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.
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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? :)