Last Update 2013/11/6 7:37
The launch of AMD’s R9 290X last week was interesting as it certainly stirred up the graphics card market and industry. Following the launch arguing between readers occurred in abundance across many review sites, not just our own. Where I stand in this debate is that AMD have really shot themselves in the foot by releasing such a high performance graphics card that then gets throttled by such a mediocre cooling solution. Then to make things worse they’ve chosen to shed no light on the launch of non-reference solutions – something all prospective R9 290X buyers are waiting for to make a fully informed decision. Yet despite the R9 290X being throttled by that stock cooler the general consensus from most reviewers was that the R9 290X is at least as good as the GTX 780, while some reviewers who were able to test in favourable temperature conditions received results that suggested the R9 290X was better than the GTX Titan. Our review fell into that latter category and our benchmarks showed the R9 290X as being quite some way ahead of the GTX Titan in most benchmarks.
Setting the R9 290X aside for a bit, today we have with us the R9 290, the R9 290X’s little brother. For those who remember the HD 7000 series clearly the R9 290 is essentially the HD 7950 successor and is the second best single GPU graphics card of the RX-2XX series. Sadly, the AMD R9 290 comes with the same weak AMD stock cooling solution so we can expect more of the same – a wide variety of reviewers showing very different results based on testing that was conducted in varying ambient room temperatures. I think it is immensely important to stress that if readers really want to see the full picture, and want to make a solid judgement on whether the R9 290(X) cards are a good buy, then you’ve got to wait for the non-reference solutions to hit the market to see the accurate picture. When that will be is anyone’s guess as AMD have remained tight-lipped about it, we’ve seen a variety of (guess)estimates thrown all over internet forums ranging from early November to mid December – in my opinion the sooner the better.
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