If you like the looks of the windforce 290X then you should like the 290 too... same cooler and that's the only difference here between Gigabytes product and the reference product.

well I dont do this for the looks lol, Im just wondering if the R9 290 without X is as reliable in terms of heat and noise.

I'm exactly the other way around, running SLI gtx 770 and regret every singel moment getting these nvidia cards, driver and software problem one after another. Its never ending, for me i'm never getting nvidia again

I've been an AMD user since 2010, and I've never had any driver issues. Was I late to "AMD's awful driver saga?"

well I dont do this for the looks lol, Im just wondering if the R9 290 without X is as reliable in terms of heat and noise.

Absolutely, I've owned a 290 from PowerColor card for over a month, and have never had an issue with it. ...And I know a lot of people don't have high standards for PowerColor. There is some heat, and the fan can get loud, but as long as your PC is ~6ft (2m) from you, and you use ear/headphones you won't hear a thing when gaming.

how much did you pay for your powercolor ? I thought they werent on the market yet ! Thanks for the advice but right now there will be only the Windforce R9 290 and the Sapphire Tri Oc to choose from when I'm gonna buy it, so it's still a hard choice, I hope someone that has tried both will tell me what he thinks about them.

how much did you pay for your powercolor ? I thought they werent on the market yet ! Thanks for the advice but right now there will be only the Windforce R9 290 and the Sapphire Tri Oc to choose from when I'm gonna buy it, so it's still a hard choice, I hope someone that has tried both will tell me what he thinks about them.

I'm pretty sure he's was talking about reference Powercolor. 😉

Thanks for the review, but I have one small question if I may 😀 http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/gigabyte_radeon_r9_290x_windforce_3x_oc_review,29.html What kind of temps did you get @ 50% fan and that 1180mhz OC? I didn't see this info

While I always love Guru3d's review, the 290x vs 780 Ti situation is insane at the moment. Here in the USA at least, the only place to get decent 780 Ti OC cards OR 290x OC cards is Newegg. Now, at the moment, a vanilla (sucks) 290x is around $600-$629. The ASUS or Gigabyte 290x OC have been going at $699 or higher. I just ordered a Gigabyte 780 Ti Ghz Edition for $729 that trumps the 290x (even OC versions) in every gaming application. With the pricing all out of whack, the 780 Ti OC versions are the clear winners IMHO.

While I always love Guru3d's review, the 290x vs 780 Ti situation is insane at the moment. Here in the USA at least, the only place to get decent 780 Ti OC cards OR 290x OC cards is Newegg. Now, at the moment, a vanilla (sucks) 290x is around $600-$629. The ASUS or Gigabyte 290x OC have been going at $699 or higher. I just ordered a Gigabyte 780 Ti Ghz Edition for $729 that trumps the 290x (even OC versions) in every gaming application. With the pricing all out of whack, the 780 Ti OC versions are the clear winners IMHO.

You must be reading different reviews than i. All the ones I have read show the 290x trading blows and even beating the 780 Ti in certain games.

You must be reading different reviews than i. All the ones I have read show the 290x trading blows and even beating the 780 Ti in certain games.

That is what doesn't make any sense. I have personally tested the following video cards over the past two months and the besides Battlefield 4, the 290x is always underwhelming. The 290 was a steal before the priced got jacked up above $500 as well... * 290x Ref * 290x Gigabyte OC * 290 Ref * 780 Ti Ref * 780 Ti ACX OC * 780 Ti Gigabyte OC * GTX 690 The 290x was an ok deal for $549 USD but it was hot and loud. Even at a high OC on the Gigabyte 290x, it was always behind the 780 Ti OC versions.. I can share benchmarks if needed...

Crysis 3 performance with OCed card Hey, no offense, but why didn't you test Crysis 3 performance with overcocked card?? This game would use more GPU power the most!!! I think many people would like to see how did the performance in C3 rise in 1200p and 1440p resolutions, instead of showing the performance boost in games where it has minimal sense or which run good enough without OC or where the OC has minimal impact on fps... Also, it would be nice to know what rpm were those THREE (not two as you mistakenly wrote) fans running at, how noisy was the overclocked card in comparison to stock clocks and how did temperatures change... Thanks! 🙂

It's a beast but the 780ti is still the faster card on average because it will do a 20% overclock without breaking a sweat. You can't argue with the price though, at least £100 cheaper than a vanilla 780ti and if you're a BF4 nut, it should be a no-brainer, especially when mantle goes GA. Mantle really makes me want to go red in the future but I just can't forget the shocking driver experiences I had with them before, it makes it really hard to make the jump.

