1 00:00:06,640 --> 00:00:12,240 the fractal design define r4 case gets featured on the WAN Show build logs of 2 00:00:10,559 --> 00:00:17,039 the week section more than any other case click now to learn more about it 3 00:00:14,799 --> 00:00:22,320 welcome to my unboxing and review of one of the most anticipated graphics card 4 00:00:19,039 --> 00:00:26,240 launches in recent memory this is the r9 5 00:00:22,320 --> 00:00:29,519 290x from AMD it is their new ultimate 6 00:00:26,240 --> 00:00:31,840 performance flagship single GPU card it 7 00:00:29,519 --> 00:00:37,440 features the same gcn architecture as the last gen 7000 series as well as the 8 00:00:34,399 --> 00:00:39,600 wii u and the ps4 and the xbox one but 9 00:00:37,440 --> 00:00:43,600 with some performance enhancements as well as some feature tweaks so let's 10 00:00:41,600 --> 00:00:48,480 start with a quick rundown of the specs the GPU core inside here is clocked at 11 00:00:46,239 --> 00:00:54,480 one gigahertz which considering that it is a fixed billion transistor GPU core 12 00:00:51,920 --> 00:01:00,039 is nothing short of very very impressive it has four gigs of 512 bit gddr5 memory 13 00:00:58,719 --> 00:01:05,760 it's got 2816 stream processors so yeah there's 14 00:01:02,800 --> 00:01:11,280 more performance and it's four gigs of gddr5 memory are running on a 512-bit 15 00:01:08,799 --> 00:01:15,119 bus meaning there is massive memory bandwidth and a ton of memory available 16 00:01:13,360 --> 00:01:19,280 to it and there's a very good reason for that it is optimized for greater than hd 17 00:01:17,680 --> 00:01:25,840 gaming compared to the last generation 7970 gigahertz edition it has twice the 18 00:01:23,200 --> 00:01:30,320 pixel fill rate performance almost and nearly double the geometry performance 19 00:01:28,000 --> 00:01:34,159 so that basically means it's made to take what the last gen could do which is 20 00:01:32,000 --> 00:01:38,960 kind of two and a half k gaming amp it up a notch and deliver that kind of 21 00:01:35,840 --> 00:01:40,159 performance at 4k resolutions on the 22 00:01:38,960 --> 00:01:46,320 front of the card other than the upgraded industrial design there's not much to talk about other than this right 23 00:01:43,680 --> 00:01:50,000 here the fan has been significantly altered versus previous generation 24 00:01:47,840 --> 00:01:55,119 products so the fan profile the software that controls it is able to ramp up and 25 00:01:53,200 --> 00:01:59,280 ramp down the speeds much more slowly making it sound less aggressive to your 26 00:01:56,960 --> 00:02:04,240 ears this ties in very nicely with their new upgraded powertune technology so 27 00:02:01,759 --> 00:02:07,920 think of it kind of like GPU boost 2.0 for AMD they're not really going to want 28 00:02:05,439 --> 00:02:11,680 me to say that but let's face it so it's taking four pillars so that is voltage 29 00:02:10,479 --> 00:02:16,720 clock speed power and temperature and then balancing 30 00:02:14,800 --> 00:02:20,400 the performance of the GPU against all of those things in order to squeeze as 31 00:02:18,400 --> 00:02:24,400 much performance as possible out of the graphics card now what AMD says is 32 00:02:22,720 --> 00:02:29,599 unique about their implementation is that the voltage control is incredibly 33 00:02:26,319 --> 00:02:32,080 granular and it can switch voltage steps 34 00:02:29,599 --> 00:02:36,400 and around 10 microseconds meaning that it is always pushing to squeeze as much 35 00:02:34,480 --> 00:02:42,000 perf as possible out of the card now power tune comes dialed in at 95 degrees 36 00:02:39,200 --> 00:02:44,879 celsius however you know some folks are not necessarily comfortable with their 37 00:02:43,360 --> 00:02:49,920 graphics card running at 95 degrees it'll run at that temperature all the time because of the way it's designed 38 00:02:48,160 --> 00:02:54,160 don't worry power tune is fully customizable so if you decide you have a 39 00:02:51,840 --> 00:02:58,319 different maximum fan speed you want or you have a different maximum temperature 40 00:02:56,560 --> 00:03:01,840 you want to see it'll adjust all the other parameters so that is clock speed 41 00:03:00,000 --> 00:03:05,680 therefore performance in order to keep in line with your expectations now 42 00:03:03,519 --> 00:03:09,120 NVIDIA ships their cards dialed in at 80 degrees by default but it should be 43 00:03:07,440 --> 00:03:12,959 noted that it was only a generation or two ago that NVIDIA was also saying it 44 00:03:10,800 --> 00:03:16,080 was fine for gpus to run at 100 degrees flipping around to the top of the card 45 00:03:14,400 --> 00:03:19,360 we find where the plastic shroud is joined to the metal unisync that 46 00:03:17,440 --> 00:03:25,200 provides cooling for the RAM and vrm components we also find cross market no 47 00:03:22,480 --> 00:03:29,120 no crossfire connectors AMD has tested the card in fact they left the contact 48 00:03:27,040 --> 00:03:33,280 points on the pcb so that they could actually ghetto wire one up to make sure 49 00:03:31,840 --> 00:03:38,799 that it doesn't make a difference and they tested it down to PCIe 8x two cards 50 00:03:36,400 --> 00:03:42,000 running in 8x gen2 and saw no performance difference between putting 51 00:03:40,319 --> 00:03:46,480 the connectors on and not putting the connectors on so the crossfire connector 52 00:03:43,920 --> 00:03:50,720 is gone on this card we also find the power connector so there's an eight pin 53 00:03:48,000 --> 00:03:56,080 PCIe and a six pin PCIe plug and finally ah yes the bioswitch has made a return 54 00:03:53,360 --> 00:04:00,319 so by default it comes with uber and quiet fan profiles in two separate 55 00:03:58,319 --> 00:04:05,200 bioses and you can flip between them as you want and by default the quiet mode 56 00:04:02,480 --> 00:04:09,439 is closer to the i o panel so naturally we have gone and put it in uber mode on 57 00:04:07,280 --> 00:04:13,360 the rear i o we find ventilation so this is a blower design card so while some 58 00:04:11,599 --> 00:04:18,320 air is going to come out up here most of it's going to come out the back of the card and be exhausted from your case as 59 00:04:16,479 --> 00:04:23,840 well as for all digital outputs all digital you 60 00:04:21,280 --> 00:04:28,240 might say oh dvi to vga adapter no no adapter the analog signaling is not 61 00:04:26,320 --> 00:04:32,560 there AMD has made some other tweaks to this though as well so check this out 62 00:04:30,160 --> 00:04:36,720 two dvi ports one HDMI can't run ifinity off of those three ports whoa hey now 63 00:04:34,160 --> 00:04:42,160 you can you can run three 1080p monitors off dvi dvi and HDMI you can still use 64 00:04:39,840 --> 00:04:47,440 displayport for ifinity but it's totally up to you matching dvi monitors no big 65 00:04:44,800 --> 00:04:50,720 deal an HDMI to dvi cable will take care of that with no conversion they've made 66 00:04:49,440 --> 00:04:54,479 some changes to the way that they allocate resources in order to make that 67 00:04:52,800 --> 00:04:58,479 possible which is very very cool displayport you can also get some 68 00:04:56,160 --> 00:05:03,600 commercially available displayport hubs now which will allow you to easily run 69 00:05:01,120 --> 00:05:08,240 six displays off of this card so there is no need for an ifinity 6 edition card 70 00:05:06,080 --> 00:05:12,400 anymore now speaking of the HDMI port on the back AMD was the first to implement 71 00:05:10,320 --> 00:05:16,639 sound over HDMI on their graphics cards a couple generations ago and they are 72 00:05:15,120 --> 00:05:20,720 throwing another first at us with this card this is the second card on the 73 00:05:18,800 --> 00:05:24,880 market to implement AMD's true audio technology so that is a programmable dsp 74 00:05:23,120 --> 00:05:30,240 that is built right onto the card that is dedicated hardware just to process 75 00:05:27,120 --> 00:05:32,639 audio that means lower CPU utilization 76 00:05:30,240 --> 00:05:37,440 better surround effects less clutchy approximations of environmental effects 77 00:05:34,800 --> 00:05:42,000 using reverb as well as generally more immersive