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
Crysis
Up next is our legacy title for 2013/2014, Crysis: Warhead. The stand-alone expansion to 2007’s Crysis, at over 5 years old Crysis: Warhead can still beat most systems down. Crysis was intended to be future-looking as far as performance and visual quality goes, and it has clearly achieved that. We’ve only finally reached the point where single-GPU cards have come out that can hit 60fps at 1920 with 4xAA, never mind 2560 and beyond.
Unlike games such as Battlefield 3, AMD’s GCN cards have always excelled on Crysis: Warhead, and as a result at all resolutions and all settings the 290X tops our charts for single-GPU performance. At 2560 this is a 15% performance advantage for the 290X, pushing past GTX 780 and GTX Titan to be the only card to break into the 50fps range. While at 4K that’s a 22% performance advantage, which sees 290X and Titan become the only cards to even crack 40fps.
But of course if you want 60fps in either scenario, you need two GPUs. At which point 290X’s initial performance advantage, coupled with its AFR scaling advantage (77/81% versus 70%) only widens the gap between the 290X CF and GTX 780 SLI. Though either configuration will get you above 60fps in either resolution.
Meanwhile the performance advantage of the 290X over the 280X is lower here than it is in most games. At 2560 it’s just a 26% gain, a bit short of the 30% average.290X significantly bulks up on everything short of memory bandwidth and rasterization versus 280X, so the list of potential bottlenecks is relatively short in this scenario.
Interestingly, despite the 290X’s stellar performance when it comes to average framerates, the performance advantage with minimum framerates is more muted. 290X still beats GTX 780, but only by 4% at 2560. We’re not CPU bottlenecked, as evidenced by the AFR scaling, so there’s something about Crysis that leads to the 290X crashing a bit harder in the most strenuous scenes.
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heflys - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
Slightly slower than a 780 overall? Even in Uber mode? Can you link me to these reviews if possible?Shark321 - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
I didn't say that. It's slightly slower in Uber Mode than Titan overall in 1080p (across all sites combined). In Quiet mode it's usually slightly faster than 780, slighttly slower in the minority of the reviews.heflys - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
I see now.Jumangi - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
What noob would buy a 290x or a Titan and run it in 1080p? A pointless resolution for these cards.
inighthawki - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
What an arrogant post. There are tons of people who game on 1080p displays and buy a 290X or a Titan. Having a high framerate (i.e. consistently greater than 60fps) reduces the likelihood of stuttering while playing, while also making your system a bit more future-proof as new games come out. Not everyone cares about pixel count, some care more about quality per pixel. As you start seeing titles ship on Unreal 4, post-Crysis 3, etc, I will be laughing at you when I can still run my games at native resolution without the need to upscale or reduce quality.puppies - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
Anyone who buys a titan to play games at 1080p is insane, seriously they need locking up. You claiming otherwise does nothing.Samus - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
agreed. this card is for 2560x1440+ or multimonitorTheJian - Friday, October 25, 2013 - link
ROFL...Only if you don't believe in MAXING your games. Which nobody can do with a single card. Many sites comment on this, and show mins, even here with lower settings they hit below 30fps in a few of their games at 2560. In multiplayer you'd get crushed by guys hitting much higher fps at 1080p in many games. Maybe you'll be right at 20nm, but certainly there are far too many games you have to jockey settings around on to make you right today.reddev - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
Both LinusTechTips and OC3D, two reviewers I trust quite a bit, have it below the 780.randomhkkid - Friday, October 25, 2013 - link
Linus tech tips over clocks all the cards it tests, since the 780 has much more headroom (on the stick cooler) the gains were larger than the 290x so at stock the 290x is faster.