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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SirRaulo - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
Game changer!A faster card and $100 cheaper... even an nvidia fanboy would know the difference.... wait, a fanboy wouldnt... too bad.
willis936 - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
The game has changed twice a year for the past 20 years. If the change isn't changing one could argue that the game is staying the same.apaceeee - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
Er...I don't think so ..polaco - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
I have seen you used AMD Catalyst 13.11 (Beta 5) in the 290X benchmarks. Maybe would be nice if you can post some with the updated revision as they say to improve performance from 8% to 30% in several games.http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/lat...
Thanks!
Ryan Smith - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
Those are versus Catalyst 13.9. There are no performance improvements in our game set between 13.11 v5 and v6.polaco - Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - link
Oh, ok if you say so. I got confused coz in one place it states that explicitly and in the other does not."Performance improvements for the AMD APU Series (comparing AMD Catalyst 13.11 Beta6 to AMD Catalyst 13.9)" in the other place doesn't make that clarification just
"Performance improvements"
wiyosaya - Wednesday, October 30, 2013 - link
Personally, I think it would have been interesting to see a GTX 580 thrown in for the compute benchmarks.rogerthat1945 - Thursday, October 31, 2013 - link
The ASUS GTX 780 went up in price $120+ USD for me last night when I was expecting a price drop thids morning.Last week (and all last month at least, the ASUS GTX 780 price was around $745 USD (in Yen) on Amazon Jp.
I put one in my shoping basket, and browsed some more for extra items (Zx Evo Headset considerations), and then heard about the NVidia cards price to be dropped for the GTX 780 range; so I held off going to checkout; however, this morning when I went to look at paying via the advertised price drop, BUT I found that Amazon have JACKED-UP the price to $867 US. :no:
http://www.amazon.co.jp/ASUSTeK-GTX780%E3%83%81%E3...
Question is;-
"Where can I buy this card for a `proper` price (which popular site) where they will POST it via Air Mail to Japan (not a US military address)? :ange:
Every site I tried from California to China do not post to Japan.
Amazon Japan, you are Kraaayyy-Zee crayon users. :pt1cable:
photek242 - Saturday, November 2, 2013 - link
Now i have a GTX 680 sli setup i think to sell the 2 cards and buy a AMD R290xOr stay with the sli setup?
Here in belgium the r290x goes between 465 - 550 euro
Tia
muziqaz - Sunday, November 3, 2013 - link
Ryan, I don't know if you are still reading this or not, but regarding Vegas Pro, I suppose other codecs do not use GPUs as expected. I use mp4 format and even though sony and AMD are telling me that GPUs do accelerate that format it actually do not. I can't even get my 12 thread CPU to be loaded fully. Or maybe there is another codec which is supported by youtube which might get some GPU acceleration if enabled? maybe someone else can pitch in with suggestions? :)