Will be upgrading to 290s on crossfire or 770s on SLI. Both have about the same price.
- The 290s are faster.
- The 290s have higher power consumption.
- Heat and noise won't be an issue since I'd be water cooling the cards in both cases.
Looking forward to some other pros and cons you guys might have bumped into on other forums or articles.
Also something else I'd like to hear an opinion on:
Will 2GB of GDDR5 memory still be enough for future games on a single 1080p monitor? Any leads?
Thanks.
There are lots of things to consider.
The first thing that jumps to my mind is that you can flash the 290x bios onto the 290, unlocking the cores on it and making it effectively a 290x. This means at the same price the difference in performance will increase further over the 770.
I myself am very happy with the beta version of Shadowplay and will be using it when they include good audio options. also depending on how long you plan on having the cards, v-sync looks amazing.
But there is something about being able to flash the bios of the 290 with that of the 290x that is so appealing to me personally.
From what I have seen and heard in terms of real world figures from various places, 2GB GDDR5 memory is capable for 1080p gaming, its only when resolutions get higher that you actually need more. But that is only at the moment.
I've been considering picking up a 290 after the custom coolers come to market, and the fact that you can flash to a 290x just sweetens the deal for me. Is flashing a new bios on to a card complicated though? I'm not exactly and advanced user when it comes to working with stuff beyond normal Windows stuff.
I have flashed a couple gigabyte cards and it was really simple (a tool direct from gigabyte's website). You might want to use the BIOS flashing software provided by the manufacturer of your graphics card, but it could work with another's.
The only think is the risk of something going wrong and you bricking your card. This is unlikely but still is a possibility. I flashed one card to the most up-to-date BIOS and it was working but there were a few problems with it, all I had to do was download a less recent version and flash that to the card.
My point is, it is really simple and in the case that it will unlock cores on your card then it is definitely worth following the manufacturer's instructions and the risk.
I am so tempted to buy the 290 and do it!
Only thing stopping me from getting two 290s now is my power supply, 850W. I know it's enough but I have a bad feeling about having it that close to the limit. Not even sure I'd be able to overclock the cards AND the CPU with it... Any thoughts on that?
Thanks a lot for that info mclusty.
Buying another one isn't an option, it took me too much time sleeving it's cables. The mere thought of having to do it again makes me want to cry.
290 + third party cooler > 770
850w has more than enough buffer room to oc everything.besides, there's no thermal room to oc on those cards, unless you go aftermarket
Also, is the frame time variance as good as with nvidia cards?
I wouldn't even consider getting 290s if I didn't plan to water cool them.
Edit: Now that I think about it though the 480mm radiator I have isn't enough to overclock them. Awww, might consider adding another radiator on top.
Edit2: And this brings me to another doubt lol: will a D5 pump be enough?
It's good. I honestly don't know how you can walk away from a review like this and get a 770 (780 is a little more compelling, but I still think the 290 give it a run for it's money).
I didn't take mantle into consideration x_x I'm definitely going with the 290s. Thanks for the replies.
what kind of water cooling are you using ? i want some too , share pls :D
https://teksyndicate.com/forum/build-pc/showing-my-last-build/160763
Custom loop.
13/10mm bitspower fittings, ek water blocks, 480mm radiator and a D5 pump.
Turns out you MIGHT be able to flash 290x bios onto a 290, apparently only certain batches are capable since they use a locked 290x chip instead of a proper 290 chip.
http://www.pcper.com/news/General-Tech/So-Apparently-Some-R9-290-Cards-Can-Flash-290X
http://wccftech.com/unlocked-radeon-r9-290-graphic-cards-masses/
With the Hawaii GPUs (290 and 290x), there is hardware frame pacing, and crossfire now works quite a bit differently than it used to. It seems to scale much better now, and the frame variance is a non-issue (except Skyrim, which is stuttery as fuck on any system).
Either way, I think mantle alone is quite the deal and star citizen will support it!
Again thanks for the info guys, I think it's settled. 290s on crossfire ^_^
It'd be great if there would be some offers, too bad black Friday isn't such a big thing here in Germany :/
yes, that's why i picked up a 290. really good gfx card for the money, and also be able to leverage mantle when games start coming out with it.
And you show up just now OH! Nah you're right I just didn't think about that up until now.
The 290 arrived this morning. Ordered one by XFX as suggested in the links provided by Rolling. Can't thank you enough man.
Flashing the bios was a success.
I bought the card from a German store. Caseking.de
Here's a guide on how to flash the bios of the 290X to the 290 in case someone is looking forward to doing it as well: http://www.overclock.net/t/1443242/the-r9-290-290x-unlock-thread
Please don't take for granted that you'll be able to do this with a card bought from that store.
Cheers!
Well did you have a succes flash? because im reading abit into this, and not much people seem to have the good luck with it? ☺ seems that only some xfx and some powercolor cards been a succes? This is strange because all those cards are the same..