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OCZ Vertex 3 Preview: Faster and Cheaper than the Vertex 3 Proby Anand Lal Shimpi on 2/24/2011 9:02 AM EST
85 Comments
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Cow86 - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkThis is likely going into my next build ^^ Which is a few months off still, so hopefully the prices will be somewhat favourable by then.... Reply
vol7ron - Friday, February 25, 2011 - linklet me guess... waiting for z68? :) Reply
Rasterman - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkWhich of the benchmarks relate to loading windows and loading programs and games or levels in games? It would be nice to see how these compare, my guess is its not worth it to upgrade from a Crucial Real SSD C300 256GB to a Vertex 3 256GB as the perceived difference is going to be negligible?
Some real world tests would be nice:
fresh load of windows 7
start windows 7 from hibernation
starting major games
loading levels in major games
starting major programs (photoshop, visual studio, windows media player, itunes, outlook) Reply
ImSpartacus - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkWell, if you do upgrade from that C300, I would happily take it off your hands.
I figure that old hardware is only worth, ohhhh, $100? Yeah, that's about right.
So, what do you say? Reply
Figaro56 - Friday, February 25, 2011 - linkThe Crucial C300 256GB drive for $100? Dream on!
You can buy one brand new today for $420 shipped at amazon.com. You under estimate the C300, it's still a valid product and $100 is just a ridiculous comment. Reply
vol7ron - Friday, February 25, 2011 - linkbrand new != used
with a used drive, you've already cut into warranty and you've reduced its lifespan (as negligible a point as it may be). Reply
Figaro56 - Friday, February 25, 2011 - linkThen you had better buy a new one then. No one is going to sell their originally priced $600 Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB SSD for $100, especially after this review.
There is a margin of real world performance improvement with the Vertex 3 true, but certainly not so superior over the C300 as to make someone crazy enough to sell an 8 month old $600 SSD for $100 as it's "obviously" not obsolete it's just 2nd best. That's just retarded.
These SSD drives have an incredible life span so cutting into the life span over 8 months of use is nebulous. The warranty is only there for warm fuzzies, if it works it works. Reply
jimhsu - Friday, February 25, 2011 - linkI suppose IM's response is a joke considering the OP's question of whether an ultra-fast drive is faster than the super-fast drive that he already has.
(For the record, I bought the C300 256GB for $400 in newegg's awesome 20% off sale). Reply
vol7ron - Friday, February 25, 2011 - linkI took it as a joke too, but still you're not going to get top dollar if you're selling a used device. A person would rather go get a refurb.
Also, didn't the C300 have many problems that crept up? Not saying it hasn't been solved and the problems weren't rare, but I though a few weeks after Anand got their version, it died - and a few others died as well (betas and productions). For whatever reason, I decided to stay away from Crucial for that reason; not permanently, but in the short run.
I'm more curious to see with what Intel has to offer. Even if they don't introduce a compression algorithm, I like their wear-leveling better - it should require less additional spare NAND and be cheaper in general. And, of course, I like to see how Vertex 3 fares with TRIM as it approaches the capacity limit. Reply
Figaro56 - Tuesday, March 01, 2011 - linkThe infamous firmware issue of the Crucial drive was solved, I've never had a problem. This C300 is a very fast SSD and I'm more than happy with it. When an SSD comes along that is actually twice as fast in every bench mark as my C300 256GB SSD then I might feel as though it's obsolete, but we're not there yet. Reply
Figaro56 - Tuesday, March 01, 2011 - linkExcuse me, but I'm confused. Why would a person rather get a refurb? For the warranty?
What do you think a refurb part is any way? It's someone's used part that is not only used, but it also had a mfg defect. Are you kidding me?! Reply
Figaro56 - Tuesday, March 01, 2011 - linkIf you think a refurb in some way has more value go for it. I have never had a problem buying used from someone, just stay away from bad used parts venues like Ebay or Craigslist. Reply
Figaro56 - Tuesday, March 01, 2011 - linkI got my C300 256GB as an early adopter when they finally fixed their infamous firmware issue. That's cost you pay for being an "early adopter enthusiast." Reply
zebrax2 - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkGames i believe are sequential in nature Reply
sticks435 - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkThis is correct. They are sequential reads. I really wish they Anand would have shown the PC Vantage gaming scores. Hopefully the full review will them them, along with the test bench 2010 on the Sandy bridge platform, since the new bench is only 2 workloads and gaming is a very specific type of workload. Reply
B3an - Friday, February 25, 2011 - linkI'd also like to see more real world and basic tests. Normal everyday things. As mentioned, Win7 start times, Photoshop tests, game loading times and so on... Reply
Figaro56 - Friday, February 25, 2011 - linkI own a Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB myself. After reading this review I have come to the same conclusion. Yes there is a margin of performance improvement with the Vertex 3, but not so great as to make you crazy enough to sell your C300 for $100 and jump on the OCZ Vertex 3 test group. I would wait awhile to see how this Vertex 3 with it's questionable new 25nm NAND holds up in the real world. I was never a fan of their new idea of data compression from the get go either. I still view this as a grand experiment at our expense. It's smart to stick with what works even if next month it will be come 2nd best. Reply
Figaro56 - Friday, February 25, 2011 - linkSee my post below dated Friday, February 25, 2011, it was intended as a reply to your post. I don't know why it didn't stack in here as a reply. Reply
Figaro56 - Friday, February 25, 2011 - linkRE: What about load times? by Figaro56 on Friday, February 25, 2011
I own a Crucial RealSSD C300 256GB myself. After reading this review I have come to the same conclusion. Yes there is a margin of performance improvement with the Vertex 3, but not so great as to make you crazy enough to sell your C300 for $100 and jump on the OCZ Vertex 3 test group. I would wait awhile to see how this Vertex 3 with it's questionable new 25nm NAND holds up in the real world. I was never a fan of their new idea of data compression from the get go either. I still view this as a grand experiment at our expense. It's smart to stick with what works even if next month it will be come 2nd best. Reply
jimhsu - Friday, February 25, 2011 - linkActually with the whole OCZ mess, questionable firmware policies, and completely unknown lifespan or reliability, I'm not sure I even want to buy the Vertex 3 at half its current price, despite the performance figures here. In this case I think the C300 is actually worth more -- at least the drive has been mostly debugged and the firmware vetted, unlike this. Reply
Mr Perfect - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkI hate to bring this up here, but this should be addressed and you seem to have a direct line to the OCZ CEO(all be it in sticky notes). Can AT look into the fiasco where OCZ shipped 8 channel 25nm Vertex 2 drives bearing the exact same name and model number as the origonal 16 channel 34nm drives, and then when customers noticed the difference decided to charge people an upgrade fee to get a 16 channel drive? True, OCX later relented after a negative backlash and gave people free exchanges for a 16 channel drive, but I can't think of a faster way to burn through customer good will then a bait and switch stunt like that. What happened?
http://www.storagereview.com/ssds_shifting_25nm_na... Reply
FunBunny2 - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkYeah. AT *seems* to be easier on OCZ than storagereview. I can't speak for their quality overall as I've only read up on what they had to say about this OCZ Vertex nonsense. I'm not going to abandon AT. Yet, anyway. Reply
semo - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkIt wasn't always the case. When Anand exposed jmicron's awfulness to the world, OCZ's CEO wasn't happy at all (the surprising thing is Anand actually mentioning this back then).
The two things that surprise me the most are:
1. Why didn't Anandtech as a whole report on 25nm drives. AFAIK OCZ were the first with commercial 25nm drives. Now if a commercial x86 CPU was about to be released in the next 6 months, AT would be all over that story...
2. A lot of time has passed, and there is still no coverage on OCZ's dishonest practices. If a decent site (like AT) covered these drives early enough, a lot less people would have fallen in OCZ's trap.
Anand did mention in his previous article that he would look in to the issue.
I've seen the discussion and based on what I've seen it sounds like very poor decision making on OCZ's behalf. Unfortunately my 25nm drive didn't arrive before I left for MWC. I hope to have it by the time I get back next week and I'll run through the gamut of tests, updating as necessary. I also plan on speaking with OCZ about this. Let me get back to the office and I'll begin working on it
As far as old Vertex 2 numbers go, I didn't actually use a Vertex 2 here (I don't believe any older numbers snuck in here). The Corsair Force F120 is the SF-1200 representative of choice in this test.
