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
Crysis 3
Still one of our most punishing benchmarks, Crysis 3 needs no introduction. With Crysis 3, Crytek has gone back to trying to kill computers and still holds “most punishing shooter” title in our benchmark suite. Only in a handful of setups can we even run Crysis 3 at its highest (Very High) settings, and that’s still without AA. Crysis 1 was an excellent template for the kind of performance required to drive games for the next few years, and Crysis 3 looks to be much the same for 2013.
Much like Battlefield 3, at 2560 it’s a neck and neck race between the 290X and the GTX 780. At 52fps neither card stands apart, and in traditional Crysis fashion neither card is fast enough to pull off 60fps here – never mind the fact that we’re not even at the highest quality levels.
Meanwhile if we bump up the resolution to 4K, things get ugly, both in the literal and figurative senses. Even at the game’s lowest quality settings neither card can get out of the 40s, though as usual the 290X pulls ahead in performance at this resolution.
As such, for 60fps+ on Crysis 3 we’ll have to resort to AFR, which gives us some interesting results depending on which resolution we’re looking at. For 2560 it’s actually the GTX 780 SLI that pulls ahead, beating the 290X in scaling. However at 4K it’s the 290X CF that pulls ahead, enjoying a 53% scaling factor to the GTX 780’s 40%. Interestingly both cards see a reduction in scaling factors here versus 2560, despite the fact that both cards are having no problem reaching full utilization. Something about Crysis 3, most likely the sheer workload the game throws out at our GPUs, is really bogging things down at 4K. Though to AMD’s credit despite the poorer scaling factor at 4K the 290X CF in uber mode is just fast enough to hit 60fps at Medium quality, and not a frame more.
Moving on to our look at delta percentages, all of our AFR setups are acceptable here, but nothing is doing well. 20-21% variance is the order of the day, a far cry from the 1-2% variance of single card setups. This is one of those games where both vendors need to do their homework, as we’re going to be seeing a lot more of CryEngine 3 over the coming years.
As for 4K, things are no better but at least they’re no worse.
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SolMiester - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
There is no way Origin PC or any other OEM would want to put this reference card in there systems..I cant wait to see RMA stats with this card...AMD blew the card after such a great GPU...how many times will they do this?polaco - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
This is an interesting article too for gamers that are looking for 4K:http://www.legitreviews.com/amd-radeon-r9-290x-vs-...
dwade123 - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
All this shows is that GTX Titan is one efficient card. Better than both GTX 780 and AMD's offerings.ehpexs - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
Looks like AMD is a gen away from offereding a crossfire solution that can max out my triple crossovers @ 7680x1440Th-z - Sunday, October 27, 2013 - link
It seems AMD is pushing 290X really hard, to the point beyond its efficiency curve to try to win over larger chips with almost 1B more transistors from Nvidia. I wonder if reducing some ROPs and dedicate more die area to shader core may look like to 290X, or to go all in, designing a chip as large as Nvidia's top parts.Ytterbium - Sunday, October 27, 2013 - link
I'm sad they've gone to 1/8th FP, the 280X is a better compute card!Animalosity - Sunday, October 27, 2013 - link
Why can't people just accept that AMD has beaten Nvidia in every shape and form this time. Yeah, its always been back and forth. And it will again in the future, but for now AMD has the crown for everything except for power/sound levels. Keep in mind that not only does AMD own both next gen consoles, they are also running every one of these benchmarks on beta drivers which means that they will only continue to get better. Add mantle to the equation and Titan will have absolutely zero purpose in life. It was a good card. RIP Kepler.Vortac - Sunday, October 27, 2013 - link
Well, let's point out again that Titan has a much better FP64 performance, approx. 2.5x better than 290X, so "absolutely zero purpose" is not entirely correct. Of course, if you don't care about computing, then obviously 290X is a much better choice now.Luke7 - Sunday, October 27, 2013 - link
Are you talking about this?http://www.sisoftware.co.uk/?d=qa&f=gpu_financ...
Vortac - Sunday, October 27, 2013 - link
In this interesting review Titan is pitted against 7970 which has 1/4 FP64 performance and is indeed very good for double precision calculations, especially with OpenCL. 290X has 1/8 FP64 and its double precision performance is worse than 7970, leaving Titan with some space to breathe.