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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Sandcat - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
Perhaps they knew it was unsustainable from the beginning, but short term gains are generally what motivate managers when the develop pricing strategies, because bonus. Make hay whilst the sun shines, or when AMD is 8 months late.chizow - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
Possibly, but now they have to deal with the damaged goodwill of some of their most enthusiastic, spendy customers. I can't count how many times I've seen it, someone saying they swore off company X or company Y because they felt they got burned/screwed/fleeced by a single transaction. That is what Nvidia will be dealing with going forward with Titan early adopters.Sancus - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
AMD really needs to do better than a response 8 months later to crash anyone's parade. And honestly, I would love to see them put up a fight with Maxwell at a reasonable time period so they have incentive to keep prices lower. Otherwise, expect Nvidia to "overprice" things next generation as well.When they have no competition for 8 months it's not unsustainable to price as high as the market will bear, and there's no real evidence that Titan was economically overpriced because it's not like there was a supply glut of Titans sitting around anywhere, in fact they were often out of stock. So really, Nvidia is just pricing according to the market -- no competition from AMD for 8 months, fastest card with limited supply, why WOULD they price it at anything below $1000?
chizow - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
My reply would be that they've never had to price it at $1000 before, and we have certainly seen this level of advancement from one generation to the next in the past (7900GTX to 8800GTX, 8800GTX to GTX 280, 280 GTX to 480 GTX, etc), so it's not completely ground-breaking performance increases even though Kepler overall outperformed historical improvements by ~20%, imo.Also, the concern with Titan isn't just the fact it was priced at ungodly premiums this time around, it's the fact it held it's crown for such a relatively short period of time. Sure Nvidia had no competition at the $500+ range for 8 months, but that was also the brevity of Titan's reign at the top. In the past, a flagship in that $500 or $600+ range would generally reign for the entire generation, especially one that was launched half way through that generation's life cycle. Now Nvidia has already announced a reply with the 780 Ti which will mean not one, but TWO cards will surpass Titan at a fraction of it's price before the generation goes EOL.
Nvidia was clearly blind-sided by Hawaii and ultimately it will cost them customer loyalty, imo.
ZeDestructor - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
$1000 cards are fine, since the Titan is a cheap compute unit compared to the Quadro K6000 and the 690 is a dual-GPU card (Dual-GPU has always been in the $800+ range).What we should see is the 780 (Ti?) go down in price and match the R9-290x, much to the rejoicing of all!
Nvidia got away with $650-750 on the 780 because they could, and THAT is why competition is important, and why I pay attention to AMD even if I have no reason to buy from them over Nvidia (driver support on Linux is a joke). Now they have to match. Much of the same happens in the CPU segement.
chizow - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
For those that actually bought the Titan as a cheap compute card, sure Titan may have been a good buy, but I doubt most Titan buyers were buying it for compute. It was marketed as a gaming card with supercomputer guts and at the time, there was still much uncertainty whether or not Nvidia would release a GTX gaming card based on GK110.I think Nvidia preyed on these fears and took the opportunity to launch a $1K part, but I knew it was an unsustainable business model for them because it was predicated on the fact Nvidia would be an entire ASIC ahead of AMD and able to match AMD's fastest ASIC (Tahiti) with their 2nd fastest (GK104). Clearly Hawaii has turned that idea on it's head and Nvidia's premium product stack is crashing down in flames.
Now, we will see at least 4 cards (290/290X, 780/780Ti) that all come close to or exceed Titan performance at a fraction of the price, only 8 months after it's launch. Short reign indeed.
TheJian - Friday, October 25, 2013 - link
The market dictates pricing. As they said, they sell every Titan immediately, so they could probably charge more. But that's because it has more value than you seem to understand. It is a PRO CARD at it's core. Are you unaware of what a TESLA is for $2500? It's the same freaking card with 1 more SMX and driver support. $1000 is GENEROUS whether you like it or not. Gamers with PRO intentions laughed when they saw the $1000 price and have been buying them like mad ever since. No parade has been crashed. They will continue to do this pricing model for the foreseeable future as they have proven there is a market for high-end gamers with a PRO APP desire on top. The first run was 100,000 and sold in days. By contrast Asus Rog Ares 2 had 1000 unit first run and didn't sell out like that. At $1500 it really was a ripoff with no PRO side.I think they'll merely need another SMX turned on and 50-100mhz for the next $1000 version which likely comes before xmas :) The PRO perf is what is valued here over a regular card. Your short-lived statement makes no sense. It's been 8 months, a rather long life in gpus when you haven't beaten the 8 month old card in much (I debunked 4k crap already, and pointed to a dozen other games where titan wins at every res). You won't fire up Blender, Premiere, PS CS etc and smoke a titan with 290x either...LOL. You'll find out what the other $450 is for at that point.
chizow - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
Yes and as soon as they released the 780, the market corrected itself and Titans were no longer sold out anywhere, clearly a shift indicating the price of the 780 was really what the market was willing to bear.Also, there are more differences with their Tesla counterparts than just 1 SMX, Titan lacks ECC support which makes it an unlikely candidate for serious compute projects. Titan is good for hobby compute, anything serious business or research related is going to spend the extra for Tesla and ECC.
And no, 8-months is not a long time at the top, look at the reigns of previous high-end parts and you will see it is generally longer than this. Even the 580 that preceded it held sway for 14-months before Tahiti took over it's spot. Time at the top is just one part though, the amount which Titan devalued is the bigger concern. When 780 launched 3 months after Titan, you could maybe sell Titan for $800. Now that Hawaii has launched, you could maybe sell it for $700? It's only going to keep going down, what do you think it will sell for once 780Ti beats it outright for $650 or less?
Sandcat - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
I noticed your comments on the Tahiti pricing fiasco 2 years ago and generally skip through the comment section to find yours because they're top notch. Exactly what I was thinking with the $550 price point, finally a top-tier card at the right price for 28nm. Long live sanity.chizow - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
Thanks! Glad you appreciated the comments, I figured this business model and pricing for Nvidia would be unsustainable, but I thought it wouldn't fall apart until we saw 20nm Maxwell/Pirate Islands parts in 2014. Hawaii definitely accelerated the downfall of Titan and Nvidia's $1K eagle's nest.