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
Metro: Last Light
As always, kicking off our look at performance is 4A Games’ latest entry in their Metro series of subterranean shooters, Metro: Last Light. The original Metro: 2033 was a graphically punishing game for its time and Metro: Last Light is in its own right too. On the other hand it scales well with resolution and quality settings, so it’s still playable on lower end hardware.
For the bulk of our analysis we’re going to be focusing on our 2560x1440 results, as monitors at this resolution will be what we expect the 290X to be primarily used with. A single 290X may have the horsepower to drive 4K in at least some situations, but given the current costs of 4K monitors that’s going to be a much different usage scenario.
With that said, for focusing on 4K on most games we’ve thrown in results both at a high quality setting, and a lower quality setting that makes it practical to run at 4K off of a single card. Given current monitor prices it won’t make a ton of sense to try to go with reduced quality settings just to save $550 – and consequently we may not keep the lower quality benchmarks around for future articles – but for the purposes of looking at a new GPU it’s useful to be able to look at single-GPU performance at framerates that are actually playable.
With that said, starting off with Metro at 2560 the 290X hits the ground running on our first benchmark. At 55fps it’s just a bit shy of hitting that 60fps average we love to cling to, but among all of our single-GPU cards it is the fastest, beating even the traditional powerhouse that is GTX Titan. Consequently the performance difference between 290X and GTX 780 (290X’s real competition) is even greater, with the 290X outpacing the GTX 780 by 13%, all the while being $100 cheaper. As we’ll see these results are a bit better than the overall average, but all told we’re not too far off. For as fast as GTX 780 is, 290X is going to be appreciably (if not significantly) faster.
290X also does well for itself compared to the Tahiti based 280X. At 2560 the 290X’s performance advantage stands at 31%, which as we alluded to earlier is greater than the increase in die size, offering solid proof that AMD has improved their performance per mm2 of silicon despite the fact that they’re still on the same 28nm manufacturing process. That 31% does come at a price increase of 83% however, which although normal for this price segment serves as a reminder that the performance increases offered by the fastest video cards with the biggest GPUs do not come cheaply.
Meanwhile for one final AMD comparison, let’s quickly look at the 290X in uber mode. As the 290X is unable to sustain the power/heat workload of a 1000MHz Hawaii GPU for an extended period of time, at its stock (quiet settings) it has to pull back on performance in order to meet reasonable operational parameters. Uber mode on the other hand represents what 290X and the Hawaii can do when fully unleashed; the noise costs won’t be pretty (as we’ll see), but in the process it builds on 290X’s existing leads and increases them by another 5%. And that’s really going to be one of the central narratives for 290X once semi-custom and fully-custom cards come online: Despite being a fully enabled part, 290X does not give us everything Hawaii is truly capable of.
Moving on, let’s talk about multi-GPU setups and 4K. Metro is a solid reminder that not every game scales similarly across different GPUs, and for that matter that not every game is going to significantly benefit from multi-GPU setups. Metro for its part isn’t particularly hospitable to multi-GPU cards, with the best setup scaling by only 53% at 2560. This is better than some games that won’t scale at all, but it won’t be as good as those games that see a near-100% performance improvement. Which consequently is also why we dropped Metro as a power benchmark, as this level of scaling is a poor showcase for the power/temp/noise characteristics of a pair of video cards under full load.
The real story here of course is that it’s another strong showing for AMD at both 2560 and 4K. At 2560 the 290X CF sees better performance scaling than the GTX 780 SLI – 53% versus 41% – further extending the 290X’s lead. Bumping the resolution up to 4K makes things even more lopsided in AMD’s favor, as at this point the NVIDIA cards essentially fail to scale (picking up just 17%) while the 290X sees an even greater scaling factor of 63%. As such for those few who can afford to seriously chase 4K gaming, the 290X is the only viable option in this scenario. And at 50fps average for 4K at high quality, 4K gaming at reasonable (though not maximum) quality settings is in fact attainable when it comes to Metro.
Meanwhile for single-GPU configurations at 4K, 4K is viable, but only at Metro’s lowest quality levels. This will be the first of many games where such a thing is possible, and the first of many games where going up to 4K in this manner further improves on AMD’s lead at 4K. Again, we’re not of the opinion that 4K at these low quality settings is a good way to play games, but it does provide some insight and validationg into AMD’s claims that their hardware is better suited for 4K gaming.
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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.