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R9 290X vs RX580
SplitStream13
Member UncommonPosts: 250
in Hardware
I've been thinking for upgrade for awhile now because my 290X seems to be on its last legs (plus its very power hungry card) and I've been looking into decent GPUs that aren't Vega (because they have the same issues 290X has) and I keep reading that the RX5xx series are nice GPUs all things considered.
Now I know a lot of you will tell me to just go ahead and get an nvidia GPU, but I sort of bought a 144hz screen with AMD's FreeSync flavor so going green is out of the question as I'll probably need to get another monitor for this one. (And as a proud 3800 SR Overwatch player, I ain't going back to 60Hz, no way in hell)
However what stops me is that ... performance-wise the 580 seems to be literally the same as 290X just with the boon of minimized TDP. Am I wrong in this assessment or the 290X is still more performant than the RX 580?
So basically what I'm asking is if it is worth it or I should stick with my 290X until something better arrives or it melts down completely?
P.S: 1080p gamer here
Now I know a lot of you will tell me to just go ahead and get an nvidia GPU, but I sort of bought a 144hz screen with AMD's FreeSync flavor so going green is out of the question as I'll probably need to get another monitor for this one. (And as a proud 3800 SR Overwatch player, I ain't going back to 60Hz, no way in hell)
However what stops me is that ... performance-wise the 580 seems to be literally the same as 290X just with the boon of minimized TDP. Am I wrong in this assessment or the 290X is still more performant than the RX 580?
So basically what I'm asking is if it is worth it or I should stick with my 290X until something better arrives or it melts down completely?
P.S: 1080p gamer here
Comments
If you want to upgrade now, you should look at GTX 1080. That would give you nearly double your current performance, and you can use it with your current monitor just fine. FreeSync is optional extra and if you get NVidia's GPU the monitor will work just fine with FreeSync turned off.
FreeSync is nice to have if you can get AMD's GPU that you're happy with, but if you want to upgrade now you shouldn't start waiting because you might have to wait more than a year for AMD to release their next consumer GPUs.
Though with that said, your current GPU should be more than good enough for 1080 gaming.
Pick up a 1080 while they are on fire sale right now, or wait.
Vega is a good option, “hot and loud” is more a function of the specific AIB, not necessarily an entire generation of chips. Prices are finally coming down to sanity on those.
That being said, AMD did imply they may have something new if not by the end of this year, then early next year.
Now, you can always wait for the next thing, and be waiting forever. Given the performance level of your existing card and the fact that it works, this isn’t an urgent thing it seems.
One upgrade option is to go Nvidia, as others have said. That might not be the best idea with a 144 Hz monitor, however, as that will prevent an Nvidia GPU from clocking down at idle. I've got a Vega 64 with three 144 Hz monitors, and it will go all the way down to 26 MHz when truly idle at the desktop.
Another would be to go with a Vega 56, which you can now get for $400:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131740
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202318
That will be a lot faster than your current card, while also using considerably less power. Part of the reason why Vega can be a power hog is that AMD clocked it pretty aggressively by default. But you don't have to stay with those aggressive clock speeds.
Vega also has three tricks up its sleeve that your Hawaii GPU doesn't:
1) Radeon Chill will monitor GPU usage and throttle back clock speeds and voltages when you're not pushing the card that hard. That includes light gaming. If it sees that you can get 144 frames per second with a clock speed far below the nominal stock speed, it will bring the clock speed and voltage down for you automatically and without noticeably affecting performance.
2) Radeon WattMan makes it easy to move the maximum clock speeds up or down from the default. If you set a maximum clock speed well below the default maximum, it can automatically adjust voltages downward for you, too, and be a pretty efficient GPU. Obviously, reducing the clock speed lowers performance, too, but you might be able to make it roughly match a GTX 1070's load power consumption and price tag, while still offering FreeSync support and clocking down properly at idle.
3) Vega uses HBM2, which doesn't use very much power. AMD said that the memory controllers alone in Hawaii used more than 30 W. They said four stacks of HBM in Fiji used just over 10 W. I'd bet on two stacks of HBM2 in Vega 10 on a 14 nm process node as being much less than 10 W. While Vega isn't that willing to throttle back memory clock speeds, if it's using under 10 W when going all out, throttling that back doesn't particularly matter anyway.
Another option is to wait for 7 nm. AMD has promised to launch a big Vega on 7 nm this year. It's not clear whether there will ever be Radeon cards based on that GPU, but once you can do a big die on 7 nm, it's easy to do smaller dies, too. That will offer huge energy savings, and I'd bet on a lot of 7 nm GPUs being available within a year.
But thanks for letting me know that RX580 is similar performance, I suppose I'll look into current offerings. Not really interested with what nvidia is selling with RTX either. I play some of my games on lowest settings just so I can minimize the input lag so I'm not really after graphics all that much, but in other games like Assassin's Creed or Witcher where I just want to chill I do enjoy eyecandy here and there.
And damn it, FreeSync is really fucking nice when I can't maintain 144fps in those games that I want eyecandy at. I will truly miss it if I go green.