Take care,
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4159/ocz-vertex-3-pr... Reply
semo - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link"Now if a commercial x86 CPU" should have been "Now if a commercial 14nm x86 CPU". Usually new tech in the CPU, GPU and now SoC segments gets covered quite early and thoroughly. Somehow the 25nm Vertex 2 flew under the radar it seems... Reply
Anand Lal Shimpi - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkI've been working with OCZ behind the scenes on this. I've been tied up with the reviews you've seen this week (as well as some stuff coming next week) and haven't been able to snag a few 25nm drives for benchmarking. Needless to say I will make sure that the situation is rectified. I've already been speaking with OCZ's CEO on it for the past week :)
Take care,
Anand Reply
lyeoh - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkHi Anand,
Is it possible to do average and max latency measurements on the drive access (read/write) while under various loads (sequential, random, low queue depth, high queue depth)?
I'm thinking that for desktop use once a drive gets really fast, the max latency (and how often it occurs) would affect the user experience more.
A drive with 0.01 millisecond access but 500ms spikes every 5 secs under load might provide a worse user experience than a drive with a constant 0.1 millisecond access even though the former averages at about 80000 accesses per second while the latter only achieves 10000. Of course it does depend on what is delayed for 500ms. If it's just a bulk sequential transfer it might not matter, but if it delays the opening of a directory or small file it might matter.
This might also be important for some server use. Reply
jimhsu - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkThis is needed -- however there are a lot of technical problems when trying to assess max latency. One of those is reproducibility -- if the drive has a latency of 0.01ms, but a max of 250ms, how reliable is that data point? What if something just happens to be writing to the drive while you make that measurement? (This can easily be seen by trying to do 4K reads when doing a sequential write larger than the DRAM cache of the SSD, such as the Intel G2 drives). From my personal observations, website to website reproducibility of maximum latencies, as well as minimum frame rates in reviews, is extremely poor.
Which is unfortunate, because they can impact user experience so heavily. Aside from strict laboratory-controlled conditions and testing with specialized equipment, I find it hard to conjecture how to do this. Reply
semo - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link"haven't been able to snag a few 25nm drives"
So OCZ are sending you Vertex drives for testing so early that they don't even have housing and you're stuggling to get a hold of drives that have been sold to consumers for the past month or two?
How come you have V3 drives months before their release date and AT does not yet even have a news article on the 25nm V2s?
I'm sorry Anand but this will be the 1st SSD article you've written that I will not be reading. This is in protest to OCZ's handling of this CONSUMER RIGHTS issue. I'm not protesting against AT but OCZ's propaganda which unfortunately is channeled through my No 1 favourite site.
Ryan Petersen, you know where to stick it. Reply
seapeople - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkYeah, I can't imagine why OCZ isn't knocking Anand's door down with review samples of 25nm SSD drives after that big customer snafu with their 25nm drives. I mean, they should be eager to have all the publicity on that issue as possible, right?
And then why on earth would they rather send their newest, fastest SSD drives to a review site right now? They must know that Anand is probably busy reviewing the other SSD drives that are about to come out, so why would they bother him with their new stuff? Reply
beginner99 - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkThat's why I would just go with Intel. I know what you pay for. No custom firmwares and other funky stuff. Reply
FunBunny2 - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkWell, no custom firmware, just a custom controller. Intel had the first really good pro-sumer controller. Likely still does. Reply
bhougha10 - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkAnand,
can you give us an idea when the intel G3 will be comming out so we have an idea wait the field looks like here. Intel seems to keep this stuff very secret :( Reply
mckirkus - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link510 Series from Intel launching March 1 if you believe the rumors. Sata 6Gb/s but using 34nm flash. Just over $2/GB. Seems like it has low IOPS compared to other SSDs but real world performance is TBD.
I'd bet a dollar Anand is working on a review of one right now. I'm using a 1st gen Sandforce drive and it's so damn fast I'm not sure I'll ever need to upgrade the thing. Reply
iwod - Friday, February 25, 2011 - linkNot a Rumors, someone from Taiwan already has their hands on it.
It uses an Marvel Chipset.
At this moment we are still not sure if 510 series means G3. Reply
JonnyBlaze - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkNot a bad idea. Reply
lorteti - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkHi Anand,
How about a power consumption test.
For those that want to use the Vertex3 in a notebook.
jx Reply
JFish222 - Sunday, February 27, 2011 - linkHi Anand,
I'd like to second this request.
I'd love to throw one of these into my laptop, but I'm always looking to balance performance with battery life (the old T61 is getting long in the tooth and an SSD sounds like a perfect upgrade!)
All of the recommendations to add SSD's to "netbook class units" (atom and Brazos) adds to this conversation. Though netbooks are popular due to their low price, their portability and battery life (which one could argue are one and the same) are also selling points.
Thanks again for the great review, and I'm looking forward to your future investigations into the OCZ debacle. Journalism has always been about both informing and inciting change. Anandtech remains the only site on the net that I've found that has the reach to do both.
Thanks again,
Jordan Reply
MarcHFR - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkDear all, Dear Anand,
I think it's important to note that AnandTech Storage Bench, like PC Mark Vantage HDD, represent a "best case" for SandForce based SSD.
These benchmarks are based on logs which have recorded accesses to be repeated, but not the data contained in these accesses. These means that the data used in the benchmark may well be highly compressible, which isn't necessarily the case in real usage.
Am i wrong ? Reply
Chloiber - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkI wanted to ask the same thing in the Vertex 3 Pro test. Would be nice to have an answer here. I don't think that the data is random. Reply
jwilliams4200 - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkI've also wondered about that. Does the 2011 Storage Bench that writes 100+ GB of data have a 100+ GB data file? If so, how much does that data file compress when run through a zip or 7zip compression program?
If not, if the data file is much smaller than 100 GB, then exactly what is being written to the drives? Reply
j.harper12 - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkI'm just happy that this far along, my Agility 2 is still holding up well. Thanks for all of the great reviews! Reply
Dug - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkAnand,
Could you please run the Anandtech Storage Bench 2011 with 1 standard hard drive, even if it takes forever to run? I always like to see a reference as many of us don't have SSD yet. Reply
Denithor - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkSeconded! Just run using like a Caviar Black drive so we can see how much better SSD is versus a top-of-the-line mechanical drive.
Would be appreciated! Reply
mckirkus - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkThirded. Perspective is a good thing. Reply
cactusdog - Friday, February 25, 2011 - linkFourthed, and i know a guy who wants fifthed. Reply
pandemonium - Friday, February 25, 2011 - linkWould be nice for technicalities, but you can see the comparison on the 2010 version with WD's Velociraptor. Reply
Shadowmaster625 - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkI would like to know how the 60GB version performs. Especially if they are cutting the number of chips in half vs the 256GB version. Reply
DarkKnight_Y2K - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkAccording to the press release on OCZ's website the Vertex 3 will be available in 120GB and 240GB capacities. The Vertex 3 Pro wil be available in 100GB, 200GB, & 400GB capacities.
Hopefully they will eventually release 60GB version. I would love to have two in RAID 0. Reply
Per Hansson - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkHi, has the much talked about hibernation problem with the Sandforce drives been solved in the 2xxx series?
Loosing Hibernation is pretty much a deal killer for me in a laptop :(
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&am... Reply
douglaswilliams - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkWill these faster drives speed up virus scans?
Currently, when a virus scan is running, my laptop performance is crippled. Reply
swaaye - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkIt'll depend on how fast your CPU is because it will become the bottleneck if it's not already. Reply
Mumrik - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link"Order enough controllers and you get a special firmware, otherwise you're stuck with the stock SF-2200 firmware.
(...)I do wish SandForce would just stick to a single spec and not play these sorts of games but that's just how business works unfortunately."
Is it really? I've never heard of anything similar elsewhere in the storage space. This really sounds to me like the kind of thing you should keep pushing them on Anand.... Reply
taltamir - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkso... 7 "models" which are the exact same chip with different firmware / different configuration (supercap, amount of NAND, etc)
And even within those so called "models" there is different levels of performance capping in firmware due to various exclusivity contracts which are not actually being reported or represented in the chip's name?
