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
Company of Heroes 2
Our second benchmark in our benchmark suite is Relic Games’ Company of Heroes 2, the developer’s World War II Eastern Front themed RTS. For Company of Heroes 2 Relic was kind enough to put together a very strenuous built-in benchmark that was captured from one of the most demanding, snow-bound maps in the game, giving us a great look at CoH2’s performance at its worst. Consequently if a card can do well here then it should have no trouble throughout the rest of the game.
Our first strategy game is also our first game that is flat out AFR incompatible, and as a result the only way to get the best performance out of Company of Heroes 2 is with the fastest single-GPU card available. To that end this is a very clear victory for the 290X, and in fact will be the largest lead for the 290X of all of our benchmarks. At 2560 it’s a full 29% faster than the GTX 780, which all but puts the 290X in a class of its own. This game also shows some of the greatest gains for the 290X over the 280X, with the 290X surpassing its Tahti based predecessor by an equally chart topping 41%. It’s not clear what it is at this time that Company of Heroes 2 loves about 290X in particular, but as far as this game is concerned AMD has put together an architecture that maps well to the game’s needs.
Briefly, because of a lack of AFR compatibility 4K is only barely attainable with any kind of GPU setup. In fact we’re only throwing in the scale-less SLI/CF numbers to showcase that fact. We had to dial down our quality settings to Low on CoH2 in order to get a framerate above 30fps; even though we can be more liberal about playable framerates on strategy games, there still needs to be a cutoff for average framerates around that point. As a result 280X, GTX Titan, and 290X are the only cards to make that cutoff, with 290X being the clear winner. But the loss in quality to make 4K achievable is hardly worth the cost.
Moving on to minimum framerates, we see that at its most stressful points that nothing, not even 290X, can keep its minimums above 30fps. For a strategy game this is bearable, but we certainly wouldn’t mind more performance. AMD will be pleased though, as their performance advantage over the GTX 780 is only further extended here; a 29% average performance advantage becomes a 43% minimum performance advantage at 2560.
Finally, while we don’t see any performance advantages from AFR on this game we did run our FCAT benchmarks anyhow to quickly capture the delta percentages. Company of Heroes 2 has a higher than average variance even among single cards, which results in deltas being above 5%. The difference between 5% and 7% is not going to be too significant in practice here, but along with AMD’s performance advantage they do have slightly more consistent frame times than the GTX 780. Though in both the case of the 280X and the 290X we’re looking at what are essentially the same deltas, so while the 290X improves on framerates versus the 280X, it doesn’t bring with it any improvements in frame time consistency.
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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.