AMD Radeon R9 290 On Linux

[Kivada]

We're entering summer here down under in a couple of weeks. I've decided to customise the cooling of R9-290X so it can perform better under the Aussie heat.

Unfortunately all the after-market air-coolers take more than 2 slots. I can only afford two slots as all the other slots are taken up by cards.
I emailed Sapphire, Gigabyte, HIS and XFX if they were willing to sell me their custom coolers once they are released and so far only Sapphire has responded with a flat no advising I will have to buy another card.

So looks like I will have to go watercooling again. I've been trying to avoid watercooling as the last one I did (4yrs ago) was too high maintenance and restrictive (due to tubing and fittings all around the place, harder to just pull stuff out and replace/experiment/tweak). Also now I got barely any room within my case due to a Noctua D14. oh well, I suppose I'll end up enjoying the "tinkering-around" once I start it.

Another option, I just sell it now and recover as much as I can and get a 780 Ti. LoL

But, I'm betting AMD will come out in force with the cavalry from 1H of next year due to market forces from the ubiquitous SteamOS/SteamMachines. And eventually Mantle enabled and supported games on Linux...

Get a waterblock for it and run the hoses to a radiator outside of the case. Put a manifold on it it to split it off ant run liquid to the CPU as well. You can either DIY which is a fairly involved process or you can buy premade parts like 9x120 radiators, reservoir tanks, compression fittings etc. Just remember to use a passive silver coil for antibacterial help on top of any active UV or chemical treatments.

[brosis]

I currently have a GTX 570. When I upgrade sometime in the future, I want to buy an AMD card and use the open source drivers. How soon do you guys think I can do so and see similar if not better performance from an AMD card that came after the GTX 570?

Lets approximate:
about 3-5 months till newer PM stabilizes,
about 3-12 months till SI becomes usable,
at least 6 more months till that ecosystem is pushed into mainstream distros.

9-18 months for the SI card, me think.

[FutureSuture]

Maybe that is because you tried to hijack a thread about something else? Phoronix publishes many benchmarks and if you don't find an answer among them, start your own thread. (And if you demonstrate that you actually researched about this question first, then maybe you get a reply there.)

I believe my question to be well within the margin of this topic. I have also done plenty of research elsewhere but am not as technically capable as many of you here and I find it easy to get lost with all the updates that occur to the drivers. I mean, look, just answering my question would have been shorter than to write everything you did. A mere time frame would have been a couple of words, and thus I am shocked at the lack of help.

[chithanh]

I feel so ignored.

Maybe that is because you tried to hijack a thread about something else? Phoronix publishes many benchmarks and if you don't find an answer among them, start your own thread. (And if you demonstrate that you actually researched about this question first, then maybe you get a reply there.)

[FutureSuture]

I currently have a GTX 570. When I upgrade sometime in the future, I want to buy an AMD card and use the open source drivers. How soon do you guys think I can do so and see similar if not better performance from an AMD card that came after the GTX 570?

I feel so ignored.

[A Laggy Grunt]

If anyone wants a little relief from the heat of one of these, you can remove the heatsink and do a careful application of thermal compound. It will still run at 95C, but it will be able to run a little faster. Note that this will probably void your warranty.

Like this. I'm surprised they picked that thermal compound, because they had run a big thermal compound comparison, and the best performance on their test GPU was with the Coollaboratory Liquid Metal Pad.

[DrYak]

So looks like I will have to go watercooling again. I've been trying to avoid watercooling as the last one I did (4yrs ago) was too high maintenance and restrictive (due to tubing and fittings all around the place, harder to just pull stuff out and replace/experiment/tweak).

As someone who has experimented A LOT with water cooling there are a couple of tips I can give you:

1. first and for most:USE QUICK COUPLING ADAPTERS
   • example in a webshop (its in europe, but I'm sure you can find similar down in your hemisphere)
   • example at a constructor
   
   These things really make much more simple to play around, upgrade, plug/unplug, extend, etc.
   