I am liking sandforce less and less. Reply
TGressus - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - link+1
It's even more egregious when vendors are sending the reviewers pre-release samples that may or may not represent the final retail product. Reply
taltamir - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkyou are correct, that does make it even worse. Reply
jaydee - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkInteresting read from a theoretical perspective, but it would be far more useful for your readership to have a roundup involving 60-120GB SSD's. I can find benchmarks on budget video cards, cpu's, and read reviews on budget motherboards. I do realize there are no 60-120GB Vertex 3's available, but 6-9 months after launch I still have no idea how (for instance) the Sandforce, JMicron, Samsung, Indillinx, Marvell, Intel, Toshiba 60-90GB SSD's benchmark against each other considering they all scale down differently from the 240GB models which are often reviewed.
240GB SSD's are neat, but not affordable for many. Reply
86waterpumper - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkI agree, the 128gb size seems to be the sweet spot, that is what I've decided to go with, just not sure
whether it will be the newest sandforce or the c400. I wish we could get some testing on the amd
motherboard controllers too. I know intel is more popular right now but amd is still a viable option
for many. I would think this is especially important since amd finally released a ahci driver not too
long ago, but I haven't heard much about how good it is. Reply
ol1bit - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkI can't believe the jump, Intel better be on their game or they might find themselves without a market anymore.
My Intel 80gb is old after 1.5 years! LOL Reply
seapeople - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkSell an x25m g2 for $1.5/GB and they are right back on top of the value/money game. Especially when you consider issues like reliability reputation versus these new drives. I wonder what the profit margin on these drives are... There might be a lot of leeway to drop price to capture market on these, considering their "real" competitors are HD's. Reply
boxleitnerb - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkHey Anand,
I was wondering if you're considering writing about the CPU-SSD dynamic in a future article. As I understand it, the SSDs can serve requests so fast that in some scenarios the CPU again becomes the limiting factor.
I would be especially interested in common tasks like virus scanning, gaming/application load times/installation and windows startup. I know this could be alot of work, so maybe you can pick only one or two of these tasks and analyze them with CPUs with a different number of cores and clock speeds.
What do you think about it? Reply
seapeople - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkI think the answer you are searching for is a bit more mundane than you desire. For example, when you load a map you are storage limited whether you have an SSD or not, and when you are fighting bad guys you are CPU limited whether you have a slow HD or not. Reply
vol7ron - Saturday, February 26, 2011 - linkWhile that's true, I'm not sure that's what he's referring to.
If you're ever CPU limited, it's probably not just because of an SSD, it's just the fact that you need a better CPU. Generally, CPU limitations are apparent from memory access, not due to SSDs.
I can understand what he's saying though as I'm still running a C2D and it gets to 100% during games. Not to mention, there does seems to be hang ups on Win7 64b startup, due to all the applications, widgets, and services that load; but that's less to do with the SSD and more to do with the CPU. The load time would be just as long w/o the SSD, it's just that there wouldn't be as much of a hang-up as the sluggishness would be constant.
Having more cores in this instance would certainly help. Reply
Nentor - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkFirst paragraph:
"What wasn't impressive however was the price."
There is not a word about price in the article about the V3Pro. Not even a slight indication implying a high price which made it seem affordable.
Also this:
---I asked OCZ if this meant the drive I was testing wasn't representative of final, shipping performance. OCZ stated very clearly that performance will not change between the drive I have today and the drive that goes on sale in the next 2 months.
SandForce wouldn't comment on any existing agreements and OCZ said it couldn't get SandForce to confirm that the V3's performance wouldn't change between now and its eventual release.---
What exactly does that mean? It comes down to not meaning anything at all to me. Reply
ClagMaster - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkI went half-way through this article and was frustrated with the complexity of the SandForce Controller capabilities and firmware games.
It would seem SandForce is very Intel-like in its conduct. Why cannot they have 2-3 stinking controllers setup for maximum performance without these firmware games ? The hardware is willing but the businessmen are not.
Last night I was about ready to purchase a 120GB SSD but decided this was an extravagance for my desktop for $220. I would rather have a good Western Digital Black 1.0 TB harddrive than this SSD. I get much more for my money. I still use Windows XP Home because of its efficiency and minimalist memory foot print. Are there any garbage collection utilities I can use for this still excellent OS? This is not clear from the vendor sights.
Can anyone enlighten me as to what is available for Windows XP so these SSD's continue to operate in prime form ?
I cannot believe consumers are willing to pay this kind of money so they shave off 15 to 20 seconds off boottimes. Reply
86waterpumper - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkI agree whole-heartedly with you about the frimware games...that is def. lameness.
With that being said, I don't think that ocz drives are really more expensive than other brands so I guess the solution for now is just to buy their drives instead of the competitions which is exactly what they want right? haha.
I disagree though with you about ssd not being worth it. I know they are high, but shaving 15 to 20 seconds off boot time is huge in my book. I mean that is half the time in alot of cases. That has a coolness factor to it, but the main benefit I see is being
able to multitask better, and having programs and games load faster. The boot time is just a side benefit really. Quietness and low heat and power draw are other nice features. Anyway I remember people were happy to pay the price for raptors not long ago, and they were this expensive and much less capacity than regular drives. They did not represent nearly the performance gap either. Reply
Barbaniko - Thursday, February 24, 2011 - linkAnand,
How about Garbage collection on the Vertex 3?
How would it hold up over time without access to winnows 7 trim command?
I am interested in putting two of these in a Raid 0 configuration.
Thank you. Reply
arm3n - Monday, February 28, 2011 - linkI second this request. Would love to get your take on these bad boys striped.
Armen Reply
gstrickler - Friday, February 25, 2011 - linkAnand,
I've been searching for reliable information about the AES encryption on SF based SSDs. From the information I've been able to get from the manufacturers, this is NOT TCG "OPAL" compatible FDE, it's passive encryption that does not require any BIOS support, TCM, or boot time password. If that's accurate, then it's almost useless. It doesn't protect your data if your SSD is stolen. Therefore, it is of limited value.
What that does do is protect the data from being recovered from the NAND Flash chips on a failed SSD, and executing a "erase" ATA command will change the password and make all your data, including bad blocks and reserved overallocation areas, inaccessible after the erase. Clearly, that has value to those reallocating a used drive, but that's about the extent of it's value.
There is certainly some value in that, as securely erasing the data from an SSD can be challenging because of the LBA->Flash block remapping that SSDs perform. However, if it doesn't support "OPAL" FDE, then you must fall back to software FDE and the performance penalty for software FDE on an SSD is far more significant than it is for a HDD, and effectively eliminates much of the performance benefit of an SSD.
Please check with SandForce and/or the SSD vendors and report if any of them support TCG compatible "OPAL" FDE. That information is vital to users who need to use FDE. Reply
ac2 - Friday, February 25, 2011 - link+1
The AES encryption bit sounds like one of those meaningless marketing bullet points... Reply
iwod - Friday, February 25, 2011 - linkThe Anand SSD benchmarks 2010 and 2011 are the closest we get to real life measurements.
And if those results are correct. Then our previous estimation of Seq Read Write become not important as we move faster will be incorrect. It turns out most of our time we are doing Seq Read Write. Therefore it is the Random Read Write has reach its tipping point and not providing any more Real World Improvement to users. Reply
FunBunny2 - Friday, February 25, 2011 - linkIf you're running a really relational database, then random performance is what matters. Reply
iwod - Friday, February 25, 2011 - linkYes, but 99% of Normal World Users dont run Relational DB. And those who ran the DB would properly search for faster Random I/O instead. Reply
jimhsu - Friday, February 25, 2011 - linkIt ... depends. Real world performance is really complicated:
1. You can have any combination of read or writes, sequential or random, going on at once.
2. You have both synchronous IO (this read must be done before that read) and asynchronous IO (this reads all need to be executed, but in whatever order).
3. You have other bottlenecks coming into play - CPU, memory, GPU, ...
All the basic metrics (seq read/write, random read/write) are important. As well as performance with mixed read/write workloads (this is in fact the most difficult aspect to bench). Hard drives have been around for decades, so we have well-established metrics for determining performance. Flash SSDs have been around for less than 10, and in the consumer market, less than 3 years. Reply
iwod - Friday, February 25, 2011 - linkYes Performance is Complicated. But it doesn't matter in this context. We are trying to find the bottleneck and fastest Storage Hardware within today's Applications. And the Anandtech Bechmarks, is basically just a batch script that execute common task that we do. Time and Average it as Scores.
