GIGABYTE R9 290X GDDR5-4GB 2xDVI/HDMI/DP OC Graphics Card GV-R929XOC-4GD

When I was getting this card I had recently upgraded from 1080P to 1440P (2560x1440 pixels on my main monitor with a second monitor for things like itunes and teamspeak in 1080p, or even playing more than one game at once!). My old Gigabyte Nvidia Geforce 680 GTX was awesome though when I swapped to the higher resolution it struggled, so I thought I should look into Gigabyte again for an upgrade. I had been looking at comparisons between many cards and found this one was at the top of the list and cheaper than it's Nvidia counterpart. It wasn't the best at everything but all but two of the cards above it on average where dual GPU setups. Gigabyte's price always makes it well worth it and despite what you'd think, they make very durable cards. The cooling is fantastic. On my old card, it had the same cooling system, which was way more than it needed, but this card actually uses all of it! (only if you are overclocking of course). As it is with overclocked cards, I wanted to overclock it more, (as they are better designed for overclocking). My results have come up with this for the best: (yes I used this to answer someone's question, figured I should post it in my review!)"Does it overclock well?"From my experience, It is highly depending on the game you are playing. But it is most stable at 1080 MHz core clock, +3 max power, +50 mV and 1350 MHz memory clock (5400 Mb/s). I wound up using MSI Afterburner because some of the options were locked in the Gigabyte OC Guru. rather, a lot of them were. Card is awesome though! Just know this issue is because it does not use GPU Boost 2.0 like Nvidia's, so it doesn't have two clock settings, just the one.The Highest I've ever had it stable at was 1140 MHz core, +100 max power, +100 mV, and 1500 MHz memory. the memory can be OC'd to that pretty easily though. Of my tests over the last 3-4 months, I've only had the card reset twice, otherwise I just throttled it down when I saw "snow flaking". it crashed at 1175 MHz which is what I read on some online article as it's max. that's during a benchmark, not actual gaming in Cry Engine 3 (MechWarrior Online and Star Citizen: Arena Commander Pre-alpha module) or Final Fantasy XIV: ARR, which has phenomenal graphics at 2560x1440. Just some examples of what I tested it on. Rust is another, but it snow flakes easy on it. On FF it took a few hours to an entire day of 1140 MHz before any snow flaking occurred. (I'm paranoid so at any snow flaking I lower the OC).P.S. if it means anything to anyone, I'm running an AMD FX-8350 eight core 4GHz stock (4.2 turbo) , OCing the turbo core to 4.4 GHz. 16 GB of RAM (Kingston HyperX 4x4 GB 2400 Mhz) at 1833 MHz, Samsung 840 Evo 1TB SSD, ASUS ROG Crosshair Formula - Z Motherboard, Corsair GS700 PS, Corsair H90 Heatsink**if you have any questions I will gladly answer them!

I built my system based around this card.I7 4770k CPUMaximus VI Formula MB480GB SSD16 GB 2400 RAMAX860i PSU***EDITs****** Card wouldn't recognize to the system when installed. Loaded Windows thru the on board video*** I go to the BIOS and change it to PCIE, won't go. Fiddle with it (Bios), redo the setting a few times, it finally took after a few hours and for almost two days it worked flawlessly. Now it's out again, only on one occasion was recognized by the MB and when it finally booted to desktop, it lasted 5 seconds before going black.***Never worked again after two full days of trying.******DOA board confirmed. Took it to Fry's Electronics and the technician confirmed the board was toast. Put in a test board and it was instantly recognized. I purchased an ASUS R9 290X DirectCU II OC they had in stock, took it home and installed it. System immediately recognized it and booted to desktop without any fiddling with (no manual BIOS changes).***When the board finally ran (for the whole two days :( grrr.....) the graphics were great. I kind of was worried when it wouldn't immediately recognize it that something was wrong with either the mobo or card, finally had to take it into a shop to diagnose. Installing a non-faulty card and having it be instantly recognized gave me the peace of mind that the mobo was good.Probably a good card as long as it works, had a bad experience myself that cost me one day of frustration to get it recognized, two days of gaming bliss followed by two more days of frustration and a trip to the repair shop. Had to pay more at retail for a different card. Wouldn't trust a replacement at this point.***

I picked this up after the recent price drop in AMD cards. I picked one reference card which was loud like jet airplant. I also saw other bad reivews on this, so I was a little hesitant. Switching from NVIDIA(Upgraded from Gigabyte GTX 770 Windforce, Gigabyte windforce Fan) to AMD was easy, and I haven't had any driver problems others had since I did new install of windows 7 64 bit and AMD 14.4 whql driver. The card can max out Thief at 1080p, stay cool, and keep the framerate buttery. Runs bf4 on ultra around 110fps when Mantle enabled. Gets around 73c after gaming for a few hours. Experienced a 20+Fps improvement in all games from GTX770.No regrets. Excellent card. Maybe Gigabyte improve the quality or/and AMD provide good drivers. Will buy another one if price drop more.I guess the real test will be in a couple weeks when Watch Dogs comes out. I'll update this review if I run into any problems with the card.I did overclock it, 1200Mhz/1380Mhz for core/Ram with +100mv. Temp rises up to 83c for full load. (Room temp: 23c)My spec: (for anyone curious)Case: Rosewill Blackhawk Gaming Mid-ATXMobo: MSI msi z77a-g45CPU: Intel I7 3770KRam: Corsair vengeance 8gb 1600PSU: Rosewill 1000W lightingCPU cooler: Cooler Master Seidon 120V all in one LiquidSSD: PNY XLR8 240GVideo: Gigabyte 290X Windforce

Can performs very well; however, I do have trouble using the AMD Catalyst driver (No hardware issues, just don't like the interface). I do have a blue screen with white lines come up every once in a while and have to restart. I have 2 monitors and they are not the same, so this could be part of the issue.

Love how well this thing works. If only the first one had worked for more than 2 weeks.The replacement, that I am using now, has been running for 5 weeks and seems to be here to stay.I use it to power a 3x 1080p eyefinity rig. Most games are above 30FPS even with all settings on. DX11 games are 60+ fps with all settings on.I would give it a 4.5, but that isnt allowed here.