2. Use large diameters, thick wall tubes of good quality. Large inner diameter (9mm and up. ~⅓" I think) make more flow and less resistance/pressure in the tubes. Large outer diameters (12mm and up. ~?" ) makes sure that the tube is solid and won't tear. The quick-coupling adapters I've given as an example above use such wide tubing.
   
3. Use dual pumps in serie. That keeps more flow, and in case of 1 pump failing you still have the other one preventing the PC from melting. My setups used either 2x Lain DDC, or Innovatek HPPS + pump immersed in reservoir.
   
4. If you want to use a flow meter, use one with the least resistance (big internal diameter of the channel).
   

Also now I got barely any room within my case due to a Noctua D14. oh well, I suppose I'll end up enjoying the "tinkering-around" once I start it.

Well the good part with water cooling is that you can keep the bulk of the mass (radiator and reservoir) away from the heat source (away as in "out of the case", eventually with a long tube in between. If you go for the dual pumps as I'm suggesting, pressure and flow won't be a problem even with some distance).

I use radiator/reservoir hybrids, like the first serie of Zalman's reserators (The tall towers) or Kailon (a little bit less happy about the noise). That gives a lot of exchange surface without taking space inside the case (and as a bonus, these have a pump immersed inside, so you only need to think getting 1 extra pump).
I also put as many radiators on the out-take fan grills of the case as possible (Black Ice are my current favourite). If you choose big enough radiators of good enough quality, you may end up having way much more exchange surface than the typical in-case fan-cooled radiator. You can probably reach the same performance as your current monster, but without taking 99% of the free space. (Which in turn allows more air flow inside the case to help cooling the other components). I end-up with a rather spacious case, with the big honking radiators hanging on the outside.

Another option, I just sell it now and recover as much as I can and get a 780 Ti. LoL

Find someone into alt-coin mining. AMD GPUs are good on Scrypt-based alt-coins (Litecoin and Co).

But, I'm betting AMD will come out in force with the cavalry from 1H of next year due to market forces from the ubiquitous SteamOS/SteamMachines. And eventually Mantle enabled and supported games on Linux...

Well GCN 2.0 will probably more innovative and less incremental than GCN 1.1. Don't forget also that the other consoles too are using AMD hardware under the hood sa that's extra R&D that will eventually find its way into future Radeon products.

But I wouldn't bet on Mantle. 3D graphics are better served a completely cross-platform multi-vendor API, like OpenGL. Mantle would put is back into the 3dfx Glide days.

[FutureSuture]

I currently have a GTX 570. When I upgrade sometime in the future, I want to buy an AMD card and use the open source drivers. How soon do you guys think I can do so and see similar if not better performance from an AMD card that came after the GTX 570?

[sunweb]

Something tells me they're waiting for Mantle to be ready as well. For now Hawai are under testing for Windows so that we get a better software product, yeah i know wishfull thinking. They probably just forgot =(

[DanglingPointer]

custom better cooling

We're entering summer here down under in a couple of weeks. I've decided to customise the cooling of R9-290X so it can perform better under the Aussie heat.

Unfortunately all the after-market air-coolers take more than 2 slots. I can only afford two slots as all the other slots are taken up by cards.
I emailed Sapphire, Gigabyte, HIS and XFX if they were willing to sell me their custom coolers once they are released and so far only Sapphire has responded with a flat no advising I will have to buy another card.

So looks like I will have to go watercooling again. I've been trying to avoid watercooling as the last one I did (4yrs ago) was too high maintenance and restrictive (due to tubing and fittings all around the place, harder to just pull stuff out and replace/experiment/tweak). Also now I got barely any room within my case due to a Noctua D14. oh well, I suppose I'll end up enjoying the "tinkering-around" once I start it.

Another option, I just sell it now and recover as much as I can and get a 780 Ti. LoL

But, I'm betting AMD will come out in force with the cavalry from 1H of next year due to market forces from the ubiquitous SteamOS/SteamMachines. And eventually Mantle enabled and supported games on Linux...