Time and Time again i have asked why some brand controller, labeled as "crap" by most of us, continuously to perform extremely well, and in many cases even better then Sandforce on Anand Real World Benchmarks ( Read Toshiba Controller in Kingston V+ aka Apple's MBA SSD) Reply
Chaser - Friday, February 25, 2011 - linkAs SSDs become more common and second/third generations of models are starting to appear graph bars showing numerical values are beginning to got lost in haze. How would a "PC Mark Vantage score" difference of 3 points equate to an improved and noticable user experience? So while pages of "faster, higher" values might look appealing I am more lost now than anything else.
For me, I enjoy reading conclusions similar to GPU results and comparisons. Such as, "If you have a Sandforce 1200 drive upgrading to this next generation wouldn't result in much or more of a noticable change on the average desktop enthusiast or gaming computer.
iwod - Friday, February 25, 2011 - linkThe difference of 3 Points will be the same. Because it is within Margin or Error.
Read up my post about you. Reply
MamiyaOtaru - Friday, February 25, 2011 - link"prices will continue to fall"
been waiting for them to become reasonable for years now, and this gets repeated when they go up?
I'm hoping for great things from memristors Reply
Spazweasel - Monday, February 28, 2011 - linkSo here's a question. With these solid state hard drives bursting to near the maximum transfer rate of SATA3 and completely eclipsing spinning media, the Holy Grail is going to be to approach RAMdisk speed.
I'd be curious to see how a drive like this compares to, say, a 4gb RAM disk which has been formatted with the same file system. I imagine the RAMdisk driver and operating system will matter a great deal for such a baseline, but if a RAMdisk driver and config can be settled upon, this would make a very interesting comparison.
As far as I can tell, the SATA3 standard, with 6Gb/sec (little B) will saturate at about 525MB/sec (big B). DDR3/1333 will do so at 10667MB/sec. 20 times faster, right? Well... maybe. This is where file system and driver overhead will loom large. RAID will fatten up the pipe, and ultimately PCIE 2.0 16x will peak at 8192MB/sec (big B). Since PCIE 2.0/16x is close to DDR3/1333 in transfer speeds, in theory (that wonderful place where everything works), the aforementioned Holy Grail is at least in sight at the horizon.
So yeah, I'm curious about RAMdisks vs. fast SSDs in RAID. Just as an exercise. Reply
iwod - Tuesday, March 01, 2011 - linkI know this is old, but can you brief us on WHAT THE HELL HAPPEN to Intel SSD Controller?
Was it always suppose to be a Marvel Controller + Intel Firmware? Are is there REAL G3 coming soon? Reply
WintersEdge - Wednesday, March 09, 2011 - linkSo this is a preview, right? Although it's quite complete like a full review... Nevertheless, you'll do another review when the product actually comes out? Right? Or what? If so, will you add your energy use test, like you've done for SSD reviews in the past? I know it'll be very small but then again, all the differences in performance are also very small to an end user just doing ordinary tasks.
Thanks Reply
ErikO - Wednesday, March 09, 2011 - linkIt has been over two years, since I took the plunge for SSD, and on my third one, (Intel SLC), I'm loving it, as McDonalds marketing team would surely love everyone to say.
I started with that woeful OCZ SSD, (that created more noise than the Mohammad Cartoons in the world).
They sent me a second one by some way of peace offering (I wrote them from the address of a small tech site I own), but public reviews said they were just as bad. Sold on Ebay with no reserve. (almost got my money back too)
Then a year ago, my wallet allowed for a 160GB X25-M. That was -worlds- better, but still every now and then (once an hour?) my music would skip - and I recognised that as MLC behaviour. This would be the high-latency small-file-size writes then. But as an audiophile, who does actually connect his computer to his hi-fi (via a dedicated sound card of course), this meant noticable breaks in a high output system. Not cool in front of guests.
So a couple of weeks back, I bought the 64GB X25-E. This was everything I had hoped for. This is what I expected SSDs would give us from day one. The size of the disk is painful though, but I digress.
My question is...with all these much higher results out there, am I really going to perceive much of a difference in system-wide performance? Intel seems to be dropping SLC as far as I can see, and based on my experience, I don't think I can / could turn my back on SLC technology again...!
So where is all the talk of the X25-E - of recent? They are for sale everywhere, but the internet seems almost dead to their existance. Too small? Too expensive?
Even if I can be convinced into a Vertex, I will definately have to pay the high admission cost for the pro...I'd happily sacrifice some speed for consistancy of performance.
Gents, let me know what you know?
Thanks. Reply
SeattleGeek - Thursday, March 10, 2011 - linkWill the 128GB model perform the same as the 256GB model that is reviewed?
Also, do they have the same number of channels? Reply
sean.crees - Friday, March 11, 2011 - linkWhere are the benchmarks for the Vertex 2? I'd really like to see how exactly the new Vertex 3 compares to the drive it's supposed to replace. Reply
Dssguy1 - Monday, April 18, 2011 - linkBecause we know OCZ is infamous for trickery, I would like to know if you got some kind of "super juiced-up" version of the drive for review.
It would make me feel a lot better about dropping $550 (basically because I just did), if I knew that the review SSD you tested, matches what we are getting when we buy the Retail version. Reply
davele - Friday, December 30, 2011 - linkBased on what you describe I wonder if this testing is really a representative snapshot of any common use pattern.
ie: Application installs - typically this is a once off activity. Any one machine only installs a finite number of applications. (the exception being a SCOM based virtual desktop where the entire systems is installed each time a user logs on. But that is Enterprise & they are very unlikely to put SSD's in user workstations)
For Enterprise SSD benchmarks please consider profiling a SQL Server system running both normal OLTP app & a Sharepoint app.
The OLTP would give you huge numbers of 4K & 64K random writes, while the logs would give you largely a sequential write. The Sharepoint app is a heavy BLOB store, So this would give you the a random set of large sequential I/O, with much more Read than Write.
The advantage of this is you can backup the database, capture the I/O requests. Then each test is just a restore & replay of the requests. Easy, repeatable & extremely representative of Heavy I/O workload. Especially an enterprise class load. Reply


text:
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - County fairs may be best known for their large assortment of rides and attractions, but Krispy Kreme wants us all to remember that the best part of any fair experience is the food, and it has a new line of doughnuts to prove it.
The popular doughnut chain announced this week that its participating U.S. and Canada locations are releasing two new fair-inspired flavors for a limited time: Cotton Candy and Caramel Apple Cake.
According the company, the Cotton Candy doughnut is an original glazed doughnut that is dipped in blue cotton candy sugar, and the Caramel Apple doughnut features an apple-flavored cake doughnut topped with caramel icing.
Krispy Kreme said its new menu items will run from Aug. 30 through Sept. 30, and also include two drinks: the Cotton Candy Chiller and the Caramel Latte.
The Cotton Candy Chiller is a frozen drink featuring hints of raspberry and blueberry flavors, while the Caramel Latte is espresso topped with whipped cream and caramel drizzle, and can be served on ice or hot.
BrandEating.com reported that Krispy Kreme's Caramel Apple Cake doughnut will also be sold at participating grocery and convenience stores. But there is still no word on whether any deep-fried varieties are on the menu horizon.
Lovers of the starchy fried goodness of twice-dipped Twinkies and Oreos will just have to wait and see.