sound it does rely on support 78 00:05:39,919 --> 00:05:45,199 from middleware developers as well as from game developers so given that 79 00:05:44,000 --> 00:05:50,000 there's only a couple cards in the market right now that support it maybe it's not going to be a huge thing yet 80 00:05:48,320 --> 00:05:53,360 but in the future thumbs up AMD for implementing that 81 00:05:51,919 --> 00:05:57,759 flipping over to the back of the card we've got the GPU itself so that's 82 00:05:55,199 --> 00:06:03,039 clocked at up to 1 gigahertz and then we've also got yeah count them 16 memory 83 00:06:00,960 --> 00:06:06,319 chips so AMD has opted to mount all of the memory on the front of the card 84 00:06:04,479 --> 00:06:11,680 where it can be cooled by that unisync and because of its 512-bit memory 85 00:06:09,039 --> 00:06:16,240 interface it actually needs 16 memory modules in order to function 86 00:06:15,440 --> 00:06:21,120 so there you go guys quite the engineering feat cramming all of that in there while 87 00:06:19,759 --> 00:06:24,639 we're back here i want to take a moment to talk about zerocore technology so 88 00:06:22,880 --> 00:06:29,600 when your computer is idling and your screen turns off AMD cards can actually 89 00:06:27,199 --> 00:06:34,479 almost completely turn off the graphics card so it uses almost no power we've 90 00:06:32,319 --> 00:06:38,240 already seen this before but just a reminder guys zero core is a thing and 91 00:06:36,720 --> 00:06:41,680 it does help save power if you're not the kind of person who always puts their 92 00:06:40,080 --> 00:06:46,319 computer to sleep or turns it off when they're not using it next up we've got 93 00:06:43,919 --> 00:06:50,800 mantle which is a potential game changer it's going to be supported by this card 94 00:06:48,160 --> 00:06:55,039 and all gcn architecture cards it is a new API that allows more direct 95 00:06:52,960 --> 00:06:58,880 communication between the game engine itself and the hardware inside your 96 00:06:57,440 --> 00:07:03,039 graphics card rather than going through directx which is an intermediary layer 97 00:07:01,199 --> 00:07:08,000 that doesn't allow for the same kind of bare metal programming for an individual 98 00:07:05,599 --> 00:07:13,280 graphics card architecture it's not the same as a next-gen console even though 99 00:07:10,400 --> 00:07:17,280 they use a gcn architecture but AMD is hoping that because of the similar 100 00:07:14,960 --> 00:07:21,599 architectures some of the principles that developers are using to optimize on 101 00:07:19,120 --> 00:07:26,000 those consoles can be used through mantle to get better performance on AMD 102 00:07:23,840 --> 00:07:29,840 cards it'll rely heavily on developer support so battlefield 4 is going to 103 00:07:27,599 --> 00:07:34,639 have mantle support coming in december and at their developer conference in 104 00:07:31,919 --> 00:07:38,639 november 2013 we are expecting to see announcements from a lot of other 105 00:07:36,479 --> 00:07:42,479 developers based on the the rumors that i've heard chirping around now before we 106 00:07:40,720 --> 00:07:46,000 get into performance numbers i want to talk about overclocking we run all of 107 00:07:44,240 --> 00:07:50,400 our cards overclocked and overclocking is very different on 290x so instead of 108 00:07:48,560 --> 00:07:56,400 the traditional clock speed slider and fan speed slider now you set a maximum 109 00:07:53,280 --> 00:07:58,960 fan speed and you have a little heat map 110 00:07:56,400 --> 00:08:03,520 grid within AMD's overdrive utility that allows you to see how the settings 111 00:08:01,759 --> 00:08:08,000 you're applying and it's a percentage based overclock now not a clock speed 112 00:08:05,120 --> 00:08:11,440 based overclock affect both the clock speed as well as the temperature and the 113 00:08:09,599 --> 00:08:14,639 power targets and how all those things work together so you're going to want to 114 00:08:12,960 --> 00:08:18,240 spend a little bit of time learning about that before you go and try and 115 00:08:16,319 --> 00:08:22,000 