WEBVTT 00:00:06.640 --> 00:00:13.200 buy an Intel knock barebones PC and get a limited edition t-shirt and in-game 00:00:10.920 --> 00:00:18.640 items for Planet Side 2 click now to learn more now I have to admit I feel 00:00:16.279 --> 00:00:23.039 like AMD was trolling us reviewers a little bit with the release of the 290x 00:00:21.119 --> 00:00:26.359 and the 290 and I guess I've been trolling you guys a little bit lately 00:00:24.519 --> 00:00:30.560 with unboxings that don't have boxes in them so I am going to rectify that by 00:00:28.760 --> 00:00:37.520 showing you the box that the Radeon r9290 came in unboxing 00:00:34.440 --> 00:00:39.840 the card and then proceeding to get on 00:00:37.520 --> 00:00:42.559 with the review of the card which for something like this where quite frankly 00:00:41.480 --> 00:00:48.239 that's what you should do with the box then install it in your system and enjoy it enjoy the gaming Bliss that comes 00:00:46.160 --> 00:00:52.039 with it is probably what you should do as well now what do I mean by trolling 00:00:50.039 --> 00:00:55.719 us well I mean the card works and it's great that's all fine and good but what 00:00:53.719 --> 00:01:00.000 AMD did is they released two cards that are pretty much the same thing days 00:00:58.280 --> 00:01:03.600 apart so that we get to make separate videos outlining pretty much the same 00:01:01.680 --> 00:01:07.000 information twice in a row so if you guys have watched the 290x video you 00:01:05.600 --> 00:01:12.600 probably already know most of what I'm about to say so go ahead and Skip forward to the performance numbers which 00:01:10.400 --> 00:01:18.640 are where this card is really going to prove its worth price to Performance my 00:01:16.159 --> 00:01:23.159 friends so without further Ado it uses the same gcn architecture as the 00:01:20.360 --> 00:01:28.520 previous Edition 7000 series as well as the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 00:01:25.479 --> 00:01:30.759 meaning that AMD's ah yes their API 00:01:28.520 --> 00:01:35.000 called mantle is is going to be able to borrow a lot of the development 00:01:33.200 --> 00:01:39.240 principles that go into making console games and bring them to the PC so a more 00:01:37.119 --> 00:01:42.960 bare to metal programming approach that should give AMD's cards when they're 00:01:41.280 --> 00:01:47.200 running the mantle API and the game has to specifically support it the first 00:01:44.520 --> 00:01:52.880 one's going to be Battlefield 4 a huge performance Advantage it's got over 6 00:01:49.880 --> 00:01:57.000 billion transistors and unlike the 290x 00:01:52.880 --> 00:01:59.880 it is clocked at only 947 mahz maximum 00:01:57.000 --> 00:02:03.000 versus 1 GHz for the 290x and it has its stream processors cut down a little bit 00:02:01.439 --> 00:02:08.560 too so it has 2560 stream processors other than that 00:02:06.200 --> 00:02:14.560 it is pretty much the same card it has 4 gigs of RAM running on a 512-bit bus so 00:02:12.560 --> 00:02:20.560 these cards are designed for high resolution gaming that is to say 2 and 00:02:16.959 --> 00:02:22.560 1/2k or 4K or you might as well go for 00:02:20.560 --> 00:02:26.519 something like a 280X unless you really want to crank up the antialiasing 00:02:24.640 --> 00:02:31.760 completely through the roof or be ready for you know next Generation games at 00:02:28.879 --> 00:02:35.519 1080p it's not designed for 1080p my friends it has a newer optimized fan 00:02:33.959 --> 00:02:38.840 profile but that doesn't change the fact that it is a little bit on the louder 00:02:37.080 --> 00:02:42.319 side the good news is that when it ramps up and ramps down it does so much more 00:02:40.720 --> 00:02:46.159 smoothly than their previous generation fan controller design it has their new 00:02:44.480 --> 00:02:52.280 updated powertune technology that factors in the GPU clock the voltage the 00:02:49.319 --> 00:02:57.239 temperature and