EVGA 780 ti Classified scored above 12000 in Firestrike so a good bit faster than even a highly overclocked 290x.

Single Card is fine Crossfire on mATX is a problem. I recently bought 2 Gigabyte Windforce R9 290 to run in crossfire. Single GPU configuration works well and better than reference. At max load, temp is at 82C(room temp 33), fan speed 47%, and frequency of 1040MHz (factory OC). The problem starts when I put together in crossfire on a tight mATX board (Asus Maximus VI Gene). At first I have confidence that it would be fine since fan is still at half speed but everything has gone wrong. The temperature has reached max setting (90C) in just few minutes then dropping the frequency to 727Mhz and fan speed at 100%. Even I put a couple more fans beside the Vcard in open case still does not help. At this, the temperature still keep rising and have shut down my pc a couple of times of testing. With that, I resorted to downclock the frequency to 850Mhz, and is stable at the moment with frequency fluctuation down to 603Mhz. I am honestly disappointed for the performance in crossfire. I hope I could find another solution before I will go water cooling the GPU. Performance wise it's awesome fast only that I am not getting what I've paid for because of incapable cooler(in crossfire at least). Any information to improve my the cooling would be great. Thanks.

Sapphire refuses to submit samples to Guru3D.com, so I don't know / can't comment on it really.

Can't blame them Hilbert! You run a pretty honest ship and the last Sapphire cards I got were horrible (7970's) I sent them back because of the horrible quality, and they would not run at stock speeds, I had to down clock them in cross-fire. That is a no go. I really hope that things stay stable with AMD though, they seem to be back on a good up swing. I will be waiting though after the last few years of disappointments though.

AMD Stock coolers are trash , this again proves it , but who cares actually ?

I recently bought 2 Gigabyte Windforce R9 290 to run in crossfire. Single GPU configuration works well and better than reference. At max load, temp is at 82C(room temp 33), fan speed 47%, and frequency of 1040MHz (factory OC). The problem starts when I put together in crossfire on a tight mATX board (Asus Maximus VI Gene). At first I have confidence that it would be fine since fan is still at half speed but everything has gone wrong. The temperature has reached max setting (90C) in just few minutes then dropping the frequency to 727Mhz and fan speed at 100%. Even I put a couple more fans beside the Vcard in open case still does not help. At this, the temperature still keep rising and have shut down my pc a couple of times of testing. With that, I resorted to downclock the frequency to 850Mhz, and is stable at the moment with frequency fluctuation down to 603Mhz. I am honestly disappointed for the performance in crossfire. I hope I could find another solution before I will go water cooling the GPU. Performance wise it's awesome fast only that I am not getting what I've paid for because of incapable cooler(in crossfire at least). Any information to improve my the cooling would be great. Thanks.

It's a well known limitation of the Windforce cooler. It needs free space above the fans to work - for SLI/CF you need at least one expansion slot between the cards. For small cases you need one that doesn't have the card sitting too close to the side panel. For example the Fractal Design Node 304 will give you worse temperatures with the side panel than without, despite the panel having a mesh cutout to provide fresh air it's enough to limit the efficiency of the cooler. In short; there is nothing you can do if the cards are too close together.

AMD Stock coolers are trash , this again proves it , but who cares actually ?

Boy you must be on crack. If you are buying from AMD/NVidia Directly they have the same one fan at the end of the card.

Boy you must be on crack. If you are buying from AMD/NVidia Directly they have the same one fan at the end of the card.

Does that make his statement any less true? **Btw AMD don't sell GPU's, they just design them. All sales/manufacturing is done by AIB's.

No they don't, Nvidias coolers totally blow (no pun intended :P) AMDs away, they are much quieter, and give much lower temps, AMD need to change them, only thing that lets their cards down. I really don't understand it, they make cracking cards, but shove utter sh!te coolers on them, its like buying a top end rig, say Intel Haswell, 780Ti Quad SLi, umpteen SSDs, all watercooled, and then buying a £20 Q-Tec gold PSU to power it all, you just bloody wouldn't, but AMD won't be told, they said some guff about having to use them for OEMs so can't change, but what about Nvidias fantastic blower coolers (Titan), which i presume are also like that for OEMs just like AMDs. No wonder when they release new cards, they ain't flying off the shelves, as everyones going nope, not with that sh!t cooler, its a non ref for me, so they all wait months for them to appear. Id have bought a 290 on release if the cooler was decent, but no way, they've been absolutely slaughtered for that cooler in every review, and deservedly so.