Distributed by LAKANA. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
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text:
Sapphire Radeon R9 290 Tri-X OC Review: Our First Custom Cooled 290by Ryan Smith on 12/24/2013 3:45 PM EST
- Posted in
- Radeon
- Sapphire
- GPUs
- Radeon 200
119 Comments
Back to Article
Gyro231995 - Tuesday, December 24, 2013 - linkI have a throbbing erection for this card. Reply
psyside1 - Tuesday, December 24, 2013 - linkNo vrm temps in the review, kinda no use to show amazing core temps if the vrm's are not measured. Reply
rf525256 - Thursday, December 26, 2013 - linksterben. Reply
blanarahul - Tuesday, December 24, 2013 - linkThose noise levels. My jaw dropped on the floor. Great job Sapphire. Really great job. No wonder AMD doesn't care about their coolers. Reply
blanarahul - Tuesday, December 24, 2013 - linkI am so surprised that I read the OCing portion again. Wow. Disposing 125 W more than 780 Ti at the exact same noise and temperature. This cooler is.... really something else. Reply
jasonelmore - Tuesday, December 24, 2013 - linkwell just look at the cooler. Its very expensive. All those pure copper heatpipes and tons of surface area aluminium. I wouldn't be surprised if this cooler sells for $80 all by it's lonesome. Reply
testbug00 - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - linkand to think how much the 780/Titan/780ti cooler costs.... Well, the cooler NVidia uses should crush this one based on price. Reply
rf525256 - Thursday, December 26, 2013 - linksterven Reply
krutou - Tuesday, December 24, 2013 - linkA non-reference cooler beating a reference cooler. This is news? Reply
yannigr - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - linkEvery custom cooler will be news thanks to AMD's reference coolers, Hawaii's performance and the price it sells. 10-15 more 290/290X models with real availability in the market and Nvidia will HAVE to drop 780Ti's price close to $550. 780 should go down to $400. Reply
psyside1 - Thursday, December 26, 2013 - linkSo no update for VRM - temps? Reply
FookDuSushi - Monday, January 06, 2014 - linkYou wish. Nvidia sucks too much dick to do that. Reply
tnypxl - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - linkNo. It's a review. Reply
psyside1 - Friday, December 27, 2013 - linkSo what if its review? Reply
yacoub35 - Thursday, December 26, 2013 - linkIt will be even quieter when one or more of the fans dies within three months of ownership, if it's anything like the Sapphire cards I've owned. Reply
tteksystems - Friday, December 27, 2013 - linkAll fans can be replaced with even better, quieter ones, as is the practice of almost every enthusiast. I would change all fans to something better or use a water cooler. Cooling does not have to be so complicated, or even sophisticated. Choosing better after-market fans and/or water cooling always solves the cooling issues and is well worth the investment. Reply
TheJian - Saturday, December 28, 2013 - linkDon't forget all of your solutions void the warranty. Most of us don't like that ;) Also if you're going to blow the warranty, why buy a more expensive card like this, just buy ref if warranty means nothing to you. The point of buying this over ref is YOU USE THESE FANS with warranty INTACT.
One more point, none of this is needed with ANY 780TI card. Just OC to max and have a nice day. No fan mods etc needed. Warranty still good. Sell the 3 AAA games if you don't want them to make up most of the difference and be happy you got a better card that probably won't have a phase2 driver in its future ;) Reply
K_Space - Sunday, December 29, 2013 - linkThat's very much anecdotal evidence; I've got Sapphire Crossfire'd HD 5870 Vapor-X alive and kicking since release day sometime ~ 2009. (I still think it's one of the most under-rated cards from the red camp)
Broadly speaking, Sapphire is very much a reputable company and their build quality is up there amongst AMD board partners. I'm sure this product will b no different. Reply
kmmatney - Friday, January 03, 2014 - linkI have a 560 GTX-Ti Hawk card, with a Twin Frzr III cooler which sounds like an airplane while gaming. I tried to adjust the fan settings to be quieter, but the temps would easily go above 100C. On a whim, I removed the fan cover exposing the heat sink, and zip-tied a quiet 120 mm fan above it. Not only is the card near silent now, but the temps are a good 20 deg cooler. So if you have the space (it will become a tri-slot card) I think any card can have good, silent cooling with this technique. Reply
LordOfTheBoired - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - linkOur frothing desire for this video card increases! Reply
ShieTar - Tuesday, December 24, 2013 - link"Curiously, the [idle] power consumption of the 290 Tri-X OC is notably lower than the reference 290."
Well, it runs about 10°C cooler, and silicone does have a negative temperature coefficient of electrical resistance. That 10°C should lead to a resistance increase of a few %, and thus to a lower current of a few %. Here's some nice article about the same phenomenon observed going from a Stock 480 to an Zotac AMP! 480:
The author over there was also initially very surprised. Apparently kids these days just don't pay attention in physics class anymore ... Reply
EarthwormJim - Tuesday, December 24, 2013 - linkIt's mainly the leakage current which decreases as temperature decreases, which can lead to the reductions in power consumption. Reply
Ryan Smith - Tuesday, December 24, 2013 - linkI had considered leakage, but that doesn't explain such a (relatively) massive difference. Hawaii is not a leaky chip, meanwhile if we take the difference at the wall to be entirely due to the GPU (after accounting for PSU efficiency), it's hard to buy that 10C of leakage alone is increasing idle power consumption by one-third. Reply
The Von Matrices - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - linkIn your 290 review you said that the release drivers had a power leak. Could this have been fixed and account for the difference? Reply
Samus - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - linkQuality vrms and circuitry optimizations will have an impact on power consumption, too. Lots of factors here... Reply
madwolfa - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - linkThis card is based on reference design. Reply
RazberyBandit - Friday, December 27, 2013 - linkAnd based does not mean an exact copy -- it means similar. Some components (caps, chokes, resistors, etc.) could be upgraded and still fill the bill for the base design. Some components could even be downgraded, yet the card would still fit the definition of "based on AMD reference design." Reply
Khenglish - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - linkYes power draw does decrease with temperature, but not because resistance drops. Resistance dropping has zero effect on power draw. Why? Because processors are all about pushing current to charge and discharge wire and gate capacitance. Lower resistance just means that happens faster.
The real reason power draw drops is due to lower leakage. Leakage current is completely unnecessary and is just wasted power.
Also an added tidbit. The reason performance increases while temperature decreases is mainly due to the wire resistance dropping, not an improvement in the transistor itself. Lower temperature decreases the number of carriers in a semiconductor but improves carrier mobility. There is a small net benefit to how much current the transistor can pass due to temperature's effect on silicon, but the main improvement is from the resistance of the copper interconnects dropping as temperature drops. Reply
Totally - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - linkResistance increases with temperature -> Power draw increases P=(I^2)*R. Reply
ShieTar - Thursday, December 26, 2013 - linkThe current isn't stabilized generally, the current is: P=U^2/R.
" Because processors are all about pushing current to charge and discharge wire and gate capacitance. Lower resistance just means that happens faster."
Basically correct, nevertheless capacitor charging happens asymptotic, and any IC optimised for speed will not wait for a "full" charge. The design baseline is probably to get the lowest charging required for operation at the highest qualified temperature. Since decreasing temperature will increase charging speed, as you pointed out, you will get to a higher charging ratio, and thus use more power.
On top of that, the GPU is not exclusively transistors. There is power electronics, there are interconnects, there are caches, and who knows what else (not me). Now when the transistors pull a little more charge due to the higher temperature, and the interconnects which deliver the current have a higher resistance, then you get additional transmission losses. And that's on top of higher leakage rates.
Of course the equation gets even more fun if you start considering the time constants of the interconnects itself, which have gotten quiet relevant since we got to 32nm structures, hence the high-K materials. Though I have honestly no clue how this contribution is linked to temperature.
But hey, here's hoping that Ryan will go and investigate the Power drop with his equipment and provide us with a full explanation. As I personally don't own a GPU which gets hot in idle (can't force the fan below 30% by software and won't stop it by hand) I cannot test idle power behavior on my own, but I can and did repeat the Furmark-Test described in the link above, and also see a power-saving of about 0.5W per °C with my GTX660. And thats based on internal power monitoring, so the mainboard/PCIe slot and the PSU should add a bit more to that:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/javq0dg75u40357/Screensh... Reply
Khenglish - Thursday, December 26, 2013 - linkYeah I simplified things some. I was just pointing out the main culprits for performance and power scaling with temperature. I think I was over most people's heads anyway so I figured more detail wasn't worth it.
Also maybe you meant to say something else, but all caches and registers are is a 4 transistor flip-flop (2 inverters in a loop), with 2 more transistors for reading and writing to that exact cell. Power electronics are just bigger FETs. Saying everything in a processor is just FETs and interconnects is very accurate. There really is nothing else. Reply
Arbie - Friday, December 27, 2013 - linkBut they do probably learn that ICs aren't built on silicone. Reply
Godigy - Tuesday, December 24, 2013 - linkGreat review, Ryan, but could you please update this review with VRM temps (stock idle/load, overclocked idle/load)? It'll show the temps in GPU-Z as VRM1 (the GPU/VRAM phases) and VRM2 (PLL-the trio of MOSFETS near the video connectors).
