Gigabyte R9 290X WindForce OC 4GB Graphics Card Review

Ryan Martin / 10 years ago

Final Thoughts

Pricing

As mentioned in other recent AMD graphics card reviews pricing at the moment is in disarray. The cryptocurrency mining bonanza is driving the price of AMD graphics cards through the roof. Consequently we are finding it difficult to get actual retail pricing for the Gigabyte R9 290X. However, we have managed to get some semi-accurate pricing. As we know the reference R9 290X should cost $549.99 or about £434.99. In the UK Gigabyte’s R9 290X WindForce OC graphics card is selling for £479.99 which seems about right. By my maths that is a 10% premium over reference pricing which seems logical though I still think that is a little inflated, Gigabyte normally match reference pricing even with their WindForce OC models so when stock starts to return and the mining craze starts to slow we may see prices dip closer to reference levels. Newegg are charging an extortionate $699.99, clearly trying to exploit customers for whatever extra they can while miners will be willing to pay this much.The reality is U.S pricing should be about $610 which is a 10% premium, but you’ll be hard pushed to find it for that at this current point in time.

Overview

We’ve seen the performance, temperatures, acoustics and power consumption figures. What conclusions can we draw from Gigabyte’s R9 290X WindForce OC? Well out of the box Gigabyte’s R9 290X WindForce OC graphics card comes with just a 4% overclock yet often performs more than 4% faster than a reference R9 290X, in some cases 17% faster. Like the reference R9 290X it ships with the Quiet BIOS enabled, and that’s what we tested it with, but in the case of the Gigabyte R9 290X it has a thermal limit of 85 degrees set while the reference card sets 95 degrees, both have maximum fan speeds of 40%. Despite that lower temperature limit Gigabyte’s card is consistently able to run at 950MHz or higher for extended periods of 3D load while the reference design drops as low as 650MHz when in Quiet Mode. Of course the Gigabyte card still faces some thermal throttling because an overclocked R9 290X chucks out immense amounts of heat which super quiet fans do struggle with, but it is worth noting the thermal throttling is minimal in impact even in quiet mode. It is also worth noting that Gigabyte’s card produced just 44.9 dBA at maximum load compared to 54.5 on the reference card – that is a massive reduction in noise. By choosing the second BIOS on the Gigabyte R9 290X the card never reaches a thermal throttle so runs consistently at 1040MHz, but of course you do have to trade that off for much more noise due to a more aggressive fan profile. Either way the Gigabyte card is quieter, cooler and clocked higher under both BIOS settings versus the reference card.

So we’ve established the Gigabyte model is cooler, has higher average clocks, less thermal throttling and much less noise but what else is there to the story. Well strangely power consumption is higher. Why? Well it isn’t that strange at all. Less thermal throttling means running at higher clocks, running at higher clocks means using more power – simple. I think the reality is most people are going to only use these cards in quiet mode and in quiet mode the Gigabyte R9 290X is just vastly superior to the reference model in every way except power consumption. Even if you were to choose the uber mode BIOS you’d find that there isn’t that much gain to be had from doing so, the WindForce 450 cooling solution will be louder, and you’ll probably avert reaching the thermal throttle but in return you’ll get only a fraction more performance since in quiet mode the Gigabyte R9 290X consistently has very high clocks anyway. In terms of overclocking we found there wasn’t much to be had on our sample. 1110MHz on the core that we managed was only 10MHz better than the reference design. Yet performance was a lot better simply because while on paper that’s only 10MHz more in reality it is more like 300MHz more because of less thermal throttling. The same applies for the out-of-the-box speeds, there is only a 40MHz overclock but in reality it is more like a 200-300MHz overclock because of reduced throttling.

I really could babble on forever about throttling, temperatures and noise but by now I think the message is clear. Gigabyte’s card runs a lot cooler than the reference design and only occasionally throttles, the reference design throttles consistently and after only a few minutes. Gigabyte’s card doesn’t do itself any favours by using a lower temperature threshold of 85 degrees which is 10 degrees lower than the reference card. This makes its cooling performance seem less impressive than it is. Yet it achieves all of this with such a low level of noise that you should only be impressed. Most users will probably tweak their own temperature/fan profile balances and I encourage you to do so because Gigabyte’s WindForce OC R9 290X is incredibly flexible. I myself was happy to bump the threshold up to 90 degrees and make my own custom fan curve which keeps the fan speed below 50% – still very quiet indeed. This allowed me to max out clocks 24/7 giving great levels of performance.

Pros

Impressive cooling performance – does an excellent job of taming the R9 290X
Dramatic noise improvement versus reference design, one of the quietest high-end graphics cards money can buy
Minimal throttling which gives significant performance boosts over the reference design
Dual BIOS
3 Year Warranty

Cons

Stock and pricing issues at some larger retailers
Still some thermal throttling out of the box- I wanted to see a slightly more aggressive fan profile in return for no throttling
Our sample had limited overclocking headroom

“Gigabyte have successfully tamed the beast that is the R9 290X and what a beast it is. In every way – noise, performance and temperatures – Gigabyte’s R9 290X WindForce OC offers a significant improvement over the reference design. If you’re in the market for an R9 290X then you’d be bonkers to even consider a reference design graphics card now that non-reference solutions are here. We are excited to see the R9 290X finally reach its full potential and fully recommend their WindForce OC R9 290X. It’s a great card and if you’re in the market for an R9 290X it is definitely worth a strong consideration.“