P.S: I've never modded a GPU to install aftermarket cooler, outside of water cooling, are there any other alternatives? I'm a bit ~~~ about water cooling since it needs maintenance and I don't think I'm qualified enough to provide it c.c
If you're very conscious about heat and noise, then RX 580 uses about 50% more power compared to GTX 1060. But as long as you get a card with good cooling that's much more important than the amount of power used.
Remember to look for reviews that do measurements on heat and noise of that specific model before buying. If there are no reviews for that model then it's a cheaper model that doesn't have as good cooler.
Buy 2 Arctic F9 PWM fans, a bag of zip-ties, one 4-pin pwm splitter and an extender (or if u you have enough room to plug fans on your motherboard skip a splitter or extender).
Remove the plastic shroud and the fan, zip-tie the 2 92mm fans to the heatsink, and maybe the one closer to where the original fan was to sit a bit over the heatsink.
And you've solved all of your problems.
In the case that you can't find the splitters and extenders, nor a cheap fan controller instead, you can get non PWM versions which you should able to plug into your motherboard 3 PIN spots near the gpu, and then control speed if needed from bios.
Though i still recommend PWM version, and a splitter+extender or fan controller.
heck you could say those fans are $6, because there is a 5 pack fan sale going on for $30 for 10 years now for those all over the world.
I don't mean to be offensive, it's just, albeit it being loud, it did work fine for the past 5 years and suddenly it isn't.
EDIT: I've never removed the radiator as I don't know what they use on GPUs other than thermal pads. Do they use thermal paste like the ones we put on CPUs?
Under the GPU chip itself, normal thermal paste is used, you definitely need to replace this no mater what else you decide to do.
Under the vrm's there are thermal pads, but they will be fine with the current ones (if you're careful enough when removing the whole heatsink(radiator), some of the old should stay "whole" and in place, and you can just put the old back on when you're putting everything back together).
Your main problem is the the thermal paste under the chip itself needs to be replaced. Your 2nd most important problem is that little fan is shit, and all similar blower solutions produce high temperatures.
Putting 2 proper fans is gonna do wonders for temperatures ( they will properly cool the card even if you put it back together without pads (no reason not to buy some thermal pads in the process if you find them and want to go the extra mile).
What you could do for starters is get a decent thermal paste that's not too expensive and remove everything clean the old paste of the gpu chip with isopropyl alcohol on toilet paper or coffee filters or cotton swabs, and place new paste on, google how much, a small pea-ammount is ok.
This way you can test the temperatures without buying the fans, and if u do decide to do my idea, you don't have to remove the whole heatsink(radiator) again, just the plastic part and the fan itself.
You can tell me what shop you use to buy stuff, i can recommend you a good price-to-performance thermal paste ?
This was what popped up on Amazon, for example:
https://smile.amazon.com/EVGA-GeForce-Clocked-Graphic-06G-P4-4995-KR/dp/B00YDAYOK0/ref=mp_s_a_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1537974173&sr=8-7&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=980+ti&dpPl=1&dpID=41h4P9P2O3L&ref=plSrch
Compare with similar items shows the same story - almost $700 for a Ti, and over $500 for the plain 980.
Polaris is on somewhat of a firesale now - can find RX580s under $200 lately. Pascal has at least come down to MSRP levels but with the RTX SNAFU haven’t really dipped like you would typically see.
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/thermal-paste-comparison,5108-4.html
Thermal paste doesn't differ between CPU, GPU, or for that matter, any type of electronic heat sink. There's nothing magical about it - it's just there to fill in for microscopic gaps between the metal surfaces, so heat can transfer better. I've used toothpaste before on a dare, and it worked almost as well as the $15/application high end CPU stuff.
Since it's just filling microscopic gaps - less is better than more, you want the absolute minimum amount required to cover the entire surface. I always likened it to melted butter over toast, not peanut butter on PB&J.
The biggest danger in thermal paste isn't which paste you choose (it does matter, it's just not nearly as important as you'd think), it much more dependent on in how it's applied. As you found out - there's definitely wrong ways to do it. But if you do it correctly, you can get away with some pretty ridiculous material on the low end and it will still work out fine.
I bet your 290X has some life left in it now. Good to hear.
The problem with using too much is that the aluminum and copper in the heatsink have about 100 times the thermal conductivity of thermal paste. If you have to conduct heat through a thick layer of thermal paste, that's not going to work very well, as it insulates the heat too well. You want just enough thermal paste to get rid of most of the pockets of air, and no more.
If one thermal paste has twice the conductivity of another, that barely matters. The factor of 100 in both directions (as compared to air and as compared to aluminum/copper) is the big thing. Change it to a factor of 50 and you've barely made a dent, which is why I've been so careless with rounding here (e.g., copper has nearly double the conductivity of aluminum, so they can't simultaneously be exactly 100 times the conductivity of a particular thermal paste).
Even some ordinary household substances such as mayonnaise do a fine job of filling the air with something that conducts heat a lot better than air over the very short term. The reason to pay for thermal paste is so that you can have something that will last for years through many thousands of heating and cooling cycles without rotting, becoming rancid, or otherwise decomposing, and without damaging the heatspreader or heatsink. Longevity is the hard part of thermal paste, not conductivity.
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
EDIT: This one https://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/powercolor_r9_290x_oc/2.htm