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
Total War: Rome 2
The second strategy game in our benchmark suite, Total War: Rome 2 is the latest game in the Total War franchise. Total War games have traditionally been a mix of CPU and GPU bottlenecks, so it takes a good system on both ends of the equation to do well here. In this case the game comes with a built-in benchmark that plays out over a forested area with a large number of units, definitely stressing the GPU in particular.
For this game in particular we’ve also gone and turned down the shadows to medium. Rome’s shadows are extremely CPU intensive (as opposed to GPU intensive), so this keeps us from CPU bottlenecking nearly as easily.
With Rome 2 no one is getting 60fps at 2560, but then again as a strategy game it’s hardly necessary. In which case the 290X once again beats the GTX 780 by a smaller than average 6%, essentially sitting in the middle of the gap between the GTX 780 and GTX Titan.
Meanwhile at 4K we can actually get some relatively strong results out of even our single card configurations, but we have to drop our settings down by 2 notches to Very High to do so. Though like all of our 4K game tests, it turns out well for AMD, with the 290X’s lead growing to 13%.
AFR performance is a completely different matter though. It’s not unusual for strategy games to scale poorly or not at all, but Rome 2 is different yet. The GTX 780 SLI consistently doesn’t scale at all, however with the 290X CF we see anything from massive negative scaling at 2560 to a small performance gain at 4K. Given the nature of the game we weren’t expecting anything here at all, and though getting any scaling is a nice turn of events to have negative scaling like this is a bit embarrassing for AMD. At least NVIDIA can claim to be more consistent here.
Without working AFR scaling, our deltas are limited to single-GPU configurations and as a result are unremarkable. Sub-3% for everyone, everywhere, which is a solid result for any single-GPU setup.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
396 Comments
View All Comments
Bloodcalibur - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
Your dumb ass paid $350 extra for computing performance when all you do is game LOL!eddieveenstra - Sunday, October 27, 2013 - link
+10blau808 - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
The 780ti will easily beat the 290 for price/performanceBlack Obsidian - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
So you're anticipating greater than Titan performance for less than 290X pricing?If so, you might be interested in this bridge I have for sale. It's in Brooklyn. In good shape, available real cheap.
Bloodcalibur - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
Titan is a gaming/workstation hybrid. That's why it costs $350 more than 780 with only a small gaming performance increase. You sounded really ignorant there lolol.erple2 - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
Too easy. Too easy. You need to actually read the post Above you before commenting on the price comparison.rituraj - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
No.Naxirian - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
Lol.... except it loses to the 780 in a bunch of benchmarks, a card that has already been on the market for 6 months and costs exactly the same as the R9 290X does. Not to mention the 780 Ti is due out next month, and from the looks of these benchmarks, will probably murder the 290X whilst being in the same price range. AMD are late to the party yet again. Wonder what they'll do when Nvidia launch the 800 series next year lol. Probably wait 9 months and then launch another out-dated gen like this time.extide - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
What planet are you on? The 290x is $100 cheaper, NOT the same price. AMD also had the 7970 out before nVidia had any 28nm cards out, so they weren't behind. Right now the 290x is the best bang/buck card period, and if you game in 4K it is THE best card. Facts are facts man....QuantumPion - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
According to the benchmarks it is only faster than the Titan at 4k resolution (probably due to its 4 gb ram and higher memory bandwidth). At normal resolutions it is about on par with the 780 depending on the game. So it is about on par with the 780 and ~$50 cheaper - we've yet to see what the 780 Ti can do though. Why the article claims the 290X is faster than the Titan and only $550 makes it seem like it was written before the actual benchmarks were performed.