Thanks! Reply
TechFanatic - Tuesday, December 24, 2013 - linkThis is Sapphire telling all AMD fans out there that your patience shall be rewarded.
You have to remember that while Sapphire is asking for a $50 premium custom cards from other AMD partners will bring the prices down, namely the DirectCUII card from Asus which only adds $20 to the MSRP of a reference R9 290.
This card is faster, quieter, cooler, has more memory and is less expensive than the 780.
AMD have got a major winner on their hands. Reply
GPU_obsessed - Tuesday, December 24, 2013 - linkWell you won't see MSRP for r9 290 for still some time. Even so, $550 is a price I'm willing to pay over the $500 780 based on performance. But VRM Temps first ofc. Reply
Mondozai - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - linkThe problems with MSRP prices getting distorted due to the mining craze is a mostly NA-centric phenomenom. The mining craze has reached Sweden, too, the forums at even mainstream, non-tech sites are filled with threads on mining yet we see no distortion on prices here. I think it is less an issue of supply and more about the shameless aspects of American capitalism. Nevertheless, for those of us who do pay MSRP it is a good card. Still waiting for review of the DirectCU II cooler from Asus on this card. Reply
blanarahul - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - linkIf Computebase.de's reviews are to be believed, the Tri-X cards are better than their respective DirectCU2 and Windforce 3X cards. Reply
Folterknecht - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - linkComputerbase is testing INSIDE A CASE not on an open benchtable. Makes a huge difference. Reply
Azurael - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - linkLast time I checked, my computer was INSIDE A CASE too. So it seems fairly relevant..,. Reply
bigboxes - Thursday, December 26, 2013 - linkThank you. Reply
madwolfa - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - linkCheck hardocp. Reply
juhatus - Tuesday, December 24, 2013 - linkCome on, can you move to metric system please or atleast give both inches and centimetres.
<insert stupid joke about imperial system here> Reply
ws3 - Tuesday, December 24, 2013 - linkThere is nothing wrong with inches. They are perhaps just unfamiliar to you.
Just remember this fact: 1 inch = 25.4 mm exactly. For quick calculations in the head 1 inch = 2.5 cm works well. So a 12 inch card ~ 12*2.5 ~ 30cm. Reply
Senti - Tuesday, December 24, 2013 - linkThere is certainly something very wrong with inches: majority of the world uses metric system and hates your inches with a passion.
How about measurements in international units and you do calculations in the head? Reply
Drumsticks - Tuesday, December 24, 2013 - linkWell Anandtech is a US based privately owned site, so I imagine they can do what they want.
Don't get me wrong. I'm from america and I hate imperial haha, but saying they should do it to make it easier for their Europe audience is a bit silly. Also, although inhave NO proof for this, its possible that while most of the world uses metric, the majority of their audience comes from America. Reply
StevoLincolnite - Thursday, December 26, 2013 - linkIt's the internet.
Nothing is limited to a typical continents/countries borders and Anandtech serves a world-wide audience, thus by extension it should account for it's world-wide audience.
Majority of the planet uses metric.
With that in mind, my country goes by the metric system, but inches is still freely used as a form of measurement so it's no big deal. Reply
TheJian - Saturday, December 28, 2013 - linkBy that line of thinking he should be putting his site up in german , chinese, french etc...But no, he doesn't do that because it's an american site. WE SPEAK ENGLISH. If you come to here don't expect me to speak spanish just because we have people migrating from mexico. If you don't like english don't come here. If you don't like english don't read this site ;) It's not his problem people from outside the country try to read here too. Writing for everyone else would just cost more money and lower the amount or quality of news as lots of money would be going to translations etc instead of the actual news/reviews. Reply
andy o - Monday, December 30, 2013 - linkWow, I was with you for a couple of sentences there, but that quickly turned into a xenophobic and borderly racist rant. "If you don't like english don't come here"? How about if you don't like any of these http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_languages_... don't come here? Reply
wetwareinterface - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - linkthe majority of the world uses the metric system but...
the majority of the readers of this web site don't.
the majority of the buyers of this level of video card are also in the U.S.
if you want reviews using the metric system go to another web site that uses it, or just pop the number followed by "inches to cm" in google and get your result instead of commenting that the review is biased against you because of a unit of measurement used in the country the article was authored in. Reply
Mondozai - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - linkDon't get defensive. The imperial system never made sense which is why international science is all about the metric system. Nevertheless, I am not annoyed personally at Anandtech, an American site using the measurement system they themselves are accustomed too. But that doesn't mean we should have thrown an outdaded system on the trash heap, the imperial system, and done so yesterday. Sorry but it is just a retarded system even if your feelings are hurt. Reply
Drumsticks - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - linkMore or less exactly! Anandtech can do what they want but I do kind of hate our silly system of measurement. It isn't going anywhere sadly Reply
mond0 - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - linkFrom his tone, it's clear that he's not being defensive, but merely pointing out the reasons why AnandTech uses imperial measurements to a person who felt like it was Ryan's *duty* to spoon feed him metric measurements so he wouldn't have to do "calculations in the head" while the majority of the viewerbase would. Calling him "defensive" is the closest thing to "you mad bro" you can say. Reply
juhatus - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - linkSorry, I was not trying to be smart ass about this. I bet the split for readers is 50% US and 50% international. I really tried to be as neutral as I can and no I don't help calculating.
Ryan any comment? Is there any policy about standards? Reply
bigboxes - Thursday, December 26, 2013 - linkSorry. It's not 50/50. I'm sure that it's >70%, but you've got me curious as to the real numbers. Almost everything on this site is for American buyers. You get the occasional "it's only available in Europe", but usually it's US-centric. So inches it is. You can get an android conversion app if you don't want to google it. Reply
bigboxes - Thursday, December 26, 2013 - linkHA! I was wrong. US only 33.6% of traffic. D'oh! Reply
ShieTar - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - link"the majority of the buyers of this level of video card are also in the U.S."
I'm confused, how would you figure that? The European markets for consumer electronics have overtaken the North-American market in volume about a decade ago, and 2-3 years ago the combined volume of both have become smaller than the Asian market. Even with a relatively high-end card like this, I would be surprised if more than 25% of sales go to the U.S. these days.
Also, why would a majority of AT readers be American? Funny measurement units and the price comparisons aside, there is nothing on here that is specifically tailored to the US market. As the majority of tech-savy Europeans is rather fluid in English, I'm sure AT gets just as many European readers, keeping in mind the much larger overall population. Reply
TheJian - Saturday, December 28, 2013 - linkI didn't realize Europe was a country...Silly me. This is a USA site, get over it. The site is based in NC, USA last I checked and am unaware of it having any server in another country. You're more than welcome to FUND the development of a FOREIGN soil based expansion.
Does any single country buy more than your assumed 25% that goes to USA? Germany, Russia, France etc? You're counting europe as one entity and it's not. There is nothing wrong with catering to his OWN audience. If you want to read it from outside, fine. But don't expect anyone to alter their world to suit yours. It's just not this site's job. There are not many other web sites with multi language and I don't know of many USA sites using multi-language or even metric.
With US traffic being 33%, there is no other larger country coming to read this site correct? I translate chinese/german tech pages all the time. Sure I wish they'd put them up in English for me, but realize that it is cost prohibitive to do so. No point in asking as I'd rather have that cost go to reviewing more products etc. That's what translators are for anyway :) Reply
ShieTar - Monday, December 30, 2013 - linkYou seem to be a little confused about my statement. Try reading it again, and point out to me where I demanded that AT change anything? I merely pointed out some weak points in the comment of "wetwareinterface". I also did not pretend Europe was a country, merely an economic entity, which it is. I live in Europe, working for a European company, I can order products from any European shop without having to bother about any customs/tariff, I can move to and work in any other European Union country without any paperwork, etc. The different national governments at this point are merely another level of administration, but not something that seriously affects our everyday life.
More importantly though, none of that matters to my original point, which was just to point out that an estimated 25% are a far way from "the majority", as the other 75% who come from "metric system nations" would be clearly the majority. Reply
mpdugas - Thursday, December 26, 2013 - linkSince number systems are purely imaginary, what difference does how you measure an object make?
Some folks find fractions easy, some like decimals better, but they are just fractions, too.