the power consumption in order to give you as much perf or 00:02:54.959 --> 00:03:01.519 performance as possible out of the card at any given time now this changes the 00:02:59.159 --> 00:03:04.879 way over clock works so they have a new graphical user interface for 00:03:02.879 --> 00:03:09.080 overclocking where basically instead of overclocking to a frequency now you 00:03:06.920 --> 00:03:13.319 overclock based on a percentage and you give the card thresholds within which to 00:03:11.519 --> 00:03:16.599 work where you say okay I'm okay with this much more than the recommended 00:03:14.799 --> 00:03:20.080 power I'm okay with this much more than the recommended clock speed do your best 00:03:18.640 --> 00:03:23.920 and then the card will deliver to you whatever it can Although our 290x review 00:03:22.640 --> 00:03:27.319 revealed that there wasn't much overclocking Headroom on that card maybe 00:03:25.879 --> 00:03:31.239 we find out that things are a little bit different here speaking of not much 00:03:29.000 --> 00:03:38.120 overclocking head room they come dialed in at 95° don't be surprised when your 00:03:35.000 --> 00:03:40.680 290 or 290x runs at 95° Celsius 00:03:38.120 --> 00:03:44.840 underload this is by Design AMD is switching voltages and clock speeds 00:03:42.280 --> 00:03:48.519 about every 10 micros seconds in order to squeeze as much performance out of 00:03:46.319 --> 00:03:54.480 the card as possible if you don't like it just like NVIDIA's GPU Boost 2.0 00:03:51.560 --> 00:03:58.280 technology just turn it down just use the slider say okay I'm only comfortable 00:03:56.239 --> 00:04:01.760 with 80° AMD is saying it's not going to affect the longevity of the card They 00:03:59.840 --> 00:04:07.439 probably know better than us but hey who knows heat does make integrated circuits 00:04:05.640 --> 00:04:10.480 die eventually so there you go whatever you're comfortable with dial it in at 00:04:09.159 --> 00:04:13.959 that it'll just turn down the performance of the card a little bit or 00:04:12.400 --> 00:04:19.479 you can choose to ramp up the fan speed a little bit more if you want speaking of fan speed there's quiet mode and Uber 00:04:17.799 --> 00:04:23.120 mode so there's a switch on the top of the card towards the back of the card 00:04:21.359 --> 00:04:26.520 towards the fan is Uber mode that is what we use for our testing what you 00:04:25.080 --> 00:04:32.680 also might have noticed looking close up at the card right there is there are no Crossfire connectors all the crossfire 00:04:30.360 --> 00:04:37.320 communication is done through that PCI Express 16x interface down there at the 00:04:35.160 --> 00:04:42.880 bottom it's PCIe 3.0 ready but don't worry even if you're running PCIe 2.0 8X 00:04:40.880 --> 00:04:47.120 slots AMD hasn't observed any performance difference between running 00:04:44.320 --> 00:04:50.320 connectors and not running connectors so the rest of the card physically this is 00:04:48.680 --> 00:04:55.199 fascinating here at the back two DVI ports HDMI and DisplayPort no analog 00:04:52.919 --> 00:04:58.919 output whatsoever not even with adapters but what's cool is you can run Infinity 00:04:56.880 --> 00:05:03.360 using any of these three ports now and up to six display using a DisplayPort 00:05:00.840 --> 00:05:08.840 hub off of a single card without needing a specific fancy special ifinity 6 00:05:05.880 --> 00:05:13.160 Edition card it takes one six pin and one 8 Pin power connector and it has a 00:05:11.039 --> 00:05:16.639 pretty sexy looking shroud overall there's not much to see on the back of 00:05:14.400 --> 00:05:20.479 the card because all of the memory chips are actually soldered on the front of 00:05:18.199 --> 00:05:24.400 the c a bit of an unusual design for something that has 16 memory chips on it 00:05:23.199 --> 00:05:28.680 which is a requirement if you're going to have a 512-bit memory bus because it 00:05:27.080 --> 00:05:32.240 