production board with improper cooling never made it into retail. So if you want to purchase this card, rest assured that you will purchase the version with the proper cooling solution.

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Above the final 'fixed' retail sample result. 72 Degrees C in Uber mode and 82 Degrees C in quiet mode. You'll also notice very little core frequency 'turbo' changes. It's 99% of the time at a full 1040 MHz.

With the proper cooler in place we get a product that offers sufficient cooling. Extreme performance, silent and tweakable are the key-words here. And hey it comes factory clocked faster then reference and it is a good chunk cheaper than a GTX 780 Ti as well as you get more graphics memory (4GB). Having that much raw unadulterated horsepower under the hood will bring options to the table. You play your games at 2560x1440 and flick on every quality setting that you can think of. Even then the cards will do a terrific job. For the few of you that already made the step towards UHD or 4K gaming at 3840 x 2160 that where these card do make sense. The Gigabyte R9 290X WindForce 3X OC edition is often as fast or faster then a GeForce GTX 780 Ti and certainly faster then a Titan, whilst it is going to be priced a good chunk lower. So that in retrospect means (even at this price level) performance for money. Prices will sit at 499~539 EUR (incl VAT for this rather shweeeeet graphics card).
 


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Cooling & Noise Levels

So where the reference cooled products are to be considered really average at 95 Degrees C, the WindForce 3X cooler does make its promises worthwhile on everything. This revision is a dual-slot solution looks great. The PCB is customized and I can spot merely quality components, lovely. Two subtle and silent fans in all black make this a good looking package alright. Great looking and very sturdy I must state as well, there is a metal plate at the top of the card so the card can not bend when seated horizontally in the PC. We measured a top stress temperature of 83 Degrees C on the card (Quiet mode), coming from 95 Degrees C on the reference coolers. Next to that, the card remains to be extremely silent in Quiet BIOS mode. So that is simply put a massive improvement over the reference cards.

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As a result of the cooling temperatures these cards hardly downclock either, so no longer a worry either anymore. The tiny dips are scene changes and me taking a screenshot in the background.

Power Consumption

Power consumption is not bad but again not good either, the card is rated by us having a 280~290 Watt TDP. That is high, but in perspective, it is 30 to 40 Watts away from Titan. So that could have been worse. I think enthusiast consumers at this performance level will not mind that much about the power draw and be forgiving. That 290 Watt TDP also will make running multi-GPU solutions a bit more complicated. With two card we think an 800~900 Watt PSU would be sufficient. So yeah, it's not great to have a GPU consuming that much power, but it could have been a lot worse.

Game Performance

The AMD R9 290X in most scenarios will be performing roughly at Titan or GeForce GTX 780 Ti like performance, that it pretty kick ass for just one GPU with a nicer price-tag. Realistically I should be comparing towards the GeForce GTX 780. Don't forget that you will receive a free copy of Battlefield 4 as well with certain SKUs. Performance wise really there's not one game that won't run seriously good at either of the cards, and that is at the very best image quality settings. And you do it all with a nice 30" monitor of course, at 2560x1440/1600. I mean BioShock infinite at Ultra quality levels is still oozing out 60+ FPS there. Or what about Hitman Absolution with 67+ FPS at 2560x1600 High quality and 2xMSAA?  It's really nice performance. And especially for those with Ultra High Definition gaming in mind, the 290/290X will make sense setup in Crossfire. That would be a sweet spot and you'd have 4 GB of graphics memory per GPU.

Overclocking

Overclocking then, a thing or two have changed, the new boost modes for example. However, in the current design with normal cooling levels you can reach close to 1200 MHz on the GPU. The memory can be clocked just above 6000 MHz (effective). Overall that brings the card another 5 to 10% performance when compared to reference clock frequencies. It is a fairly nice tweak, also I must note that Gigabyte factory overclocks the card a bit to 1040 MHz on the GPU core. A bit of a warning, it seems that AMD still automatically apply the overclock at startup. be careful with that? Push it too far and with the settings pre-applied, there is a possibility that the card would crash during Windows bootup/start. So be sure that you know what you are doing.

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Concluding

The Gigabyte R9 290X WindForce 3X OC edition is a product that I'd happily insert into my PC. It offers raw brute performance and remains to be extremely quiet in it's default BIOS mode. Now I do want to make one remark, the R9-290X GPU will ooze out a lot of heat and that heat needs to go somewhere. The cooler will suck up that heat and release it. Unfortunately that heat is exhausted mostly inside the PC. So you do need to get your ventilation inside the chassis right, meaning you will need at least two fans active in a push-pull configuration. You suck in cold at at the front intake and exhaust in the top of the PC. After a few weeks reporting on the temps and problems related to it, we feel AMD made an average choice with the reference coolers of the 290X, I mean it's a great card but the 94 Degrees C temperature target is a hint troublesome. The Gigabyte R9 290X WindForce 3X OC edition however eliminates that mostly thanks to the WindForce 3X cooler. In fact you'll even have more reserve to actually be able to actually overclock the card. In the end products like shown today will make the entire enthusiast segment will go down a little in pricing. A problem right now is that prices of the card remain artificially high due to high demand. While great for AMD, it is not so great for gamers. The 290/290X cards are truly excellent litecoin hash miners (bitcoin competition). And as such the cards are in high demand by non gamers. Regardless, we can only conclude that the Gigabyte R9 290X WindForce 3X OC edition is a very attractive product, with its great volume of 4GB graphics memory and raw rendering performance it will surely offer you an extensive amount of gaming performance into your PC. The heat levels, and noise levels are no longer a trade-off and effectively have been eliminated. That makes the card a serious contender against NVIDIA's line-up. Yup the custom cooled products are the ones that make the difference, this Gigabyte R9 290X WindForce 3X OC edition is a very good example of what the 290 and 290X really needs to be. The Gigabyte R9 290X WindForce 3X OC editionis recommended and totally approved by Guru3D.com, with the one side-note .. you need proper ventilation inside your chassis.

Just look at that, that is a cool looking card duudski.


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