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.
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Antiflash - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
I've usually prefer Nvidia Cards, but they have it well deserved when decided to price GK110 to the stratosphere just "because they can" and had no competition. That's poor way to treat your customers and taking advantage of fanboys. Full implementation of Tesla and Fermi were always priced around $500. Pricing Keppler GK110 at $650+ was stupid. It's silicon after all, you should get more performance for the same price each year. Not more performance at a premium price as Nvidia tried to do this generation. AMD is not doing anything extraordinary here they are just not following nvidia price gouging practices and $550 is their GPU at historical market prices for their flagship GPU. We would not have been having this discussion if Nvidia had done the same with GK110.blitzninja - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
OMG, why won't you people get it? The Titan is a COMPUTE-GAMING HYBRID card, it's for professionals who run PRO apps (ie. Adobe Media product line, 3D Modeling, CAD, etc) but are also gamers and don't want to have SLI setups for gaming + compute or they can't afford to do so.A Quadro card is $2500, this card has 1 less SMX unit and no PRO customer driver support but is $1000 and does both Gaming AND Compute, as far as low-level professionals are concerned this thing is the very definition of steal. Heck, you SLI two of these things and you're still up $500 from a K6000.
What usually happens is the company they work at will have Quadro workstations and at home the employee has a Titan. Sure it's not as good but it gets the job done until you get back to work.
Please check your shit. Everyone saying R9 290X--and yes I agree for gaming it's got some real good price/performance--destroys the Titan is ignorant and needs to do some good long research into:
A. How well the Titan sold
B. The size of the compute market and MISSING PRICE POINTS in said market.
C. The amount of people doing compute who are also avid gamers.
chimaxi83 - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
Impressive. This cards beats Nvidia on EVERY level! Price, performance, features, power..... every level. Nvidia paid the price for gouging it's customers, they are going to lose a ton of marketshare. I doubt they have anything to match this for at least a year.Berzerker7 - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
Sounds like a bot. The card is worse than a Titan on every point except high resolution (read: 4K), including power, temperature and noise.testbug00 - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
Er, the Titan beats it on being higher priced, looking nicer, having a better cooler and using less power.even in 1080p a 290x approxs ties (slightly ahead according to techpowerup (4%)) the Titan.
Well, a $550 card that can tie a $1000 card in a resolution a card that fast really shouldn't be bought for (seriously, if you are playing in 1200p or less there is no reason to buy any GPU over $400 unless you plan to ugprade screens soon)
Sancus - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
The Titan was a $1000 card when it was released.... 8 months ago. So for 8 months nvidia has had the fastest card and been able to sell it at a ridiculous price premium(even at $1000, supply of Titans was quite limited, so it's not like they would have somehow benefited from setting the price lower... in fact Titan would probably have made more money for Nvidia at an even HIGHER price).The fact that ATI is just barely matching Nvidia at regular resolutions and slightly beating them at 4k, 8 months later, is a baseline EXPECTATION. It's hardly an achievement. If they had released anything less than the 290X they would have completely embarrassed themselves.
And I should point out that they're heavily marketing 4k resolution for this card and yet frame pacing in Crossfire even with their 'fixes' is still pretty terrible, and if you are seriously planning to game at 4k you need Crossfire to be actually usable, which it has never really been.
anubis44 - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
The margin of victory for the R9 290X over the Titan at 4K resolutions is not 'slight', it's substantial. HardOCP says it's 10-15% faster on average. That's a $550 card that's 10-15% faster than a $1000 card.What was that about AMD being embarassed?
Sancus - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
By the time more than 1% of the people buying this card even have 4k monitors 20nm cards will have been on sale for months. Not only that but you would basically go deaf next to a Crossfire 290x setup which is what you need for 4k. And anyway, the 290x is faster only because it's been monstrously over clocked beyond the ability of its heatsink to cool it properly. 780/Titan are still far more viable 2/3/4 GPU cards because of their superior noise and power consumption.All 780s overclock to considerably faster than this card at ALL resolutions so the gtx 780ti is probably just an OCed 780, and it will outperform the 290x while still being 10db quieter.
DMCalloway - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
You mention monstrously OC'ing the 290x yet have no problem OC'ing the 780 in order to create a 780ti. Everyone knows that aftermarket coolers will keep the noise and temps. in check when released. Let's deal with the here and now, not speculate on future cards. Face it; AMD at least matches or beats a card costing $100 more which will cause Nvidia to launch the 780ti at less than current 780 prices.Sancus - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
You don't understand how pricing works. AMD is 8 months late to the game. They've released a card that is basically the GTX Titan, except it uses more than 50W more power and has a bargain basement heatsink. That's why it's $100 cheaper. Because AMD is the one who are far behind and the only way for them to compete is on price. They demonstrably can't compete purely based on performance, if the 290X was WAY better than the GTX Titan, AMD would have priced it higher because guess what, AMD needs to make a profit too -- and they consistently have lost money for years now.The company that completely owned the market to the point they could charge $1000 for a video card are the winners here, not the one that arrived out of breath at the finish line 8 months later.
I would love for AMD to be competitive *at a competitive time* so that we didn't have to pay $650 for a GTX 780, but the fact of the matter is that they're simply not.