actually reads and writes to every one of those chips all at the same time and 00:05:30.720 --> 00:05:36.319 that's how you're able to achieve the massive bandwidth that AMD has with this 00:05:34.639 --> 00:05:41.360 particular graphics card so they've also got true audio built into this card the 00:05:38.039 --> 00:05:43.600 260x and the 290x that is a dedicated 00:05:41.360 --> 00:05:47.199 onboard digital sound processor that will allow games to leverage it if they 00:05:45.759 --> 00:05:51.800 take advantage of it there's middlewares that are going to support it it's really going to depend on dev support and right 00:05:50.199 --> 00:05:55.240 now there's only three cards that actually have true audio Hardware on 00:05:53.319 --> 00:06:00.520 them so it might not be as relevant for now but in the future it will be a less 00:05:57.440 --> 00:06:03.280 cluggy and more CPU resource efficient 00:06:00.520 --> 00:06:07.960 way to implement much much better audio that's more immersive in games and I 00:06:05.039 --> 00:06:10.800 appreciate AMD being a Pioneer in the whole graphics card audio thing I mean 00:06:09.440 --> 00:06:15.240 they were the first ones to put audio over HDMI on a graphics card way back in 00:06:13.160 --> 00:06:19.160 the day as well another note on mantle guys is much like true audio it depends 00:06:17.280 --> 00:06:22.759 on developer support So mantle can potentially dramatically improve the 00:06:21.160 --> 00:06:26.800 performance not only of this card but also 7,000 series cards but we've yet to 00:06:25.199 --> 00:06:31.280 see a game engine that actually implements it yet once it's done it 00:06:29.120 --> 00:06:35.080 might be a simple as for end users automatically detecting your AMD gcn 00:06:33.360 --> 00:06:38.479 graphics card or even just being a drop down and giving you like huge 00:06:36.599 --> 00:06:43.520 performance improvements but until we actually see anything it's really really 00:06:41.039 --> 00:06:47.520 hard for us to say now I'm going to hand off to Luke to give you guys the 00:06:45.160 --> 00:06:53.840 performance numbers before we start I cannot emphasize this enough please 00:06:50.080 --> 00:06:55.000 listen to me we run all of our graphics 00:06:53.840 --> 00:07:00.639 cards overclocked that is why our numbers are 00:06:57.879 --> 00:07:04.240 different from other review viewers I hope that was clear enough if you have 00:07:02.599 --> 00:07:08.120 any Curiosities about the kinds of overclocks that we're running on the 00:07:05.639 --> 00:07:12.240 cards we will link our overclocking master sheet under the video so you can 00:07:10.240 --> 00:07:17.520 see exactly what clock speeds were at our 290x wasn't a particularly great 00:07:14.680 --> 00:07:20.720 overclocker in our in our 29x review it wasn't that bad either I mean it was 00:07:19.160 --> 00:07:25.360 functional it did overclock a little bit it wasn't as bad as our old 00:07:22.240 --> 00:07:26.479 7870 but um you know we had people 00:07:25.360 --> 00:07:31.000 saying that we were putting it up against the GTX 780 lightning we weren't 00:07:28.960 --> 00:07:33.919 that was just a standard GTX 780 reference card that wasn't a 00:07:32.039 --> 00:07:38.240 particularly great overclocker we're looking into ways we can tweak this 00:07:35.520 --> 00:07:41.400 methodology maybe using something like average overclocks on Hardware bought on 00:07:40.039 --> 00:07:45.879 every card or something along those lines but the cold hard truth is we are 00:07:43.680 --> 00:07:49.520 not changing the way we run overclocked cards because we feel that it is the one 00:07:47.960 --> 00:07:53.919 thing that we can do a little bit differently here versus everyone else 00:07:52.000 --> 00:07:57.240 who is running the card stock if your complaint is everyone else runs the card 00:07:55.800 --> 00:08:01.280 stock why are your numbers different why are you even looking at our numbers if you know they're not