It really just comes down to which you prefer; the object does not change, no matter which fraction system you use. Reply
xTRICKYxx - Tuesday, December 24, 2013 - linkWow, that cooler is something else. Reply
asH98 - Tuesday, December 24, 2013 - linkI find it amazing how short sighted this writer is. It is obvious to anyone building a system AMD's 290 reference card gives the builder an opportunity to choose her/his GPU options, while allowing 290 suppliers an opportunity to make a few dollars and keep prices low - if the writer cant see something so obvious should I trust his articles? - Reply
blanarahul - Tuesday, December 24, 2013 - linkPlease rewrite your thoughts using clearer sentences. Reply
blanarahul - Tuesday, December 24, 2013 - linkAnd proper punctuation. Reply
RaistlinZ - Tuesday, December 24, 2013 - linkI have absolutely no idea what point you're trying to make. Reply
Sunburn74 - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - linkI too am completely lost as to your point. Reply
asH98 - Thursday, December 26, 2013 - linkThe 290 reference card with fan allows me my choice of cooling options, or perhaps a choice of AIB solutions -this it is still cheaper relative to comparable offerings vs performance - everyone wins !!
All the bitching and moaning about noise is BS - the reference fan was always to keep prices low and allow options to builders, while AIB suppliers made a few dollars - ...!! Reply
firewall597 - Thursday, December 26, 2013 - linkI like how you automatically assume that everyone should be builders willing to take their GPU apart for aftermarket solutions. Reply
asH98 - Thursday, December 26, 2013 - link- if you're not a builder prices are still low via AIB's, and their solutions !! Reply
sparkuss - Tuesday, December 24, 2013 - linkJust a quick double check. This is a pure reference board with no new components or change in location?
I want to double confirm that I could buy this GPU now and be ready for some new Water Blocks for reference R290 when they become available (the WBs)?
Thanks Reply
Ryan Smith - Tuesday, December 24, 2013 - linkCorrect. Pure reference board with identical components and component positions, right down to the AMD logo.
http://images.anandtech.com/doci/7601/S290_TriX_PC... Reply
Godigy - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - linkNo, it follows the reference design, but Sapphire decided to put different chokes on. You'll see that Sapphire put on CEC R15 chokes, and the reference cards uses different chokes from the same brand. Reply
sparkuss - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - linkLooking at the picture they appear to be the same size though, don't they? Only a change in size or orientation should give a problem with water-blocks, I hope. Reply
ggathagan - Monday, December 30, 2013 - linkWhat's the point of buying a pricier GPU with a custom cooler if you intend on replacing the cooler with water blocks? Reply
sparkuss - Monday, December 30, 2013 - linkBasically because every time I think I'm ready to build my watercool rig, something happens and I don't follow through. But I still want to upgrade the GPU and I end up waiting too long before the reference cards are all gone. With this remaining reference I get all the benefit of the better cooling and can still hang on to it until I WC. Reply
shotgunx1x - Tuesday, December 24, 2013 - linkI know it should be soon, but any idea when we can expect these to be available? Reply
Shreddie - Tuesday, December 24, 2013 - linkMost likely Mid-Late January (that's the estimated DCII release date) Reply
Ryan Smith - Tuesday, December 24, 2013 - linkSapphire says it should start hitting shelves at the end of this week. Reply
Mopar63 - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - linkThey seem to already be out with some etailers in Europe. Reply
Will Robinson - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - linkGuess Blackened23 and Balla are just gonna ignore the beating the 780 gets in this review lolol
What was that about 780 overclocking again? :) Reply
Mondozai - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - linkThe OC performance here is better than the review in Hexus.
Also, you can get from mid-800s to mid-1200s in mhz on a custom-cooled GTX 780 with OC. The OC here is a lesser amount. I wonder what the performance would be on a maxed out-OC'd GTX 780 would be vs the OC that Ryan applied. Reply
Mondozai - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - link("That Ryan applied on this Sapphire 290", it should say at the end.) Reply
blanarahul - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - linkHexus.net are liers. Look at their Noise charts. Tri-X 290 is louder than a 780 Ti. Look at Anandtech or Computerbase.de, 290 Tri-X is quieter than 780 Ti. Reply
Mopar63 - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - linkcalling them liars might be harsh. There is no standardization in the review industry when it comes to how noise level is measured. Some use open bench and others use cases. The cases can vary with each model and then there is the fact that hardware and software used to measure can vary as well. Add to this the measuring methodology such as distance from the item as well as how ti was set to run, did they measure 100% speed, game play speeds, auto or set and so on. Reply
Bobs_Your_Uncle - Sunday, December 29, 2013 - linkThen there's always the question: are they recording the dB(A) measurements on a Metric scale or on an Imperial scale? : / Reply
bigboxes - Sunday, December 29, 2013 - linkLOL Reply
sheh - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - linkI still don't understand why reference designs use blowers. Isn't that mainly useful for small cramped cases? Don't most users have a well-spaced case, and especially the users who go for high-end cards, and so are better served with an open air cooler? Reply
blanarahul - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - linkThese open air coolers dump heat/hot "inside" the case/cabinet. This has a negative impact on CPU, RAM, Chipset, HDD etc. temperatures (usless you are using a super tower). Blowers throw the hot air out the case and hence has no impact on other components.
Open air coolers make a lot of sense for Open Air test benches though. Reply
Mopar63 - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - linkThe impact of an open air cooler is a lot less on the systems internals than many think. The heat released is not a direct increase but rather like adding hot water to cooler water. The water is not suddenly hot, just a bit warmer. Also even mid and most mATX towers are moving more than enough air to make this a minor effect at best. In fact MANY of the mITX cases we are seeing for gaming rigs can handle it easily as well. Reply
Godigy - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - linkNot necessarily. I had an R9 290 with the Gelid Icy aftermarket cooler, and if I didn't take the side panel off of my case, it would really make stuff in the case hot. My CPU temps jumped 10C with the side panel closed. If I were to open the side panel, I could feel the heat coming out of my case, which has very good airflow. Reply
Mayuyu - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - linkI have one of these open air GPUs and I really don't like the design. The GPU board is so tall that it essentially creates another compartment in the case. Since the fan faces downward, all the heat is in the bottom of the case. The big fan at the back of the case only moves air for the CPU and RAM. Reply
skiboysteve - Thursday, December 26, 2013 - linkI had that even worse. Card would crash in Diablo 3 from overheating. Case was super hot and GPU fan was pegged on high. I sold it (6850) and bought a GTX 660 because it had a blower, now its quiet and cool. Reply
Th-z - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - linkThus the problem lies, people like small form factor these days. Open air cooler can complicate how the air is moved. Take the beta Steam Machine for example, the GPU is in a chamber that uses riser to reduce the size of the case. The design is simple for a blower cooler, the air basically moves one way all the way. If it's an open air cooler, both hot and cool air are intermingling, additional fans would need to help moving the air, and air path would also need a redesign.
I agree with Ryan, AMD simply needs to do better job with their reference cooler, perhaps their AIB partners can step in and make their own blower cards that perform better than AMD's reference design. Reply
Ryan Smith - Thursday, December 26, 2013 - linkI had originally intended to put the following discussion about blowers versus open air coolers in the article, but it came off as too disjoint from the rest of the article so I dropped it. But since you're asking, I'll publish it here in the comments.
When looking at the cooling performance of the 290 Tri-X OC relative to the reference 290, it's important to keep in mind that the Tri-X OC's cooling advantages don't come for free; there are tradeoffs to be made for achieving this kind of performance. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, open air coolers can be very high performance solutions, however there are some important differences between open air coolers and blowers that need to be taken into consideration.
Between the two types of coolers, blowers are the more compatible and more self-sufficient due to the fact that the blower design is essentially self-exhausting. By blowing hot air directly outside of the chassis, blowers aren't significantly reliant on the chassis cooling, meaning they'll work in a wide variety of cases and environments, especially small form factor designs or multi-GPU setups. The one downside to blowers is that the limited amount of space available to funnel air (about 1 PCIe slot's width) requires that all of that airflow is generated by one fan, which in turn may have to run at a relatively high speed to move enough air. The end result being that while blowers don't have to be loud, they're generally louder than open air coolers.
