Acoustics
The acoustic performance of a graphics card is an increasingly important consideration for PC users and Gamers these days. While fan noise is unlikely to ruin the gaming experience, no one likes a noisy graphics card and no one will argue with the fact that quieter is better. Many users are willing to sacrifice temperatures to gain a noise advantage, but with better cooling solutions being developed it is increasingly common to be able to get both better cooling and better acoustic performance than a reference solution on most custom cooled graphics cards from Nvidia and AMD partners. That said both AMD and Nvidia have stepped up their game too with regards to acoustics on their reference coolers. Ultimately, acoustics will always be a big deciding factor when there is often very little differentiation between graphics cards using the same GPUs.
Find details of our acoustic methodology on page 3.
How’s this for coincidence, I was building a machine for a customer earlier this week who requested a R9 290X/R9 290 GFX. I advised him prices were all over the place but I’d try get him the best deal I could. After making a few calls I managed to procure the exact same model you tested here. After slapping my markup on it, the card cost him roughly GBP 350 (according to my crude exchange rate calculations). A fair deal in my book.
Makes me a bit sad that you got it for over £100 less even with an extra mark-up. <3 UK pricing!
It’s the luck of the draw. Powercolor, Asus & Sapphire cost as much as 1.5X more at the moment. Gigabyte’s price will stay constant while stocks last but who knows how long that’ll be.
Can you please tell your settings for mining with cgminer? i can only get 840khash out of the card.
anything higher than 925 core clock decreases hashing power. thanks.
-I 20 -g 1 -w 256 –thread-concurrency 35960, results will vary by system but I find higher thread concurrency gives better results.