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
Company of Heroes 2
Our second benchmark in our benchmark suite is Relic Games’ Company of Heroes 2, the developer’s World War II Eastern Front themed RTS. For Company of Heroes 2 Relic was kind enough to put together a very strenuous built-in benchmark that was captured from one of the most demanding, snow-bound maps in the game, giving us a great look at CoH2’s performance at its worst. Consequently if a card can do well here then it should have no trouble throughout the rest of the game.
Our first strategy game is also our first game that is flat out AFR incompatible, and as a result the only way to get the best performance out of Company of Heroes 2 is with the fastest single-GPU card available. To that end this is a very clear victory for the 290X, and in fact will be the largest lead for the 290X of all of our benchmarks. At 2560 it’s a full 29% faster than the GTX 780, which all but puts the 290X in a class of its own. This game also shows some of the greatest gains for the 290X over the 280X, with the 290X surpassing its Tahti based predecessor by an equally chart topping 41%. It’s not clear what it is at this time that Company of Heroes 2 loves about 290X in particular, but as far as this game is concerned AMD has put together an architecture that maps well to the game’s needs.
Briefly, because of a lack of AFR compatibility 4K is only barely attainable with any kind of GPU setup. In fact we’re only throwing in the scale-less SLI/CF numbers to showcase that fact. We had to dial down our quality settings to Low on CoH2 in order to get a framerate above 30fps; even though we can be more liberal about playable framerates on strategy games, there still needs to be a cutoff for average framerates around that point. As a result 280X, GTX Titan, and 290X are the only cards to make that cutoff, with 290X being the clear winner. But the loss in quality to make 4K achievable is hardly worth the cost.
Moving on to minimum framerates, we see that at its most stressful points that nothing, not even 290X, can keep its minimums above 30fps. For a strategy game this is bearable, but we certainly wouldn’t mind more performance. AMD will be pleased though, as their performance advantage over the GTX 780 is only further extended here; a 29% average performance advantage becomes a 43% minimum performance advantage at 2560.
Finally, while we don’t see any performance advantages from AFR on this game we did run our FCAT benchmarks anyhow to quickly capture the delta percentages. Company of Heroes 2 has a higher than average variance even among single cards, which results in deltas being above 5%. The difference between 5% and 7% is not going to be too significant in practice here, but along with AMD’s performance advantage they do have slightly more consistent frame times than the GTX 780. Though in both the case of the 280X and the 290X we’re looking at what are essentially the same deltas, so while the 290X improves on framerates versus the 280X, it doesn’t bring with it any improvements in frame time consistency.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
396 Comments
View All Comments
ninjaquick - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
so 4-5% faster than Titan?Drumsticks - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
If the 780Ti is $599, then that means the 780 should see at least a $150 (nearly 25%!) price drop, which is good with me.DMCalloway - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
So, what you are telling me is Nvidia is going to stop laughing- all- the- way- to-the-bank and price the 780ti for less than current 780 prices? Current 780 owners are going to get HOT and flood the market with used 780's.dragonsqrrl - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
Why is it that this is only ever the case when Nvidia performs a massive price drop? Nvidia price drop = early adopters getting screwed (even though 780 has been out for ~6 months now). AMD price drop = great value for enthusiasts, go AMD! ... lolz.Minion4Hire - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
Titan is a COMPUTE card. A poor man's (relatively speaking) proper compute solution. The fact that it is also a great gaming card is almost incidental. No one needs a 6GB frame buffer for gaming right now. The Titan comparisons are nearly meaningless.The "nearly" part is the unknown 780 TI. Nvidia could enable the remaining CUs on 780 to at least give the TI comparable performance to Titan. But who cares that Titan is $1000? It isn't really relevant.
