AMD R9 290X fan speed/noise test

enjoy 65 decibels of deafness and never having to heat your house in the winter again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQhqOKKAq7o

You sound mad, own a titan by any chance?

What I was thinking.

nope. i own a old nvidia 6800gs and a AMD hd7670m.

besides the performance, there's nothing to like about a video card that puts out 95c degrees (heat) while running the fan at 100% @ 54 decibels. $550 might be a damn good price for this card (considering it's high performace), but noise and heat are factors to be considered as well. i mean WOW, that's louder than an old vantec tornado - ridiculous!

Dude! I understand your' concern. I had a normal shroud 7970, and it heated up my whole bedroom after an hour of gaming when there was snow outside. The noise was horrible too. This thing seems worse. Great price/performance, but there has GOT to be some kind of something that could be done on the noise and heat!

Does anyone actually buy cards with the reference coolers after the first week?

This is to be expected at that price point, its clear that AMD just cut costs and slapped the crappy cooler on to it, nobody should be buying the reference card, wait for the other ones to come out, the card has allot more potential in it but because of the reference cooler can't handle the heat(Fans only goes to 55% speed), it starts to throttle it down. My guess is when the other brand cards start to arrive we will see how far this card can go.

I'm more interested in the R9 290 tho, I think this card, can actually topple the 780 with an even lower price point.

from what i understand the reason the fan only goes to 55% is that anything over that doesn't even lower the temps on the card any more than the 55% speed does, and the noise in unbelievable to boot. so i'm guessing the r9 290 (non x version) will not have uber mode. maybe it will be the same card as the r9 290x but will not have the switch on top of the card to enable uber mode.

here's to hoping it's quieter and cooler and even cheaper as well. if the r9 290 is as fast as the r9 290x is (in normal mode), costs $50-$100 less and is a little quieter and cooler than the r9 290x, i'm going to be all over that.

No, the 290 has less stream processors and a lower clock, and the problem with the cooling solution is that the reference cooler is the same that the 7000 series, those fans are incredibly loud since it can go all the way to 5000rpm but right now is caped at 55% because more then that can be very loud.

Once MSI/Gigabyte/XFX etc... release their versions with their cooling solution we should see some very interesting results, also I want to see how much headroom this card has overclocking once you put it under water.

This is why you wait for cards with aftermarket coolers run cooler and less noise and if you have a program that lets you create custom fan profiles you can make them even quieter while still maintaining a good overclock with a less aggressive fan profile.

So did the 7950. But it was only slightly slower than the 7970 clock for clock (3-5%) and it was a very good OC'er.

The 7950 had 256 fewer stream processors and it looks like the 290 is going to be the same way. The ratios are eerily similar.

ok... i get it now. i understand what you were saying in your first reply.

i just read the review at techpowerup and it said that once the r9 290x gets to 94c (in quiet mode) the fan will increase until it hits the 2,000 rpm / 40 decibel limit. after that if the temps continue to try and rise, above the 94c limit, it will begin disabling cores to keep it "cool" at the 94c operation temp, and because of this it takes a HUGE 30% performance hit.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/R9_290X/26.html

so the benchmarks are misleading. the high numbers we are seeing from the r9 290x are only benchmarks scores. real in game performance will be 30% less after an hour or so of gaming because the card will slow itself down to lower the heat output.

NOT HAPPY!

>:(

At half the price it's a pretty amazing card. Hell, it even has a billion less transistors and performs up there with the Titan, the only way it can do as much with less transistors is to have more aggressive clocks, and more aggressive clocks are not power friendly. But again HALF THE PRICE. Enthusiasts will deal with the heat however they can and aftermarket coolers will come soon enough. The point is NVIDIA has to lower the prices of their parts to stay competitive. This is what competition is all about. We all get better cards at better prices no matter which brand we choose.

That's why I'm waiting for one of the after market cooler versions like most people who aren't using a water cooling solution.

Alternatively to waiting on one with a non-reference cooler, a couple of nice 92mm fans should fit nicely on the heatsink when the shroud is removed. That would give about the same cooling performance with much less noise...

C'mon guy's it's all about competition , Nvidia has gone soft...even bad drivers! I prefer Nvidia...but they have been gouging the hell out of everyone! Even bad drivers from nvidia! The new amd 290x is a blessing for everyone. Competition makes everything cost less! It's a win..win situation for everyone! Just enjoy!

Aftermarket coolers or watercooling solves your problem. MSI Twin Frozr version or Gigabyte Windforce or Asus own cooling should keep the card way quieter and cooler.

Amd knows about this and they still come with warranty, I dont see the issue here.

RMAing a card is a pain in the hole. If you're interested in the 290x you really should wait at least for the after market cooler designs, I'm sure they won't take long to appear

the issue is that the card runs at 94c and the fan speeds up to keep it from going higher than 94c. but if the max fan speed (44% normal or 55% uber mode) cannot keep the temperature from going over 94c, the card downclocks itself to as low as 600mhz, by disabling cores, to keep it from going over the maximum 94c temperature which in turn results in a 30% performance hit. the longer you game with it (during a long gaming session), the slower it gets.

so while the benchmarks look great, they aren't an accurate indicator of how the card performs in real life scenarios, such as playing a game for 5 hours straight. if you plan on doing any extended gaming sessions with the 290x, the card will downclock itself and wind up only running as fast as a 7970 and not much faster - waste of money.

non-reference models should fix that.

I am torn between this and 780ti

My 7970 has a non-reference cooler i.e. HIS IceQ X2 7970.

Yeah my reference 6950 sounds like that, one of the reasons I want to upgrade haha.

It's hot and loud but doesn't really use a massive amount of power (probably less than my 780), so it won't be heating up your room like crazy.

I just read the techpowerup article you linked.

Downclocking is only when the fan isn't in "uber" mode, and in uber mode it's 50dba, which is actually 1 dba lower than the 7970 ghz edition.

Edit: actually nevermind, they do mention downclocking in uber mode at the ass end of the article. That is pretty shitty then.

Just install a waterblock or wait for an aftermarket card.

the problem with aftermarket coolers is they blow hot air back into your case

if you have a micro atx case that is a big issue, especially if you are going for silence

I for once don't have that problem Benchtable FTW =P

Yep, AMD cards run hot and loud.

They don't have the tech to put more transistors so they just upclock everything, which then requires aggressive cooling, so your rig sounds like a jet engine.

On the other hand Nvidia put everything smaller, more transistor BUT this result in a less robust card as there is a greater chance of transistors warping.

So either get used to 55 db fan, or use special cooling solutions, or get a Nvidia card and make sure it has a good warrenty.

i'm going to wait and see what the r9 290 is all about and see if it's temps and speed is worth the price/performance, and in the meantime hope that the newer r9 290x comes with an aftermarket cooler that can keep it around 85c-90c. if neither of those things look like a winner, at that point, i'll just shell out the extra $150 for an nvidia card. i'm so tired of hoping and waiting that i can't stand it anymore.

Turn the fan on any video card up to 100% and it will sound like a jet turbine. Not really sure what the video proves. This is why the fans are usually set to top out at 50-60%.

@ZombieKiller7: Why such a generalized statement? Cards from both companies run at about the same clock speeds, and cards from both camps can be hot / loud. Hell, the hottest running cards that I've ever owned were my nVidia 7950's. I had to install 80mm fans on them to keep the temp under 90C...

Also, nVidia GPU's have actually been physically larger in recent years...