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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46andtool - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
I dont know where your getting your information but your obviously nvidia biased because its all wrong. AMD is known for using poor reference coolers, once manufactures like sapphire and HIS roll out there cards in a couple weeks Im sure the noise and heat wont be a problem. and the 780ti is poised to be between a 780gtx and a titan, it will not be faster than a 290x, sorry. We already have the 780ti's specs..what Nvidia needs to focus on is dropping its insane pricing.SolMiester - Monday, October 28, 2013 - link
Sorry bud, but the Ti will be much faster than Titan, otherwise there is no point, hell even the 780OC is enough to edge the Titan. Why are people going on about Titan, its a once in a blue moon product to fill a void that AMD left open with CUDA dev for prosumers...Full monty with perhaps 7ghz memory, wahey!Samus - Friday, October 25, 2013 - link
What in the world makes you think the 780Ti will be faster than Titan? That's ridiculous. What's next, a statement that the 760Ti will be faster than the 770?TheJian - Friday, October 25, 2013 - link
http://www.techradar.com/us/news/computing-compone...Another shader and more mhz.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-...
If the specs are true quite a few sites think it will be faster than titan.
http://hexus.net/tech/news/graphics/61445-nvidia-g...
Check the table. 780TI would win in gflops if leak is true. The extra 80mhz+1SMX mean it should either tie or barely beat it in nearly everything.
Even a tie at $650 would be quite awesome at less watts/heat/noise possibly. Of course it will be beat a week later buy a fully unlocked titan ultra or more mhz, or mhz+fully unlocked. NV won't just drop titan. They will make a better one easily. It's not like NV just sat on their butts for the last 8 months. It's comic anyone thinks AMD has won. OK, for a few weeks tops (and not really even now other than price looking at 1080p and the games I mentioned previously).
ShieTar - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
It doesn't cost less than a GTX780, it only has a lower MSRP. The actual price for which you can buy a GTX780 is already below 549$ today, so as usual you pay the same price for the same performance with both companies.And testing 4K gaming is important right now, but it should be another 3-5 years before 4K performance actually impacts sales figures in any relevant way.
And about Titan? Keep in mind that it is 8 months old, still has one SMX disabled (unlike the Quadro K6000), and still uses less power in games than the 290X. So I wouldn't be surprised to see a Titan+ come out soon, with 15 SMX and higher base clocks, and as Ryan puts it in this article "building a refined GPU against a much more mature 28nm process". That should be enough to gain 10%-15% performance in anything restricted by computing power, thus showing a much more clear lead over the 290X.
The only games that the 290X will clearly win are those that are restricted by memory bandwidth. But nVidia have proven with the 770 that they can operate memory at 7GHz as well, so they can increase Titans bandwidth by 16% through clocks alone.
Don't get me wrong, the 290X looks like a very nice card, with a very good price to it. I just don't think nVidia has any reason to worry, this is just competition as usual, AMD have made their move, nVidia will follow.
Drumsticks - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Sub...Searched on Newegg, sorted by lowest price, lowest one was surprise! $650. I don't think Newegg is over $100 off in their pricing with competitors.
46andtool - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...your clearly horrible at searching
TheJian - Friday, October 25, 2013 - link
$580 isn't $550 though right? And out of stock. I wonder how many of these they can actually make seeing how hot it is already in every review pegged 94c. Nobody was able to OC it past 1125. They're clearly pushing this thing a lot already.ShieTar - Friday, October 25, 2013 - link
Well, color me surprised. I admittedly didn't check the US market, because for more than a decade now, electronics used to be sold in the Euro-Region with a price conversion assumption of 1€=1$, so everything was about 35% more expensive over here (but including 19% VAT of course).So for this discussion I used our German comparison engines. Both the GTX780 and the R290X are sold for the same price of just over 500€ over here, which is basically 560$+19%VAT. I figured the same price policies would apply in the US, it basically always does.
Well, as international shipping is rarely more that 15$, it would seem like your cheapest way to get a 780 right now is to actually import it from Germany. Its always been the other way around with electronics, interesting to see it the other way around for once.
46andtool - Thursday, October 24, 2013 - link
the price of a 780gtx is not below $649 unless you are talking about a refurbished or open box card.