ddriver - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
Even much cheaper radeons compeltely destroy the titan as well as every other nvidia gpu in compute, do not be fooled by a single, poorly implemented test, the nvidia architecture plainly sucks in double precision performance.ShieTar - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
Since "much cheaper" Radeons tend to deliver 1/16th DP performance, you seem to not really know what you are talking about. Go read up on a relevant benchmark suite on professional and compute cards, e.g. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-workstati... The only tasks where AMD cards shine are those implemented in OpenCL.ddriver - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
"Much cheaper" relative to the price of the titan, not entry level radeons... You clutched onto a straw and drowned...OpenCL is THE open and portable industry standard for parallel computing, did you expect radeons to shine at .. CUDA workloads LOL, I'd say OpenCL performance is all I really need, it has been a while since I played or cared about games.
Pontius - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
I'm in the same boat as you ddriver, all I care about is OpenCL in these articles. I go straight to that section usually =)TheJian - Friday, October 25, 2013 - link
You're neglecting the fact that everything you can do professionally in openCL you can already do faster in cuda. Cuda is taught in 600+ universities for a reason. It is in over 200 pro apps and has been funded for 7+yrs unlike opencl which is funded by a broke company hoping people will catch on one day :) Anandtech refuses to show cuda (gee they do have an AMD portal after all...LOL) but it exists and is ultra fast. You really can't name a pro app that doesn't have direct support or support via plugin for Cuda. And if you're buying NV and running opencl instead of cuda (like anand shows calling it compute crap) you're an idiot. Why don't they run Premiere instead of Sony crap for video editing? Because Cuda works great for years in it. Same with Photoshop etc...You didn't look at folding@home DP benchmark here in this review either I guess. 2.5x faster than 290x. As you can see it depends on what you do and the app you use. I consider F@H stupid use of electricity but that's just me...LOL. Find anything where OpenCL (or any AMD stuff, directx, opengl) beats CUDA. Compute doesn't just mean OpenCL, it means CUDA too! Dumb sites just push openCL because its OPEN...LOL. People making money use CUDA and generally buy quadro or tesla (they own 90% of the market for a reason, or people would just buy radeons right?).
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7457/the-radeon-r9-2...
DP in F@H here. Titan sort of wins right? 2.5x or so over 290x :) It's comic both here and toms uses a bunch of junk synthetic crap (bitmining, Asics do that now, basemark junk, F@H, etc) to show how good AMD is, but forget you can do real work with Cuda (heck even bitmining can be done with cuda)
When you say compute, I think CUDA, not opencl on NV. As soon as you toss in Cuda the compute story changes completely. Unfortunately even Toms refuses to pit OpenCL vs. Cuda just like here at anandtech (but that's because both love OpenCL and hate proprietary stuff). But at least they show you in ShieTar's link (which craps out, remove the . at the end of the link) that Titan kills even the top quadro cards (it's a Tesla remember for $1500 off). It's 2x+ faster than quadro's in almost everything they tested. So yeah, Titan is very worth it for people who do PRO stuff AND game.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-workstati...
For the lazy, fixed ShieTar's link.
All these sites need to do is fire up 3dsmax, cinema4d, Blender, adobe (pick your app, After Effect, Premiere, Photoshop) and pit Cuda vs. OpenCL. Just pick an opencl plugin for AMD (luxrender) and Octane/furryball etc for NV then run the tests. Does AMD pay all these sites to NOT do this? I comment and ask on every workstation/vid card article etc at toms, they never respond...LOL. They run pure cuda, then pure opencl, but act like they never meet. They run crap like basemark for photo/video editing opencl junk (you can't make money on that), instead of running adobe and choosing opencl(or directx/opengl) for AMD and Cuda for NV. Anandtech runs Sony Vegas which a quick google shows has tons of problems with NV. Heck pit Sony/AMD vs. Adobe/NV. You can run the same tests in both on video, though it would be better to just use adobe for both but they won't do that until AMD gets done optimizing for the next rev...ROFL. Can't show AMD in a bad light here...LOL. OpenCL sucks compared to Cuda (proprietary or not...just the truth).