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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
396 Comments
View All Comments
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.