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
A Bit More On Graphics Core Next 1.1
With the launch of Hawaii, AMD is finally opening up a bit more on what Graphics Core Next 1.1 entails. No, they still aren’t giving us an official name – most references to GCN 1.1 are noting that 290X (Hawaii) and 260X (Bonaire) are part of the same IP pool – but now that AMD is in a position where they have their new flagship out they’re at least willing to discuss the official feature set.
So what does it mean to be Graphics Core Next 1.1? As it turns out, the leaked “AMD Sea Islands Instruction Set Architecture” from February appears to be spot on. Naming issues with Sea Islands aside, everything AMD has discussed as being new architecture features in Hawaii (and therefore also in Bonaire) previously showed up in that document.
As such the bulk of the changes that come with GCN 1.1 are compute oriented, and clearly are intended to play into AMD’s plans for HSA by adding features that are especially useful for the style of heterogeneous computing AMD is shooting for.
The biggest change here is support for flat (generic) addressing support, which will be critical to enabling effective use of pointers within a heterogeneous compute context. Coupled with that is a subtle change to how the ACEs (compute queues) work, allowing GPUs to have more ACEs and more queues in each ACE, versus the hard limit of 2 we’ve seen in Southern Islands. The number of ACEs is not fixed – Hawaii has 8 while Bonaire only has 2 – but it means it can be scaled up for higher-end GPUs, console APUs, etc. Finally GCN 1.1 also introduces some new instructions, including a Masked Quad Sum of Absolute Differences (MQSAD) and some FP64 floor/ceiling/truncation vector functions.
Along with these architectural changes, there are a couple of other hardware features that at this time we feel are best lumped under the GCN 1.1 banner when talking about PC GPUs, as GCN 1.1 parts were the first parts to introduce this features and every GCN 1.1 part (at least thus) far has that feature. AMD’s TrueAudio would be a prime example of this, as both Hawaii and Bonaire have integrated TrueAudio hardware, with AMD setting clear expectations that we should also see TrueAudio on future GPUs and future APUs.
AMD’s Crossfire XDMA engine is another feature that is best lumped under the GCN 1.1 banner. We’ll get to the full details of its operation in a bit, but the important part is that it’s a hardware level change (specifically an addition to their display controller functionality) that’s once again present in Hawaii and Bonaire, although only Hawaii is making full use of it at this time.
Finally we’d also roll AMD’s power management changes into the general GCN 1.1 family, again for the basic reasons listed above. AMD’s new Serial VID interface (SIV2), necessary for the large number of power states Hawaii and Bonaire support and the fast switching between them, is something that only shows up starting with GCN 1.1. AMD has implemented power management a bit differently in each product from an end user perspective – Bonaire parts have the states but lack the fine grained throttling controls that Hawaii introduces – but the underlying hardware is identical.
With that in mind, that’s a short but essential summary of what’s new with GCN 1.1. As we noted way back when Bonaire launched as the 7790, the underlying architecture isn’t going through any massive changes, and as such the differences are of primarily of interest to programmers more than end users. But they are distinct differences that will play an important role as AMD gears up to launch HSA next year. Consequently what limited fracturing there is between GCN 1.0 and GCN 1.1 is primarily due to the ancillary features, which unlike the core architectural changes are going to be of importance to end users. The addition of XDMA, TrueAudio, and improved power management (SIV2) are all small features on their own, but they are features that make GCN 1.1 a more capable, more reliable, and more feature-filled design than GCN 1.0.
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kyuu - Friday, October 25, 2013 - link
I agree. Ignore at all the complainers; it's great to have the benchmark data available without having to wait for all the rest of the article to be complete. Those who don't want anything at all until it's 100% done can always just come back later.AnotherGuy - Friday, October 25, 2013 - link
What a beastzodiacsoulmate - Friday, October 25, 2013 - link
Donno, all the geforce cards looks like sh!t in this review, and 280x/7970 290x looks like haven's god...but my 6990 7970 never really make me happier than my gtx 670 system...
well, whatever
TheJian - Friday, October 25, 2013 - link
While we have a great card here, it appears it doesn't always beat 780, and gets toppled consistently by Titan in OTHER games:http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/R9_290X/24....
World of Warcraft (spanked again all resolutions by both 780/titan even at 5760x1080)
Splinter Cell Blacklist (smacked by 780 even, of course titan)
StarCraft 2 (by both 780/titan, even 5760x1080)
Titan adds more victories (780 also depending on res, remember 98.75% of us run 1920x1200 or less):
Skyrim (all res, titan victory at techpowerup) Ooops, 780 wins all res but 1600p also skyrim.
Assassins creed3, COD Black Ops2, Diablo3, FarCry3 (though uber ekes a victory at 1600p, reg gets beat handily in fc3, however hardocp shows 780 & titan winning apples-apples min & avg, techspot shows loss to 780/titan also in fc3)
Hardocp & guru3d both show Bioshock infinite, Crysis 3 (titan 10% faster all res) and BF3 winning on Titan. Hardocp also show in apples-apples Tombraider and MetroLL winning on titan.
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/radeon_r9_290...
http://hardocp.com/article/2013/10/23/amd_radeon_r...
http://techreport.com/review/25509/amd-radeon-r9-2...
Guild wars 2 at techreport win for both 780/titan big also (both over 12%).