going to be 00:07:59.680 --> 00:08:05.240 different if you want to see stock benchmarks go to any one of the 00:08:02.720 --> 00:08:09.720 literally 100 to 200 other review sites that run them and go look at them there 00:08:07.879 --> 00:08:16.120 without further Ado here's slick so the first thing you're going to notice is that the r9290 did really well like 00:08:13.639 --> 00:08:20.759 really really well like better than 290x well and a little bit more research into 00:08:18.360 --> 00:08:25.319 this topic brought up that what likely happened was I got a not super great 00:08:22.919 --> 00:08:28.639 overclocker for my 290x and a really really good overclocker for my 290 how 00:08:27.639 --> 00:08:33.399 we're going to address this in the future is we're going to continue to have me overclock the cards as hard as I 00:08:31.720 --> 00:08:37.959 can right when I first get them because we don't have any averages and we don't know how well they overclock immediately 00:08:36.479 --> 00:08:42.959 so on the launch video it'll be as hard as I can get it for overclocked and then after that we're 00:08:41.240 --> 00:08:46.720 going to go with hardware bot averages so in the future after a bunch of people 00:08:45.040 --> 00:08:49.959 have gotten the card and after a bunch of people have submitted averages to 00:08:48.240 --> 00:08:53.600 hardware bot we will actually be adjusting our cards to that in the past 00:08:51.560 --> 00:08:57.200 we had kept it with the launch overclock to make it consistent throughout all of 00:08:55.480 --> 00:09:00.399 our testing but we believe that going with the hardware bot averages will be 00:08:58.560 --> 00:09:03.680 more representative of what the average consumer will get in the field so what 00:09:02.160 --> 00:09:08.279 are your takeaways knowing that we're going to start rebalancing for hardware bot and knowing that we're going to swap 00:09:06.279 --> 00:09:11.640 out the 290x for one that can overclock a little bit closer to hardware bot 00:09:10.200 --> 00:09:17.839 levels in the future thank you ASUS we're going to be getting an aftermarket one from them I don't know when we're in 00:09:15.000 --> 00:09:24.560 line for it so that'll be good um the 290 is extremely hot it's Extremely Loud 00:09:22.120 --> 00:09:28.200 it consumes a very large amount of power and it crushes 00:09:26.480 --> 00:09:33.279 benchmarks if you can deal with the power consumption if you can deal with the heat if you can deal with the sound 00:09:31.160 --> 00:09:36.560 it's a really powerful card at a really good price point and that's just 00:09:35.560 --> 00:09:42.600 something people are going to want to deal with it's pulling more power in a lot of situations than a 480 for those 00:09:40.680 --> 00:09:47.079 of you guys that remember 480s that is pretty insane but this thing is very 00:09:44.839 --> 00:09:50.120 powerful for its price if you have a high price point and you want to 00:09:48.160 --> 00:09:54.160 purchase the king of this generation you have a little bit of waiting left to do 00:09:51.720 --> 00:09:57.320 mantle and 780 Ti are still yet to flex their muscles and we are not sure 00:09:55.760 --> 00:10:03.120 exactly how this battle is going to play out but if you're looking at around a $400 graphics card it might be decision 00:10:01.040 --> 00:10:06.240 time now if you like the video like the video If you dislike the video dislike 00:10:04.600 --> 00:10:10.240 the video and in the comments below what's your tradeoff are you going for 00:10:08.320 --> 00:10:14.880 really heavy crazy performance but taking in power consumption heat and 00:10:12.800 --> 00:10:18.720 sound or are you going for the more allaround comfortable experience with 00:10:16.959 --> 00:10:23.640 maybe a little bit less performance leave that in the comments below and as 00:10:20.240 --> 00:10:23.640 always please subscribe to lonus 00:10:28.320 --> 00:10:31.320 techtips 00:10:31.560 --> 00:10:34.560 he