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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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.