Also tweaktown shows lost planet 2 loss to the lowly 770, let alone 780/titan.
I guess there's a reason why most of these quite popular games are NOT tested here :)
So while it's a great card, again not overwhelming and quite the loser depending on what you play. In UBER mode as compared above I wouldn't even want the card (heat, noise, watts loser). Down it to regular and there are far more losses than I'm listing above to 780 and titan especially. Considering the overclocks from all sites, you are pretty much getting almost everything in uber mode (sites have hit 6-12% max for OCing, I think that means they'll be shipping uber as OC cards, not much more). So NV just needs to kick up 780TI which should knock out almost all 290x uber wins, and just make the wins they already have even worse, thus keeping $620-650 price. Also drop 780 to $500-550 (they do have great games now 3 AAA worth $100 or more on it).
Looking at 1080p here (a res 98.75% of us play at 1920x1200 or lower remember that), 780 does pretty well already even at anandtech. Most people playing above this have 2 cards or more. While you can jockey your settings around all day per game to play above 1920x1200, you won't be MAXING much stuff out at 1600p with any single card. It's just not going to happen until maybe 20nm (big maybe). Most of us don't have large monitors YET or 1600p+ and I'm guessing all new purchases will be looking at gsync monitors now anyway. Very few of us will fork over $550 and have the cash for a new 1440p/1600p monitor ALSO. So a good portion of us would buy this card and still be 1920x1200 or lower until we have another $550-700 for a good 1440/1600p monitor (and I say $550+ since I don't believe in these korean junk no-namers and the cheapest 1440p newegg itself sells is $550 acer). Do you have $1100 in your pocket? Making that kind of monitor investment right now I wait out Gsync no matter what. If they get it AMD compatible before 20nm maxwell hits, maybe AMD gets my money for a card. Otherwise Gsync wins hands down for NV for me. I have no interest in anything but a Gsync monitor at this point and a card that works with it.
Guru3D OC: 1075/6000
Hardwarecanucks OC: 1115/5684
Hardwareheaven OC: 1100/5500
PCPerspective OC: 1100/5000
TweakTown OC: 1065/5252
TechpowerUp OC: 1125/6300
Techspot OC: 1090/6400
Bit-tech OC: 1120/5600
Left off direct links to these sites regarding OCing but I'm sure you can all figure out how to get there (don't want post flagged as spam with too many links).
b3nzint - Friday, October 25, 2013 - link
"So NV just needs to kick up 780TI which should knock out almost all 290x uber wins, and just make the wins they already have even worse, thus keeping $620-650 price. Also drop 780 to $500-550"we're talking about titan killer here.
titan vs titan killer, at res 3840, at high or ultra :
coh2 - 30%
metro - 30%
bio - (10%) but win 3% at medium
bf3 - 15%
crysis 3 - tie
crysis - 10
totalwar - tie
hitman - 20%
grid 2 - 10%+
2816 sp, 64rop, 176tmu, 4gb 512bit. 780 or 780ti won't stand a chance. this is titan killer dude wake up. only then then we're talking CF, SLi and res 5760. But for single card i go for this titan killer. good luck with gsync, im not gave up my dell u2711 yet.
just4U - Friday, October 25, 2013 - link
Well.. you have to put this in context. Those guys gave it their editor's choice award and a overall score of 9.3 They summed it up with this.."
The real highlight of AMD's R9 290X is certainly the price. What has been rumored to cost around $700 (and got people excited at that price), will actually retail for $549! $549 is an amazing price for this card, making it the price/performance king in the high-end segment. NVIDIA's $1000 GTX Titan is completely irrelevant now, even the GTX 780 with its $625 price will be a tough sale."
theuglyman0war - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
the flagship gtx *80 $msrp has been $499 for every upgrade I have ever made. After waiting out the 104 fer the 110 chip only to have the insult of the previous 780 pricing meant I will be holding off to see if everything returns to normal with Maxwell. Kind of depressing when others are excited for $550? As far as I know the market still dictates pricing and my price iz $499 if AMD is offering up decent competition to keep the market healthy and respectful.ToTTenTranz - Friday, October 25, 2013 - link
How isn't this viral?nader21007 - Friday, October 25, 2013 - link
Radeon R9 290X received Tom’s Hardware’s Elite award—the first time a graphics card has received this honor. Nvidia: Why?Wiseman: Because it Outperformed a card that is nearly double it's price (your Titan).
Do you hear me Nvidia? Please don't gouge consumers again.
Viva AMD.
doggghouse - Friday, October 25, 2013 - link
I don't think the Titan was ever considered to be a gamer's card... it was more like "prosumer" card for compute. But it was also marketed to people who build EXTREME! machines for maximum OC scores. The 780 was basically the gamer's card... it has 90-95% of the Titan's gaming capability, but for only $650 (still expensive).If you want to compare the R9 290X to the Titan, I would look at the compute benchmarks. And in that, it seems to be an apples to oranges comparison... AMD and nVIDIA seem to trade blows depending on the type of compute.
Compared to the 780, the 290X pretty much beats it hands down in performance. If I hadn't already purchased a 780 last month ($595 yay), I would consider the 290X... though I'd definitely wait for 3rd party cards with better heat solutions. A stock card on "Uber" setting is simply way too hot, and too loud!