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El Quintron
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join:2008-04-28
Tronna

El Quintron

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[Tech] Preferred brand of R290x?

My wife is itching to replace her aging 560ti with an R9 290x, I'm wondering which one I should recommend for her.

I'm considering either an ASUS direct CU version or a Sapphire, but the Powercolour ones look nice and are pretty cheap.

I know that the 290x can be loud and hot when air cooled, so ideally I'd like a quiet-ish card with good performance, and good temps on air.

The MSI 7970 I have in my HTPC can end up sounding like a jet engine if I push it too far.

Let me know what you all think about it.
EQ

Krisnatharok
PC Builder, Gamer
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join:2009-02-11
Earth Orbit

2 recommendations

Krisnatharok

Premium Member

Sapphire all the way! My reference one is fine, the noise is tolerable when gaming. If it's going to bother you, get the non-reference design.

Non-reference: »www.newegg.com/Product/P ··· -Product

Comes with the $150 in games too.

El Quintron
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El Quintron

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The non-reference looks pretty good, thanks for the recommend. Here's another question:

If the system had an Nvidia card in it previously what type of driver purge do you recommend? I'm pretty lazy and I'd just nuke both partitions and reinstall, but in case she's really attached to her current setup, what would you do to properly purge the Nvidia drivers?

ekster
Hi there
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join:2010-07-16
Sainte-Anne-De-Bellevue, QC

1 recommendation

ekster

Premium Member

Just did the switch from NVidia to AMD last week myself. Don't need to do anything special. Nvidia and AMD both made it a pretty simply uninstall through add/remove programs.

Otherwise you're looking at third party software like Display Driver Uninstaller if you want to nuke every single file, folder and registry key. But I wouldn't go that far unless you're getting some weird and rare errors.

Krisnatharok
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join:2009-02-11
Earth Orbit

1 recommendation

Krisnatharok to El Quintron

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to El Quintron
I just uninstall from programs list, nothing fancy.

El Quintron
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join:2008-04-28
Tronna

El Quintron to ekster

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to ekster
said by ekster:

Otherwise you're looking at third party software like Display Driver Uninstaller if you want to nuke every single file, folder and registry key. But I wouldn't go that far unless you're getting some weird and rare errors.

OK so it should be fairly straightforward then... the only reason I'm asking is because my machines have either had an Nvidia, or an AMD card in them and I've never swapped them, during the life of the machine.

EQ

Ghastlyone
Premium Member
join:2009-01-07
Nashville, TN

1 recommendation

Ghastlyone

Premium Member

There will more than likely still be an Nvidia folder or two with some crap still left in it, even after uninstalling from your programs list.

I'd just manually deleted those.

El Quintron
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El Quintron

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said by Ghastlyone:

There will more than likely still be an Nvidia folder or two with some crap still left in it, even after uninstalling from your programs list.

Noted, I'm assuming these folders will be easy enough to find?

Krisnatharok
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Earth Orbit

Krisnatharok

Premium Member

Usually under Program Files or the base layer of your C drive.
me1212
join:2008-11-20
Lees Summit, MO

1 recommendation

me1212 to El Quintron

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to El Quintron
Sapphire and gigabyte are generally considered the best for amd cards.

I've switched from nvida to amd mid build before, never had a problem. Just run the uninstaller and it was good.

El Quintron
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El Quintron to Krisnatharok

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to Krisnatharok
said by Krisnatharok:


Usually under Program Files or the base layer of your C drive.

Good to know, I'm going to do my best in order to avoid a re-install, and that sounds like a pretty rational place for it to be.
El Quintron

El Quintron to me1212

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to me1212
said by me1212:

I've switched from nvida to amd mid build before, never had a problem. Just run the uninstaller and it was good.

OK good to know, the prices on the 290x just dropped by ~$200 at both of the major Canadian enthusiast stores, so I might pick one up for myself too.

EQ

Moos
Tequilablob
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join:2008-12-11
Salt Lake City, UT

2 recommendations

Moos

Premium Member

+1 for sapphire. The tri-x is supposed to have amazing cooling for aftermarket 290x's. If u have any driver problems after uninstall you can use this to completely get rid of them. »www.wagnardmobile.com/DDU/

El Quintron
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El Quintron

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Thanks for the link, I'll look it up if I have any problems, in my case I'd most likely just nuke and re-install both Manjaro and Windows as "spring cleaning" but my wife will definitely want to keep both Windows and Ubuntu as is, so that link is going to be super useful for Windows, but Ubuntu I think I can "apt-get purge" it out.

Funny you mention the Tri-X that the card I'm looking at for both me and my wife.