overclock this card now for us we were running an uber mode we ran at 1080p and 116 00:08:20,479 --> 00:08:28,479 then we did a special head-to-head battle between r9 290x and gtx 780 at 117 00:08:26,000 --> 00:08:33,120 two and a half k however we don't have a 4k monitor at this time and AMD informs 118 00:08:30,879 --> 00:08:37,919 me that the 290x doesn't really stretch its legs and show its metal until you 119 00:08:35,839 --> 00:08:41,839 hook it up to a 4k display without further ado 120 00:08:39,440 --> 00:08:44,800 off to you slick there has been a ton of anticipation over these numbers so i'm 121 00:08:43,279 --> 00:08:49,519 just going to go right into it and something that a lot of people are going to notice right off the bat is that this 122 00:08:47,360 --> 00:08:52,800 card is not actually topping our charts to explain we have been running our 123 00:08:51,120 --> 00:08:57,040 graphics card tests for quite a while now with everything overclocked to the 124 00:08:54,560 --> 00:09:01,200 wall and this test is no different we're running everything overclocked as much 125 00:08:58,399 --> 00:09:04,399 as possible and we found that the 290x actually comes out of the box quite 126 00:09:02,880 --> 00:09:08,800 aggressively clocked and there isn't a ton of headroom left now 127 00:09:06,720 --> 00:09:11,600 we were interested when it started not being at the top of all our charts so i 128 00:09:10,080 --> 00:09:17,200 did a little bit of investigation and when the 780 and 290x are both at stock 129 00:09:14,399 --> 00:09:21,680 the 290x and the 780 often switch position the 290x is actually usually on 130 00:09:19,920 --> 00:09:26,800 top but we run all of our tests overclocked so moving on another thing 131 00:09:24,080 --> 00:09:32,160 to note is that this card is about 550 and a 780 is about 650 132 00:09:30,320 --> 00:09:38,000 maybe give a few more depending on where you are now at about 20 cheaper in our 133 00:09:35,200 --> 00:09:44,080 1080p benchmarks it's only 10 slower jumping to 2560 by 1440p we noticed 134 00:09:41,360 --> 00:09:46,959 actually that the story got even sweeter at about only five percent loss in 135 00:09:45,519 --> 00:09:50,959 performance that makes that whole price performance thing even better we were 136 00:09:48,800 --> 00:09:54,880 seeing ten percent on 1080p and now we're only seeing five percent that's 137 00:09:52,880 --> 00:09:57,760 great moving up to 4k it's supposed to be even better we unfortunately don't 138 00:09:56,560 --> 00:10:01,360 have those numbers as we don't have a screen that can support that though 139 00:09:59,600 --> 00:10:05,120 another thing to note is that with star citizen everything is kind of skewed 140 00:10:03,279 --> 00:10:09,360 that game is not released yet that game is not optimized yet and 141 00:10:07,440 --> 00:10:13,279 i kind of think it's gonna happen but mantle is not on it yet at all so those 142 00:10:12,000 --> 00:10:17,839 three things will actually change the game a ton we just wanted to include it 143 00:10:15,360 --> 00:10:20,640 because star citizen no actual real logical reason we just wanted to show 144 00:10:19,279 --> 00:10:24,880 how it's performing right now just in case you're one of those guys that's going to jump on the hanger module 145 00:10:23,279 --> 00:10:29,040 that's going to jump on dog fighting that's going to jump on everything in the future because you're a big follower 146 00:10:27,600 --> 00:10:32,399 of star citizen and we know there is a ton of you out there if you like the 147 00:10:30,720 --> 00:10:36,560 video like the video if you just like the video dislike the video and in the 148 00:10:34,399 --> 00:10:40,000 comments below what are you going for are you going for that sensible price 149 00:10:38,560 --> 00:10:42,959 per performance route or are you going for the hardcore i want to be at the top 150 00:10:41,839 --> 00:10:49,040 of the charts with crazy amounts of overclocking and all that kind of stuff angle what is your angle and all as 151 00:10:47,200 --> 00:11:01,840 always be sure to subscribe to Linus tech tips