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
Hitman: Absolution
The second-to-last game in our lineup is Hitman: Absolution. The latest game in Square Enix’s stealth-action series, Hitman: Absolution is a DirectX 11 based title that though a bit heavy on the CPU, can give most GPUs a run for their money. Furthermore it has a built-in benchmark, which gives it a level of standardization that fewer and fewer benchmarks possess.
Hitman is another game that makes the 290X shine, with the 290X taking a 16% lead over the GTX 780. In fact we’re getting very close to being CPU limited here, which may be limiting just how far ahead the 290X can pull. However this also means there’s plenty of GPU headroom for enabling MSAA, which we don’t use in this benchmark.
Moving on to 4K, the 290X once again extends its lead, this time by among the largest such leads to 30% over the GTX 780. This is actually good enough for 43fps even at Ultra quality, but for better than that you’ll need multiple GPUs.
To that end we’re CPU limited at 2560, though for some reason the GTX 780 SLI fares a bit better regardless. Otherwise at 4K the GTX 780 SLI achieves better scaling than the 290X CF – 64% versus 56% –so while it can’t take the lead it does at least close the gap some. Though enough of a gap remains that the GTX 780 SLI will still come a bit short of 60fps at 4K Ultra settings, which makes the 290X CF the only setup capable of achieving that goal.
When it comes to minimum framerates the 290X is able to build on its lead just a bit more here at both 2560 and 4K. In both cases the performance advantage over the GTX 780 grows by a further 3%.
Finally, for our delta percentages we can see that unfortunately for AMD they are regressing a bit here. The variance for the 290X CF at 2560 is 24%, which is greater than what the 280X CF was already seeing, and significantly greater than the GTX 780 SLI. Consequently Hitman is a good example of how although AMD’s CF frame pacing situation is generally quite good, there are going to be games where they need to buckle down a bit more and get it under control, as evidenced by what NVIDIA has been able to achieve. Though it is interesting to note that AMD’s frame pacing at 4K improves over 2K, by over 8%. AMD would seem to have an easier time keeping frame times under control when they’re outright longer, which isn’t wholly surprising since it means there’s more absolute time to resolve the matter.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
396 Comments
View All Comments
zeock9 - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
I'm sure they can/What I'm interested in the most is how they go about doing that in relation to their now oddly placed top dog, Titan, and at what price point.
ninjaquick - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
So, the 780Ti is going to magically be 25% faster than the Titan? I'd like to see where they managed to get that much number crunching out of an ancient process node.Kevin G - Friday, October 25, 2013 - link
The problem for nVidia is that they have wait for a new process node to go much beyond Titan's performance. GK110 is 550 mm^2 which is on the edge of what TSMC can reliably manufacture. Without 20 nm, nVidia can't add more functional units to really increase performance. (They could enable one more SMX cluster but that'd only be good for <10% increase at equal clocks.)TSMC 20 nm production is set to come online in early 2014 which would mean end products would start shipping at Q2 at the earliest. nVidia has wisely moved their large die releases to the end of the generation so we're likely to see the GM104 chips before the GM100.
DMCalloway - Friday, October 25, 2013 - link
The 780ti is going to be GK110 based, and should be out mid November so not sure where you're getting taped out? They'll push the clocks, enable another SMX cluster, and price it at or less than current gtx 780 prices. This of course is a good thing because it brings green team's pricing/performance inline with where it should've been at launch.JDG1980 - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
My prediction: The 780 Ti will have the same graphics specs as the original Titan, but will still have crippled GPGPU performance to maintain market segmentation. The new Titan will be the full GK110 chip with no parts disabled.AFQ - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
Since when does AnandTech started posting half-assed reviews?Ananke - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
Honestly, anything with price above PS4 is dead in the market. This is really impressive card, however they will likely sell couple thousand units and that's it. The fight is going to be in the $180-200 range, and I haven't seen anything substantial there yet. NVidia is great with GTX760 - sells a lot and the margins are great.p.p. I will most likely get R9-280X
piroroadkill - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
Uh, not sure what you're talking about.The R9 270X is basically a 7870 on steroids (faster clocks, faster RAM), and is widely available for $200.
The only NVIDIA card at that price is the 660. The 660 is crap in comparison to the 270X...
The cheapest 760 is $250. Outside of the range you yourself defined.
TheJian - Friday, October 25, 2013 - link
NV sold 100,000 Titans at $1000 in a few days with many more runs in the last 8months. AMD will likely sell at least a few hundred thousand. At the current price I'd expect a few 100K at least. This is $450 less than Titan and is pretty close (excluding heat, noise, watts). It will sell pretty well and I think they should have priced it $100 higher. NV wouldn't have needed to lower 780 and AMD would have made some real money for a change. Their pricing model seems to indicate they don't like making any money EVER.http://investing.money.msn.com/investments/financi...
10yr summary...6.5Billion lost in 10yrs. Think they need to charge a bit more for their products? I mean even a monkey would see - LOSS, LOSS, Billion LOSS, LOSS, multiBillion LOSS, LOSS etc...and say...Hmmm...We need to raise pricing or lose money forever...LOL.
althaz - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
I can see the first page of the article, but after that all I get on every page is "[work in progress]" instead of actual content.