RMA replacement....worth it or not?

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
alrobichaud

alrobichaud

Distinguished
Nov 9, 2011
796
0
19,060
I've been chugging away with my crossfire XFX 7970 DD's for the past 5 years and one started developing artifacts during POST. I just RMA'd the card and was offered a replacement. Lately, I have played nothing but WoW which has horrible crossfire scaling so I have had the second card disabled for almost 2 years. The crossfire'd cards were great for playing BF3 in full ultra at 5760 x 1080 but I have not played anything like that nearly 3 years. Mainly just WoW.

Now to the replacement.....They emailed me today and asked if an R9 290x with a reference cooler would be an acceptable compromise or I could wait for a few weeks to see if they get another 7970. I have not been keeping up with the latest AMD cards but I have been watching Nvidia and was contemplating a new 1060 and selling the 7970's. I've been crossfiring AMD cards since my first 5870's and I think I am done with their driver support and general bugs but I would be willing to give a single more powerful GPU a try.

Given that I have not used my second GPU in a few years, would the R9 290X be a good replacement? What do you guys think of the card in general? I have read that it can be loud and runs hot but it gets anywhere from 20-50% higher frame rates than the 7970 GHz edition(depending on the benchmark you read). I also read it is not great to overclock. Both of my 7970's can run stable at 1100MHz without any voltage tweaks....that is up from the stock 925MHz clock. What about a decent aftermarket dual fan cooler? I am sure that would help with the noise and temperatures.

Any thoughts would be appreciated. I just don't want to say yes then regret the decision later since I have not been keeping up on AMD technology since my 7970's.
 
Solution
Martell1977
The 290X is faster than a single 7970ghz, so it is an upgrade. But if you decide to keep it, you will likely want to get an aftermarket cooler and get rid of the reference as it can be loud and inefficient. Whether you keep it or not, it is worth the RMA as all you have now is a failing card.

Also, please don't compare crossfire driver support to single card, they are very different. nVidia has it's issues as well, it just seems they don't get as much press. From what I've read, nVidia's SLI drivers are worse than AMD's Crossfire ones.

A 1060 will be a bit faster than the 290X as it can perform similar to a gtx 980. If you are only interested in a single card, the 1060 isn't bad, but if you were thinking of trying SLI later....the...
Sort by date Sort by votes
Roryiscool

Roryiscool

Commendable
Jul 24, 2016
99
0
1,660
They are around the same. Check the prices, if the 290X is worth more (probably is) then RMA the card, then sell the 290X. More money is more money. Then if the 290X is good, then keep it, otherwise sell it.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Martell1977

Martell1977

Splendid
Oct 26, 2010
3,846
3
24,960
The 290X is faster than a single 7970ghz, so it is an upgrade. But if you decide to keep it, you will likely want to get an aftermarket cooler and get rid of the reference as it can be loud and inefficient. Whether you keep it or not, it is worth the RMA as all you have now is a failing card.

Also, please don't compare crossfire driver support to single card, they are very different. nVidia has it's issues as well, it just seems they don't get as much press. From what I've read, nVidia's SLI drivers are worse than AMD's Crossfire ones.

A 1060 will be a bit faster than the 290X as it can perform similar to a gtx 980. If you are only interested in a single card, the 1060 isn't bad, but if you were thinking of trying SLI later....the 1060 does not support SLI, nVidia reserves that option for only the 1070 and above.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
alrobichaud

alrobichaud

Distinguished
Nov 9, 2011
796
0
19,060
I think I was just looking for a change since my last Nvidia card was a gtx 460. Issues that I have been having with AMD have been quality of life issues such as the second card not even showing up in the profile to turn enable it which usually resulted in a power down and removing then reinstalling the crossfire cable. Another frequent problem I have is my screen profile. I have a widescreen setup with 3 monitors at 5760 x 1080 and a fourth for hardware monitoring and a normal setup with one center main screen and 3 extended. For the last 2-3 years(no matter the software version), switching between the setups often resulted in a loss of the widescreen setup and I would have to set it up again....it didn't always happen but it really made me mad when it did. For those reasons, I was contemplating going back to Nvidia but it is possible that my hardware is to blame....who knows.

I was looking at the 1060 as a base upgrade to a more powerful single gpu but if the r9 290x is similar then maybe the RMA was what I needed....an upgrade for free! I have no problem staying with AMD. I have been a loyal customer through my 5870's, trifire 6970's, crossfire 6990's(I know overkill, right!) and now my crossfire 7970's. Well, I think I will go for the r9 upgrade and look into replacing the stock cooler. I really dislike the reference coolers. Newegg has a triple fan cooler for $109 CDN.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Martell1977

Martell1977

Splendid
Oct 26, 2010
3,846
3
24,960
Yeah you can't beat it for the price, lol. The aftermarket coolers are much better and help the card keep from throttling. The R9 290, 290X, 390 and 390X are "safe" to 95c and start throttling if it hit that. I don't have an aftermarket replacement cooler, but the Sapphire 390 I have never goes about 75c and the fans haven't gone over 45% yet

If you decide to upgrade further, you could sell the other 7970 and the 290 and maybe spring for a GTX 1070 or see what AMD's Vega has to offer if it's out at the time. Rumors say Vega will launch around Christmas.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom