The AMD Radeon R9 290 Review
by Ryan Smith on November 5, 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.
Rome is another game that sees the 290X significantly throttle, and as such it’s another game the 290 has little trouble catching up in. At 2560 the two cards are essentially tied, each enjoying a 5% lead over the GTX 780. Elsewhere the 290 beats the 280X by 27% and the GTX 770 by 30%. Even the 7950B gets left behind to a significant extent, with the 290 beating it by 58%.
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jljaynes - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
i said "good headphones" - I don't need to turn the sound way up to drown out my case fans - foam cups around my ears do that quite welltechkitsune - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
Most serious gamers are likely to be using cans with some form of sound isolation or cancelling. Even my crummy $10 Sentry cans can cut about -10dBA off, which is surprisingly good for semi-open backed headphones.Homeles - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
"That, and any self respecting gamer uses a good set of headphones"Uh huh. Keep telling yourself that.
Ranger101 - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
Ryan we didn't realise you were such an Nvidia fan boy, thanks for clarifying.dragonsqrrl - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
I'm kind of surprised there haven't been more AMD fanboys in here accusing Anandtech and Ryan of bias and being bought out by Nvidia. What's going on? I can usually tell the time by you guys. I feel sort of insecure now, you guys are shaking my faith in your profound and reliable idiocy.HisDivineOrder - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
The AMD fanboys know that there was no way of disguising this launch as anything but a complete miscalculation on AMD's part. If they'd done anything less than what they did, well, they'd have seemed AMD biased. This is their cover. The more important ad dollars purchase will be a positive review of Kaveri, which should be coming up soon-ish.Spunjji - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
That's some twisted logic, HDO. Even for you.Homeles - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
That's interesting to say, in light of the very obvious free advertising grabbed by AMD employees who have jumped the gun when the NDA dropped and have grabbed the first comment on a pretty big handful of AMD product launches.Homeles - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
On AnandTech, that is.boot318 - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
The reference cooler is the only downer about this card. Anyways, I think every reasonable human being was expecting this to be $450.... so great job AMD!BTW, Anandtech, I'll take the heat & noise for that performance & price. Another great review by you guys. I respect you guys for giving us you honest opinion during this review. Best on the net ;)