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
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.
Unlike Metro, Company of Heroes 2 isn’t a title that the 290X gets throttled by nearly as much in our benchmarking, but it’s still something that once again demonstrates just how close 290 gets to 290X. 290 trails 290X by just 5%, a far cry from the $150 difference in price tags. Meanwhile because this is a game that AMD cards are doing so well in, the 290 also fares extremely well against the GTX 780, surpassing it by 23%. The performance gaps versus the 280X and GTX 770 are even larger yet, at 34% and 55% respectively.
Minimum framerates are similarly in AMD’s favor. On a relative basis the 290 falls behind the 290X by a little more here – by about 7% – due to the shader heavy workload of this benchmark’s most difficult scene, but that’s still only 7% behind a card 38% more expensive. Or to once again draw a GTX 780 comparison, it’s 33% faster.
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Morawka - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
Thanks for the review, overall the performance numbers are great but the heat and noise add a asterick to every Pro this card has.Custom coolers will help some, but this card is still pushing out less Performance per watt than team green. Custom coolers will only offset maybe 10% of that noise and heat, which makes this card still, louder and hotter than team green.
What makes Nvidia so attractive are their highly popular proprietary features such as Shadowplay (it's amazing), and shield streaming. I know a lot of you could care less about shield, but it is selling well and receiving rave reviews none-the-less. Those kinds of technologies are what keeps me with Nvidia. I cannot stress how much i love Shadlowplay. Being able to record anything without any sort of performance hit is amazing. And the best part, it's already encoded in h.264
Morawka - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
i forgot to mention Gsync, in which Anand called "a game changer"EJS1980 - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
The cooling solutions on these reference cards are simply atrocious, and in my opinion, completely unacceptable. Running your flagship GPU's at over 95c and 60dB, respectively, all while consuming upwards of 400w is nothing short of ridiculous. Taking the performance crown from Nvidia is fine and dandy, but we MUST look at what was needed of AMD to do so.
Call me an idealist, but I guess I'm alone in my thinking that next-gen GPU's should increase price/performance, while simultaneously DECREASING heat, noise and power consumption (not the other way around). Nvidia can just as easily release their GPU's with no noise/heat/TDP restrictions to increase performance, but do we really want our ASIC makers to do this?
I for one DO NOT want to go down that road, and I can't be the only one...
DMCalloway - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
I agree with the price paid for the crown. We do still need competition to keep overall pricing low, and no; you aren't the only, 'one'.Mondozai - Friday, December 13, 2013 - link
Yeah, but aftermarket coolers will fix this. Most people don't buy reference cards.Yet not a word about that. C'mon, EJS1980, you're a notorious buttboy for Nvidia.
dwade123 - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
Verdict: Extremely power inefficient.jonjonjonj - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
do you really care if its power inefficient? as long as they can keep the temps reasonable and the performance justifies it i say waste all the power you want.DMCalloway - Wednesday, November 6, 2013 - link
Power inefficiency = higher temps. = more noise. Who cares about the power..... I'm currently paying $0.14 per Kwh.jonjonjonj - Friday, November 15, 2013 - link
if you are so concerned with power cost maybe you shouldn't be buying expensive performance parts. i want max performance and i'm willing to pay for it.James5mith - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
I love the Editor's reference to Futurama. Keep it up!