Noise Levels
The noise levels produced by 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. For more details on our acoustic testing procedures please see the test systems and procedures page.
It’s a really nice looking cooler. I see it has Xfire connectors, I thought AMD cards ‘Xfired’ through the PCIe slots nowadays. Boy it just goes to show how out of the loop I am as far as AMD goes. I think the last AMD GFX card I tested was a HD 5770.
Just to think I Recently built an AMD machine with a single R9 290X and never even noticed if it had Xfire connectors or not.
That would the Hybrid CrossFire feature. This was limited to the new GPUs AFAIK which means the R9 290X and R9 290 and R9 295X2 if that comes out. I think all the old rebranded GPUs still need a physical connector.
Edit: I believe it is called DMA not Hybrid CFX, no idea why I said that. Get confused easily
Thanks for clearing that up. Apart from building the odd AMD machine, I really don’t have much to do with them.
I want to replace my R9 270 with this thing because of fascist game developer companies pushing horribly optimized games off as demanding graphical accomplishments (like a creed unity) When they do not look any better than games from 2010! So I want a card with at’least 3GB to run 1080p. And I thought since this model if the 280 is priced very well and has a decent power upgrade from my 270, That it would be great. But for some reason this thing is almost a foot long! WTH? It is not a R9 290! It does not need a cooler this dam long! I am going to have to remove my HDD cage and shorten it just to make it fit!
I purchased one of these for $159 after rebate on newegg(I’ve seen them get down to 149) and must be honest – WOW, this card has got to be the price to performance champion! I just sold my watercooled/overclocked gigabyte r9 290x oc edition to put some money toward the new 390 and wanted something cheap to hold me over for the spring/summer. This card has performed beyond my expectations. 1150mhz core/1400 memory without any voltage added, and it easily hits the 1200mhz board max with stability. It cools well even in my terribly confined case, but most importantly it games at 1080 like a champ.