I'm in the market for a R9 290x and I'm enticed by PowerColor's R9 290x.
This is going to be my 2nd card purchase like ever and I'm really interested in this particular one but I would like to get others' feedback regarding the Manufacturer of this card in general.
I had my 7950 die on me, RMA took 2 weeks or so (about what I would expect). All in all was pretty satisfied with their service. I believe they're run by Tul Technology Unlimited out of City of Industry, Cali.
my friend bought a powercolor hd7770 and it still works fine with no problems
What model of 7950 specifically?
How long ago was that?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131478
Hmm...that's a pretty old card which, I'm guessing, your card has been out of warranty for a while. Have you considered playing around with it's cooling? Like, slapping a water cooler on it?
Had thought about it, but my temps are great even OC'd. Running on a test bench in a cool room.
Right now I have a Asus HD 7970 DCUII that I tried to get a full replacement since the 1st RMA didn't fix the artifact-ing on it.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IBZ2SwrCAo
Reinstalling windows help with most of it but there's still some artifact-ing. I requested a cross-ship replacement over the phone and they politely refused to which I politely bit my tongue. Since it came back from Asus' RMA Dept. that card still artifacts in BF4 and Crysis 3, and, with the added annoying vibrations that wasn't present before sending for RMA. Honestly, the card still plays like a beast with no problems with my Steam games since I do make a lot of screenshots as you can apparently see from my steam profile, Odd that it only artifacts BF4 and Crysis 3, which is understandable since they're demanding. It's likely going into another build as a side project.
Little over a year and a half.
That sounds reasonable.
The best 290x at the moment is the MSI lightning R9 290X.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QndxSEwYHMs
Funny, HardwareCanucks had the same tone for PowerColor's PCS+ AXR9 290X:
As you might expect, with its amazing heatsink the R9 290X PCS+ proved to be a giant among men when it came to stability under extreme heat conditions. This is actually the first heatsink we didn’t have to increase fan speed to compensate for the overclocked (and over-voltaged) core’s thermal output.
Core speeds topped out at 1219MHz while the memory modules, which seem to be very well binned hit a plateau at 6144MHz.....
....PowerColor’s R9 290X PCS+ is everything we were hoping for and then some. Expectations were understandably high when it turned out this card ate up more than two expansion slots and was nearly as long as AMD’s HD 7990 but if you have the space to spare and money to burn, there isn’t a better choice available in the Radeon stable.
The most talked about feature this time around likely won’t be performance (which is phenomenal by the way) or any of the usual suspects for that matter. Rather, it is how PowerColor has achieved this R9 290X’s high framerates that is so impressive. While some board partners have resorted to towing the usual dual BIOS line to achieve silent or “uber” settings, this card has been able to hit both of those points without resorting to ham-fisted features. The PCS+ is one of the fastest cards available for AMD users while also being the quietest, coolest-running example we’ve tested to date. That’s a ringing endorsement considering the best ASUS, XFX and Gigabyte have to offer already made their way though out lab.
I'm really torn. Maybe I should just save a couple of bucks and buy GTX 780 for $500 since it still a tried-n-true beast.
MSI lightning R9 290X has only just come out it wasent around when the PowerColor card was out.
When you can oc the msi to 1150 core and 6.6ghz on the ram and it still stays bellow 70c in benchmarking thats more impresive.
Its allso kicking the GTX780 in the arse and keeping up with a 780TI
But if you are in the us a 780 will probably cheaper (blame those miners)
Hardware Canucks was able to achieve a core clock of 1219mhz so I guess it evens out the Lighting's 6.6mhz memory clock. The MSI Lighting seems to be the only model worth buying, their Twin Frozr counter part are notorious for the fans leaking, LOL. Plus, the warranty is better. Hmm...but significantly more expensive.
Well, I went ahead and bought it. I feel empty inside for some reason, this is what it must always feel like to blow out your tax refund.