EQ

Mentat
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join:2001-02-25
Houston, TX

Mentat to El Quintron

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The XFX is fucking beautiful.
»www.xfxforce.com/en-us/p ··· 90x-edbd

El Quintron
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El Quintron

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said by Mentat:

The XFX is fucking beautiful.
»www.xfxforce.com/en-us/p ··· 90x-edbd

That's a nice card.

Something I just noticed, most of the AMD cards are now shipping with 4GB of RAM, is this a change or did the R9s always ship with this much?

Ghastlyone
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join:2009-01-07
Nashville, TN

Ghastlyone

Premium Member

said by El Quintron:

said by Mentat:

The XFX is fucking beautiful.
»www.xfxforce.com/en-us/p ··· 90x-edbd

That's a nice card.

Something I just noticed, most of the AMD cards are now shipping with 4GB of RAM, is this a change or did the R9s always ship with this much?

They always did.

El Quintron
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El Quintron

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said by Ghastlyone:

They always did.

Nvidia should have taken the hint by now.

Krisnatharok
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Krisnatharok to Mentat

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Just... no. XFX is a crap brand that makes design changes without changing model numbers or notifying customers. Tigerlord has documented as much.
Krisnatharok

Krisnatharok to El Quintron

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to El Quintron
said by El Quintron:

said by Mentat:

The XFX is fucking beautiful.
»www.xfxforce.com/en-us/p ··· 90x-edbd

That's a nice card.

Something I just noticed, most of the AMD cards are now shipping with 4GB of RAM, is this a change or did the R9s always ship with this much?

That's the R9 290 and R9 290X. The 280X aka 7970 has 3 GB ram.
me1212
join:2008-11-20
Lees Summit, MO

me1212 to El Quintron

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to El Quintron
The 290/x always had 4GB, the 280/x had 3 even back when the 280/x was the 7950/7970. Nvidia is always behind on the vram front, for some reason.

El Quintron
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El Quintron to Krisnatharok

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to Krisnatharok
said by Krisnatharok:

That's the R9 290 and R9 290X. The 280X aka 7970 has 3 GB ram.

That makes sense.
El Quintron

El Quintron to me1212

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to me1212
said by me1212:

Nvidia is always behind on the vram front, for some reason.

I've yet to find a good reason for this, other than price, that's definitely a good reason to go over to AMD, at least for a GPU.
El Quintron

El Quintron to Krisnatharok

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to Krisnatharok
said by Krisnatharok:

XFX is a crap brand that makes design changes without changing model numbers or notifying customers. Tigerlord has documented as much.

I haven't bought anything by XFX but that's certainly worth mentioning to a prospective buyer. With Nvidia I've always bought EVGA and they're a solid manufacturer, MSI has also been good to me (despite that GPU mining clusterfuck you mentioned a while back), but I'm not as familiar with AMD GPU manufacturers as I am with Nvidia, so far seems like Sapphire is the way to go.

EQ

Mentat
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Houston, TX

Mentat to Krisnatharok

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to Krisnatharok
said by Krisnatharok:

Just... no. XFX is a crap brand that makes design changes without changing model numbers or notifying customers. Tigerlord has documented as much.

Perhaps they have. $390 for a well-reviewed 290 is a good reason to give them another look imo.

Moos
Tequilablob
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join:2008-12-11
Salt Lake City, UT

Moos

Premium Member

I own an XFX 290. I had to fix some sloppy solder work from the factory. It's worked fine since then. Most people probably would have RMA'd it (and I should of too but I'm impatient and did not want to wait). I also own 2 sapphire 290's and I have never had a problem with either of them. I would rank XFX near the bottom of my list in regards to manufacturers. Sapphire, Gigabyte, MSI, Asus, and Power Color are better than XFX imo.

Mentat
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Houston, TX

Mentat

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XFX has a lifetime warranty if you register the product within 30 days of purchase. I would have RMA'd it in a heartbeat.

El Quintron
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El Quintron

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said by Mentat:


XFX has a lifetime warranty if you register the product within 30 days of purchase.

I hadn't taken that into consideration, I didn't really know about it until now.

It add value to the card.

Krisnatharok
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Earth Orbit

Krisnatharok to Mentat

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to Mentat
said by Mentat:

XFX has a lifetime warranty if you register the product within 30 days of purchase. I would have RMA'd it in a heartbeat.

If you successfully navigate the RMA process and actually get a replacement. Lifetime = as long as it is current gen.
kcrupp
join:2002-02-11
Allen Park, MI

kcrupp to Mentat

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to Mentat
said by Mentat:

Perhaps they have. $390 for a well-reviewed 290 is a good reason to give them another look imo.

I just bought a XFX R9 290 two weeks ago to replace my XFX 6870 that was 3 years old. I never had a problem with the old card and haven't had a problem with the new. I paid $390.00 with a $30 rebate so hopefully it will only cost me $360