The AMD Radeon R9 290X Review
by Ryan Smith on October 24, 2013 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- AMD
- Radeon
- Hawaii
- Radeon 200
Battlefield 3
Our major multiplayer action game of our benchmark suite is Battlefield 3, DICE’s 2011 multiplayer military shooter. Its ability to pose a significant challenge to GPUs has been dulled some by time and drivers, but it’s still a challenge if you want to hit the highest settings at the highest resolutions at the highest anti-aliasing levels. Furthermore while we can crack 60fps in single player mode, our rule of thumb here is that multiplayer framerates will dip to half our single player framerates, so hitting high framerates here may not be high enough.
For our Battlefield 3 benchmark NVIDIA cards have consistently been the top performers over the years, and as a result this is one of the hardest fights for any AMD card. So how does the 290X fare? Very well, as it turns out. The slowest game for the 290X (relative to the GTX 780) has it losing to the GTX 780 by just 2%, effectively tying NVIDIA’s closest competitor. Not only is the 290X once again the first single-GPU AMD card that can break 60fps average on a game at 2560 – thereby ensuring good framerates even in heavy firefights – but it’s fully competitive with NVIDIA in doing so in what’s traditionally AMD’s worst game. At worst for AMD, they can’t claim to be competitive with GTX Titan in this one.
Moving on to 4K gaming, none of these single-GPU cards are going to cut it at Ultra quality; the averages are decent but the minimums will drop to 20fps and below. This means we either drop down to Medium quality, where 290X is now performance competitive with GTX Titan, or we double up on GPUs, which sees the 290X CF in uber mode take top honors. This game happens to be another good example of how the 290X is scaling into 4K better than the GTX 780 and other NVIDIA cards are, as not only does AMD’s relative positioning versus NVIDIA cards improve, but in heading to 4K AMD picks up a 13% lead over the GTX 780. The only weak spot here for AMD will be performance scaling for multiple GPUs, as while the 290X enjoys a 94% scaling factor at 2560, that drops to 60% at 4K, at a time where NVIDIA’s scaling factor is 76%. The 290X has enough of a performance lead for the 290X CF to hold out over the GTX 780 SLI, but the difference in scaling factors will make it cut close.
Meanwhile in an inter-AMD comparison, this is the first game in our benchmark suite where the 290X doesn’t beat the 280X by at least 30%. Falling just short at 29.5%, it’s a reminder that despite the similarities between 290X (Hawaii) and 280X (Tahiti), the performance differences between the two will not be consistent.
Looking at our delta percentages, this is another strong showing for the 290X CF, especially as compared to the 280X CF. AMD has once again halved their variance as compared to the 280X CF, bringing it down to sub-10% levels. This despite the theoretical advantage that the dedicated CFBI should give the 280X. However AMD can’t claim to have the lowest variance of any multi-GPU setup, as this is NVIDIA’s best game, with the GTX 780 SLI seeing a variance of only 6%. It’s a shame not all games can be like this (for either vendor) since there would be little reason not to go with a multi-GPU setup if this was the typical AFR experience as opposed to the best AFR experience.
Finally, looking at delta percentages under 4K shows that AMD’s variance has once again risen slightly compared to the variance at 2560x1440, but not significantly so. The 290X CF still holds under 10% here.
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SolMiester - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
So you can OC a 780 on stock, but not the 290x to sustain the OC, which means 780 wins!, especially after the price drop to $500!, oh dear AMD 290x just went from hero to zero...TheJian - Friday, October 25, 2013 - link
I gave links and named the games previously...See my post. At 1080p 780 trades blows depending on the games. Considering 98.75% of us are 1920x1200 or less, that is important and you get 3 AAA games with 780, on top of the fact that it's using far less watts, less noise and less heat. A simple drop in price of $50-100 and 780 seems like a no brainer to me (disregarding the 780TI which should keep the same price as now I'd guess). Granted Titan needs a dunk in price now too, which I'm sure will come or they'll just replace it with a full SMX up-clocked titan to keep that price. I'm guessing old titan just died as 780TI will likely beat it in nearly everything if the rumored clock speed and extra smx are true. They will have to release a new titan ULTRA or something with another smx or up the mhz to 1ghz or something. OR hopefully BOTH.I'm guessing it's easier to just up the 100mhz or put it to 1ghz as surely manufacturing has gotten them to where all will do this now, more than having all SMX's defect free. Then again if you have a bad SMX just turn a few more off and it's a 780TI anyway. They've had 8 months to either pile up cherry picked ones, or just improve totally anyway so more can do this easily. Clearly 780ti was just waiting in the wings already. They were just waiting to see 290x perf and estimates.
eddieveenstra - Sunday, October 27, 2013 - link
Titan died when 780gtx entered the room at 600 Euro. I'm betting Nvidia only brings a 780gtx ti and that's it. Titan goes EOL.anubis44 - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
This is the reference card. It's not loud unless you set it to 'Uber' mode, and even then, HardOCP thought the max fan speed should be set to 100% rather than 55%. Imagine how quiet an Asus Direct CUIII or Gigabyte Windforce or Sapphire Toxic custom cooled R9 290x will be.Crossfire and frame pacing all working, and R9 290X crushes Titan in 4K gaming (read HardOCP's review of this 4K section), all while costing $100 less than GTX780, and the R9 280X (7970) is priced at $299, and the R9 270X (7870) is now going for $180, and now Mantle API could be the next 3dfx Glide, and boost all 7000-series cards and higher dramatically for free...
It's like AMD just pulled out a light sabre and cut nVidia right in half while Jsen Hsun just stares dumbly at them in disbelief. He should have merged nVidia with AMD when he had the chance. Could be too late now.
Shark321 - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
There will be no custom cooling solution for the time being. It's the loudest card ever released. Twice as loud as 780/Titan in BF3 after 10 minutes of playing. Also Nvidia will bringt the 780Ti in 3 weeks, a faster cart at a comparable price, but quiet. AMD releases the 290x one year after NVidia, 2 years after NVidias tipeout. Nvidia will be able to counter this with a wink.just4U - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
Shark Writes: "It's the loudest card ever released."Guess you weren't around for the Geforce5...
HisDivineOrder - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
The FX5800 is not ever dead. Not if we remember the shrill sound of its fans......or if the sound burned itself into our brains for all time.
Samus - Friday, October 25, 2013 - link
I think the 65nm GeForce 280 takes the cake for loudest card ever made. It was the first card with a blower.ninjaquick - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
lol, the Ti can only do so much, there is no smaller node for either company to jump to, not until March for enough shipments to have stock for sales. The 290X just proves AMD's GCN design is a keeper. It is getting massively throttled by heat and still manages to pull a slight lead over the titan, at sometimes 15% lower clocks than reference. AMD needed a brand for this release season, and they have it.Both Nvidia and AMD are jumping to the next node in 2014. Nvidia will not release Maxwell on the current node. And there is no other node they would invest in going to.
HisDivineOrder - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
The Ti could theoretically open up all the disabled parts of the current GK110 part. Doing that, who knows what might happen? We've yet to see a fully enabled GK110. I suspect that might eat away some of the Titan's efficiency advantage, though.