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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Deaks2 - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
Hi Ryan,While I can appreciate the hard work put into the review, just putting up the charts without the explainer pieces is confusing. I had to read HardOCP's review to know what Uber was, your section on Powertune was a work in progress. Also, reading the temperature information was shocking, until, again, I read the relevant section of the HardOCP review and learned that the cards will operate at 95 deg C in order to reduce fan noise.
Also, a comparison to the 7990, the current single-slot performance king, would have been useful, since the R9 290x and 7990 are currently priced similarly. Thankfully, TechSpot included the 7990 and various 7970 and 7950 CF configurations in their review.
As usual, I came to this site first to read the review, but had to go elsewhere to get the context to the charts that you presented.
Thanks!
BryanC - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
Actually, I value your commentary more than the charts, which to be honest are similar to the other charts out there. =)anubis44 - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
Oh, I'm here for the crafty journalism and the witty banter in the discussion thread :)Seriously, thanks for going the extra mile with the crossfire and FCAT data, Ryan. Much appreciated. Any word on custom cards and the R9 290 (as opposed to the 290X) would also be greatly appreciated. The R9 290 may be my next card.
jeremynsl - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
I don't mean to rag on you guys (up late working and all), but it is unprofessional to post unfinished reviews like this. Full stop.I know you have made commitments to hit embargo dates, but is it really worth compromising article quality to this degree? I mean, even if only 10% of readers see it in the unfinished state it's pretty bad. I would not be ok with this, if it was my site and/or my writing.
ZeDestructor - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
Like quite a few other people, I would rather read the technical breakdown rather than the benchmark results. If I only cared about benchmark results, I would go around compiling results from several sites to account for configuration differences.It really boils down to preferring a complete review over a performance review. For performance there's the bench tool already, which is far more useful since I can filter out all the irrelevant results
Ryan Smith - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Hi guys;Your comments have been heard, so please don't think they're falling on deaf ears.
Frankly we're no more happy about this than the rest of you are, which is why we try to avoid something like this if at all possible. But in this case we can't do a meaningful write-up without the benchmark data, so there's really no getting around it in this case.
The final article ended up being a hair over 22K words. That would normally be a week-long writing job, never mind the benchmarking (new GPU + CF). So I hope if nothing else the belatedly complete article is up to your standards as our readers.
Black Obsidian - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
I would definitely agree that the complete article is up to the standards I've come to expect from Anandtech.But I would also much prefer to wait an extra day or two for the complete article, rather than get the "fill in the blanks" that the 290X review started out as. I come to Anandtech for the in-depth analysis; if that's not available when I click on the article in the first place, I'm less inclined to even bother.
Stuka87 - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
Incredible bang for the buck card. $550 is a chunk of money yes, but compared to the competition its a steal!tential - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
Jumped to Final Words and it's a work in Progress...That's my favorite part and it's the one I real first!!!!
nooooo.
Elixer - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
Looks like nice card...No wonder the green team got their panties in a bind.