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
Total War: Rome 2
The second strategy game in our benchmark suite, Total War: Rome 2 is the latest game in the Total War franchise. Total War games have traditionally been a mix of CPU and GPU bottlenecks, so it takes a good system on both ends of the equation to do well here. In this case the game comes with a built-in benchmark that plays out over a forested area with a large number of units, definitely stressing the GPU in particular.
For this game in particular we’ve also gone and turned down the shadows to medium. Rome’s shadows are extremely CPU intensive (as opposed to GPU intensive), so this keeps us from CPU bottlenecking nearly as easily.
With Rome 2 no one is getting 60fps at 2560, but then again as a strategy game it’s hardly necessary. In which case the 290X once again beats the GTX 780 by a smaller than average 6%, essentially sitting in the middle of the gap between the GTX 780 and GTX Titan.
Meanwhile at 4K we can actually get some relatively strong results out of even our single card configurations, but we have to drop our settings down by 2 notches to Very High to do so. Though like all of our 4K game tests, it turns out well for AMD, with the 290X’s lead growing to 13%.
AFR performance is a completely different matter though. It’s not unusual for strategy games to scale poorly or not at all, but Rome 2 is different yet. The GTX 780 SLI consistently doesn’t scale at all, however with the 290X CF we see anything from massive negative scaling at 2560 to a small performance gain at 4K. Given the nature of the game we weren’t expecting anything here at all, and though getting any scaling is a nice turn of events to have negative scaling like this is a bit embarrassing for AMD. At least NVIDIA can claim to be more consistent here.
Without working AFR scaling, our deltas are limited to single-GPU configurations and as a result are unremarkable. Sub-3% for everyone, everywhere, which is a solid result for any single-GPU setup.
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heflys - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
Slightly slower than a 780 overall? Even in Uber mode? Can you link me to these reviews if possible?Shark321 - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
I didn't say that. It's slightly slower in Uber Mode than Titan overall in 1080p (across all sites combined). In Quiet mode it's usually slightly faster than 780, slighttly slower in the minority of the reviews.heflys - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
I see now.Jumangi - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
What noob would buy a 290x or a Titan and run it in 1080p? A pointless resolution for these cards.
inighthawki - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
What an arrogant post. There are tons of people who game on 1080p displays and buy a 290X or a Titan. Having a high framerate (i.e. consistently greater than 60fps) reduces the likelihood of stuttering while playing, while also making your system a bit more future-proof as new games come out. Not everyone cares about pixel count, some care more about quality per pixel. As you start seeing titles ship on Unreal 4, post-Crysis 3, etc, I will be laughing at you when I can still run my games at native resolution without the need to upscale or reduce quality.puppies - Saturday, October 26, 2013 - link
Anyone who buys a titan to play games at 1080p is insane, seriously they need locking up. You claiming otherwise does nothing.Samus - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
agreed. this card is for 2560x1440+ or multimonitorTheJian - Friday, October 25, 2013 - link
ROFL...Only if you don't believe in MAXING your games. Which nobody can do with a single card. Many sites comment on this, and show mins, even here with lower settings they hit below 30fps in a few of their games at 2560. In multiplayer you'd get crushed by guys hitting much higher fps at 1080p in many games. Maybe you'll be right at 20nm, but certainly there are far too many games you have to jockey settings around on to make you right today.reddev - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
Both LinusTechTips and OC3D, two reviewers I trust quite a bit, have it below the 780.randomhkkid - Friday, October 25, 2013 - link
Linus tech tips over clocks all the cards it tests, since the 780 has much more headroom (on the stick cooler) the gains were larger than the 290x so at stock the 290x is faster.