Open air coolers on the other hand essentially punt on the issue of cooling, focusing solely on removing heat from the GPU and related components, and making removal of that hot air the job of the chassis. This allows open air coolers to utilize numerous large, slow fans that can move a good deal of air without generating a lot of noise, but only a small portion of that air is exhausted outside the chassis by the open air cooler itself. The bulk of the work for removing heat from the chassis falls to the chassis itself, which can be beneficial as chassis fans are larger and quieter still, potentially making the combined solution a very quiet own.
When it comes to open air coolers the drawback here two-fold. The first is simply that open air cards need breathing room; even though most cards are only two slots wide, the slot adjacent to the card needs to be kept complete open in order to permit airflow (even a small card like a sound card would still be an issue). The second drawback is that if the chassis can't handle the heat load – and keep in mind that a single 290 under load is going to generate more heat than the rest of the system combined – then open air coolers will struggle to work well while at the same time the heat from the video card will have a run-on effect that makes it hard to properly cool the other components in the chassis.
Because of the compatibility and self-reliance aspects of blowers, blowers are the coolers used on most high-end reference cards, as the design allows for the reference card design to be used in the widest range of systems. In that sense blowers represent a nice middle ground between functionality and noise, with a high quality blower capable of bringing all of that functionality without bringing too much noise. NVIDIA's GTX Titan blower being a good example of what a blower is capable of at the high end, while the reference 290 is an unfortunate example of what a blower looks like if it's struggling to keep up. On the other hand an open air cooler can scale up better while still maintaining very low noise levels – as exemplified by cards like the 290 Tri-X OC and the Radeon HD 7990 – but the compatibility issues mean that the resulting cards can't be used as in wide a range of systems, something that can be problematic for reference cards.
In the end however there's a need for both kinds of coolers to be on the market. As neither style is without its flaws, having the two vastly different designs allows for a wider range of market coverage than what either cooler alone could accomplish. Reply
Jwboo65 - Monday, December 30, 2013 - linkTypo in the third paragraph. The very last word. Nice article. Thanks Ryan! Reply
Wade_Jensen - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - linkWould someone be willing to explain binning? I hear Anand and Ryan and Ian talking about it surrounding CPU and GPUs scaling but its never explained. But how is it accomplished and/or caused in manufacturing? Is that how intel has differing performance in an i5 and i7 of identical tdp, HT aside?
Yes, I've tried Google. :p Reply
sheh - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - linkTake a million chips, run them through test equipment to collect data on voltage, heat, max frequency, functionality of cores/subunits. Sort them according to the results, do any external tweaking if needed (e.g., I think old CPUs has things like resistors on the package to disable/limit features), print the correct model number/put on the sticker, sell. Reply
Sunburn74 - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - linkEssentially, if you manufacture 100 chips with target level of perfomance X, some will exceed target level of performance X, some will just barely reach it, and some will underperform and not quite reach the target.
As the supplier, you bin/plan to sell the overperformers as your highest level product (ie gtx 9000 OC uber ultra TI lightning thor odin card), your on target performers as some mid range product (gtx 8950), and your poor performers as some lower range product (gtx 7000 energy sipper)
Its more complex than that in the real world as intel/nvidia/amd offer a large multitude of products, but in a nutshell that's binning. Reply
Sunburn74 - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - linkBTW, this also explains why the best overclocking products generally tend to be on the higher end of the product spectrum Reply
Wade_Jensen - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - linkThanks guys! :) Reply
gonks - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - linkRyan, there's a typo on the gaming charts and oc charts, on the headers says "Maxium quality".
Great review btw! Reply
Ryan Smith - Thursday, December 26, 2013 - linkHuh. I had thought I had fixed that. Thanks! Reply
Duelix - Thursday, December 26, 2013 - linkCan't wait for a Direct CU II model from Asus. A R9 290 with a decent cooler is stupid fast for the money. Take that, Nvidia! Reply
hoboville - Thursday, December 26, 2013 - linkIt's really amazing how on some games the 780 Ti is 10-20% faster, and then slower in others. If that performance were consistent across all game titles, the 780 Ti might just be worth the price.
Then again, $700 card vs $450 card means it costs more than 50% more! What can you say then other than: if you have the budget for a 780 Ti, save another $250 bucks and get a 2nd 290. Reply
Brent20 - Tuesday, December 31, 2013 - linkThe problem with that thinking is the AMD cards do NOT sell for $450, ANYWHERE. They are selling for 50% OVER retail price. Reply
r13j13r13 - Thursday, December 26, 2013 - linkme orgasmeoooooooooo pero con la con la version 290x iguala a la 780 ti Reply
randinspace - Friday, December 27, 2013 - link"Sapphire is essentially charging $50 for a better cooler..."
It's worth noting that what with the voiding of the warranty that follows installing an aftermarket cooling solution on a reference card the $50 premium Sapphire is charging is probably worth it in the long run. Reply
toyotabedzrock - Friday, December 27, 2013 - linkThe almost perfect scaling of performance with the over clock is interesting. If AMD would allow them to do the same with the 290x it would allow them to outright beat the 780 ti. Reply
ggathagan - Monday, December 30, 2013 - linkAn important note for owners of cases that rotate the motherboard 90 degrees (Silverstone Fortress 2, etc...):
The Asus DirectCU, the HIS IceQ X² and the MSI FrozrII lines orient the heatsink fins in a way that can take advantage of the bottom-to-top airflow of those cases.
Custom cooled solutions from Sapphire, EVGA, XFX, Gigabyte and MSI all orient the cooling fins of the heatsink perpendicular to the airflow in such cases. Reply
Mopar63 - Tuesday, December 31, 2013 - linkThis sounds like it might matter but it does not. The fins are oriented so they are essentially across the airflow of any case design. The air flow however is not enough to be an issue against the direct air pressure of the GPU fans and the exhaust is then whisked away by the air flow currents of the case.
If there was ANY difference in temps it might be 1 or 2 C at the MOST. Reply
Brent20 - Tuesday, December 31, 2013 - linkIf you want the review to be fair, I think its time that all these AMD reviews reflect the REAL inflated price that the card sells for when comparing it to the competition, which is about 50% over retail value.
AMD will die off as a gaming card company as long as they continue to cater to the "mining" users. Mark my words. Why buy a card for 50% over retail, and a card that is rarely in stock anywhere.
They need to put something in to block mining use. They may make big bucks off it now, but in the long run its going to hurt their "gaming" business badly.
Perhaps they could block the mining in the gaming card and make a separate card for mining and sell it at quadruple the price. As the miners appear willing to pay any price for it. Reply
teiva - Thursday, January 02, 2014 - linkThe prices in Australia haven't fluctuated and stayed pretty well the same since their introduction. Reply
Mopar63 - Thursday, January 02, 2014 - linkBrent20 this shows a lack of understand of how things work. AMD is not catering to miners. The particular way the mining software works just happens to work better on AMD's GPU design than on NVidia. This was not done with miners in mind it was the design they chose BEFORE anyone knew miners existed.
If they put anything in the "block" miners that would just be wrong. AMD sells APUs, they do not care who buys them, only that some one buys them, NVidia does this the same way. Blocking a potential user is bad business and in this case may hurt the GPU in other areas of performance. Reply
FookDuSushi - Monday, January 06, 2014 - linkIf they already have a ready one's why don't they release it to the public yet?? Reply
capawesome9870 - Saturday, January 11, 2014 - linkdo you have any 4k tests? similar to the Low-Medium on the original R9 290 and 290x reviews. Reply
boozzer - Wednesday, January 22, 2014 - linkwill there is a 290x version? this seems to be the cooler to get. please, please do a 290x tri x oc review + oc review!!!!!!!!!!! please. Reply
Muckster - Friday, February 28, 2014 - linkHow would this card compare to the MSI GTX 780 ti in terms of noise and temp? Techpowerup has an article on the GTX but I can't seem to find an apples to apples comparison. As with the Sapphire to the stock R9 290, the MSI improved significantly on the noise level of the stock GTX 789 ti.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_780_Ti_... Reply
kiddo - Monday, March 03, 2014 - linkis this good ? cause my bro bought it for me, I`m 5yr :3 Reply
P39Airacobra - Tuesday, January 13, 2015 - linkover 500watts? That must be a error! The dam thing has a 275watt TDP, So at the most it should only go a litte past 400 watts maybe but that's it! Reply
driessen9 - Friday, March 06, 2015 - linkwhat program did you use for the overclocking? Reply