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
GRID 2
The final game in our benchmark suite is also our racing entry, Codemasters’ GRID 2. Codemasters continues to set the bar for graphical fidelity in racing games, and with GRID 2 they’ve gone back to racing on the pavement, bringing to life cities and highways alike. Based on their in-house EGO engine, GRID 2 includes a DirectCompute based advanced lighting system in its highest quality settings, which incurs a significant performance penalty but does a good job of emulating more realistic lighting within the game world.
For as good looking as GRID 2 is, it continues to surprise us just how easy it is to run with everything cranked up, even the DirectCompute lighting system and MSAA (Forward Rendering for the win!). At 2560 the 290X has the performance advantage by 9%, but we are getting somewhat academic since it’s 80fps versus 74fps, placing both well above 60fps. Though 120Hz gamers may still find the gap of interest.
Moving up to 4K, we can still keep everything turned up including the MSAA, while pulling off respectable single-GPU framerates and great multi-GPU framerates. To no surprise at this point, the 290X further extends its lead at 4K to 21%, but as usually is the case you really want two GPUs here to get the best framerates. In which case the 290X CF is the runaway winner, achieving a scaling factor of 96% at 4K versus NVIDIA’s 47%, and 97% versus 57% at 2560. This means the GTX 780 SLI is going to fall just short of 60fps once more at 4K, leaving the 290X CF alone at 99fps.
Unfortunately for AMD their drivers coupled with GRID 2 currently blows a gasket when trying to use 4K @ 60Hz, as GRID 2 immediately crashes when trying to load with 4K/Eyefinity enabled. We can still test at 30Hz, but those stellar 4K framerates aren’t going to be usable for gaming until AMD and Codemasters get that bug sorted out.
Finally, it’s interesting to note that for the 290X this is the game where it gains the least on the 280X. The 290X performance advantage here is just 20%, 5% lower than any other game and 10% lower than the average. The framerates at 2560 are high enough that this isn’t quite as important as in other games, but it does show that the 290X isn’t always going to maintain that 30% lead over its predecessor.
Without any capturable 4K FCAT frametimes, we’re left with the delta percentages at 2560, which more so than any other game are simply not in AMD’s favor. The GTX 780 SLI is extremely consistent here, to the point of being almost absurdly so for a multi-GPU setup. 4% is the kind of variance we expect to find with a single-GPU setup, not something incorporating multiple GPUs. AMD on the other hand, though improving over the 280X by a few percent, is merely adequate at 17%. The low frame times will further reduce the real world impact of the difference between the GTX 780 SLI and 290X CF here, but this is another game AMD could stand some improvements, even if it costs AMD some of the 290X’s very strong CF scaling factor.
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Notmyusualid - Friday, October 25, 2013 - link
I have to admit the lower power consumption of the Titan would draw me in. Electricity costs are a joke in the UK now.Sancus - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
haha, awesome.hoboville - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
Great review Ryan, always in depth and insightful.One of the things I have noticed over the years is that, depending on the card (core count / TDP) the reference blower is rarely ever better than aftermarket coolers made by ASUS, EVGA, etc (anyone else confirm / deny?). That is to say they seem to provide both less cooling and more noise. My concern is that the 290X is hitting 90 degrees C. Some people who have warmer residences may find themselves having trouble. Hopefully AMD will let their partners start making custom coolers by Black Friday!
With regards to the price / performance, this reminds me of how the EVGA 780 Superclocked ACX (I think) blows away the Titan by being nearly as fast and so much cheaper. I've heard rumors that AMD may be extending their Never Settle Forever bundle to Hawaii, have you heard anything new about this? None the less, the value of an OC'd 780 would seem to be the same if the buyer were to Ebay off those game keys. Hopefully the 780 Ti will drop the 780 down to a reasonable price w/ game bundle, again giving us consumers more for our money.
Two quick questions: How well does the 290X do for Litecoin / BTC? Will the XFX 290R include Battlefield 4?
FriendlyUser - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
Great price and performance. Thanks for the timely review. I think this is a halo product, whose main role is to humiliate the Titan. The most interesting deal should be the 290 with a non-reference cooler.g00ey - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
Well it certainly killed my boxers, that's for sure...Thomas1016 - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
I bought a r9 290x this morning from Newegg. The bundled version is 579.00 the none bundled is 549.00 so the price that were quoted were in fact accurate.The one thing that does concern me a little is only having 1 fan on the card. But I also don't plan on tweeking it much if at all.
Shadowmaster625 - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
This gpu has such good memory bandwidth... so why dont they just shove 3 steamroller modules in there and slap on a southbridge and make it into an elite gaming PC motherboard? It wouldnt cost them much more than $100 extra to make this video card into a complete PC motherboard. The transistor count would only increase by 25%, so power would probably stay under 400W.Kevin G - Friday, October 25, 2013 - link
3 Steamroller modules would make the die size go beyond what is manufacturable. Three modules would add ~90 mm^2 to the 428 mm^2 dies without any support logic and before the south bridge was added. When all is said and done, the die size would likely be north of 600 mm^2.Power draw under full load would easily exceed 450W. The only way to move that much heat would be liquid cooling. Including the south bridge would add too many IO pins on top of an already large IO configuration.
labotsirc - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
Does anyone now if the 290X will support OpenCL 2.0, with the new dynamic parallelism feature?If yes, then i could buy 2 of these instead of one Titan, which does support this feature.
kyuu - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
The conclusion here is that this is a great card at a great price, but you should wait for custom cooling solutions since the reference cooler is inadequate. Unless you are going to build your own cooling solution or simply MUST have the fastest single-GPU card right now.