Hello i was wondering with a full cover waterblock how far will a r9 290 go in overclocking 24/7.
Could it beat a 980 ti?
A good aftermarket R9 290 should be capable of reaching anywhere between 1160 and 1230 on the core. Memory should go to around 1500, 1600+ if you're lucky. Some people see 1300 core and 1650 memory with full cover blocks, anything higher and you need Ln2 or Cascade.
Will it beat a 980 Ti? Not a chance.
Well with Ln2 or Cascade how far will it go without killing it.
Well Ln2 you can't use 24/7, unless you happen to own a giant tanker full and have it constantly poured onto your GPU. Cascade is another matter, but a SSC cooler unit is in the range of $1,000 - $2,500 depending on how many blocks it has (i.e. if it supports CPU, and GPU or CPU and dual-GPU cooling).
If you had this amount of money and wanted to cool your R9 290 to sub-zero temps you could see clocks of 1500 - 1550 core and 1700 memory. However, the average overclock out of nearly 5,000 submissions is still around 1310 for even sub-zero cooling options. Cherry picked aftermarket GPUs do tend to go above average, though.
For GPUs of late, no amount of overclocking with get you besting the next tier of cards. A 980 will never beat, for example the 980Ti or Titan x, the R290x will never best the 390x. this is by design; even with Cascade L2N or other extreme cooling setups you simply will find yourself unable to outperform the higher tier cards with the lower ones. While this has not always been the case for the moment it is. In theory with the best cherry picked card you might be able to get close to the next tier or even best it in some aspect but because of other limitations, I.E. Vram amount, Vram speed, ROPs, or texture units, you will find that it is the architectural differences that create the tiers that prevent this kind of thing. While it is sad to see manufactures essentially crippling their own chip sets to differentiate the market, that is the reality we have faced for 8 years or so. So that is a thing.
That actually is not true. At all. The GTX 980 has already beaten the Titan X in most benchmarks, so long as the GTX 980 is above 1800MHz on the core. A GTX 980 under SSC could (and does) beat a stock, or minimally overclocked Titan X.
the average OC on an R9-290 is around 1120mhz if you have a unicorn graphics card it would reach anything about 1150mhz on the core. but from my experience after you pass the 1100mhz mark added performance seems to be negligible. it doesn't really add much around an extra frame going up 20mhz.
here's hwbot averages on the 290
http://hwbot.org/hardware/videocard/radeon_r9_290/
The top FireStrike Extreme score claims to be a watercooled R9 290 running at 1350-1750. Soooo yeah, it made a wee bit of difference there. But yes the average is much lower than that.
like i said, from my experience. i can push my card to 1120, but after a while I can't really tell the difference between them in FPS. so i just lower it to a healthy 1100mhz. just to keep it alittle bit cooler. i have the Sapphire Tri-X
at 4k the 980 runs into Vram issues. The end of discussion. Should they come out with a 8GB Vram edition it may be able to be competitive however that seems highly unlikely. At the top end it is architecture that matters, If you have a crazy fast 980 under liquid helium cranked up to a power level over 9000 it still only has 4gbs of ram at a slow bus speed so anything you are doing with it that needs more then that, well lets just say it's not going to make it up that hill. As I said in theory you may outperform the higher tier in some aspects but at the end of the day you just can't add more ROPs, Texture units, or more Vram.
My 290 won't go much higher than 1200MHz Core, and RAM get flaky around 1400MHz. Under water.
My 290X does better on the RAM but worse on the core.
For beating a 980ti, not really. My 290X at a max and unstable overclock is closer to a 980ti at stock, that is the best it can do. Overclock the 980ti just slightly and the 290X falls behind considerably (let it boost higher). So to answer the OP, no a 290 won't beat a 980ti, it can come closer if overclocked to the max, but not much more.
I still think a 290 and a full cover block is a nice combo if you can get a good deal on it. I ran my 290 with a EK block and a Swiftech H220. Had low noise fans (Nidec Servo 1400rpm, once knows as Gentle Typhoon) and very nice temps at max overclock.
Go look at some benchmark scores on HWBot. Multiple examples of the GTX 980 beating the Titan X in 3DMark, Catzilla, and Unigine. If you somehow think I was stating an opinion you are sorely mistaken, there is plenty of evidence that backs up everything I said.
I am very well aware of architecture differences in GPUs of the last 20 years and what the changes brought to the industry in terms of performance and technology. Do not take me for an idiot. The discussion does not end just because you say so and want the last word.
Please look at this: http://hwbot.org/benchmark/3dmark_-_fire_strike_extreme/rankings?hardwareTypeId=videocard_2116&cores=1#start=0#interval=20#hardwareScope=all
And see that the GTX 980 places above many Titan X scores repeatedly, completely backing up what I said.
A 980 clocked at 2179Mhz under L2N bests a Titan-X with the stock cooler by 23 points? No I still don't see it my friend, not trying to be curt but really, as I said in extreme examples the older gen is barely holding on. The Entire page you Linked is Titan-X's and 980 Ti's which are for lack of a better description, Titan-X's with 6Ghz less Vram. only on page 2, and 3 do we even see 980's and there are no AMD cards whatsoever ATM. To top that off only the most extreme overclocks on cherry 980's with L2N are being shown.
Now if we talk about more normal cooling the odds become impossible a water cooled 980 would have to clock up to around 1800Mhz on the core to best a mildly overclocked Titan-X/980Ti given that with Maxwell we have seen some of the easiest overclocking in the history of ever even a dog of a chipset will get 1350-1400 on the core with the stock cooler. Point being a full water blocked r290 doesn't stand a snowballs chance in hell of being competitive with a 980, 980Ti/Titan-X, or a 390/390X. The chances of you getting a perfect card that will overclock nearly 2x the rated clock speed in order to make up that gap are so low you might as well play the lottery you will have both better odds and if you win you won't have a problem buying the newer stuff.
And to top all this horror off, in the real world at high resolution's we know that there are many games that use more then 4Gbz of Vram which makes the argument that a older generation card can keep up if love and money are applied a total sham. I blame the manufactures for this completely as the chipsets they use are often the same cores and memory just crippled to differentiate the market.
There were very few 980 Ti's, actually. The second page for example (Scores 21 - 40) there were 12 Titan X scores, 7 GTX 980 scores, and 1 single 980 Ti. The score difference on that page from the lowest Titan X to the highest GTX 980 was 303 points, not 23.
Data analysis is a wonderful skill.
So this statement:
Is 100% false. I know you added a lot of fluff around it to spread out your point, but I wasn't here to address the fluff. I simply wanted you to know that the GTX 980 CAN beat a Titan X or 980 Ti, and infact HAS. Whether it had to be a practical or completely replicable result really wasn't something you made clear in your original claim.
Now to address your grievances on VRAM, you are correct that as the industry moves on toward bigger screens we should see more addition to the VRAM. Truth is, however; we need the bandwidth more than the extra space. Less frames have to be stashed into a buffer if said buffer is running closer to the ASIC's native clock speed. Intel learned this concept through a different medium in 1999-2000 with the Pentium III Xeons.
Oh, and, sorry to the OP. This very quickly has devolved into a pissing match. I tried to be concise, and frankly I'll leave it at this. @Tinman if you want to continue feel free to PM me, but let's not continue to drag this off-topic tirade any further in this thread.