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
Crysis: Warhead
Up next is our legacy title for 2013/2014, Crysis: Warhead. The stand-alone expansion to 2007’s Crysis, at over 5 years old Crysis: Warhead can still beat most systems down. Crysis was intended to be future-looking as far as performance and visual quality goes, and it has clearly achieved that. We’ve only finally reached the point where single-GPU cards have come out that can hit 60fps at 1920 with 4xAA, never mind 2560 and beyond.
Unlike games such as Battlefield 3, AMD’s GCN cards have always excelled on Crysis: Warhead, and as a result it’s a good game for the 290 right off the bat. Furthermore because the 290X throttles so much here, coupled with this game’s love of ROP performance, the 290 actually beats the 290X, if only marginally so. .5fps is within our experimental variation (even though this benchmark is looped multiple times), but it just goes to show how close the 290 and 290X can be, and furthermore how powerful the higher average clockspeeds can be in ROP or geometry bound scenarios. Graphics rendering may be embarrassingly parallel in general, but sometimes a bit narrower and a bit higher clocked can be the path to better performance.
Meanwhile because the 290 does so well here, it makes for another sizable victory over the GTX 780, beating it by 16%. Further down the line the GTX 770 is beaten by 46%, and the 280X by 27%.
Moving on to our minimum framerates, the 290 actually extends its lead over the 290X. Now minimum framerates aren’t as reliable as average framerates, even in Crysis, so our experimental variation is going to be higher here, but it does once again show the advantages the 290 enjoys being clocked higher than the 290X under a sustained workload. Though on the other hand the GTX 780 catches up slightly, closing the gap to 10%.
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Sunburn74 - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
Too hot and too loud for any activity other than gaming on a headset. Maybe aftermarket coolers will salvage this card.megalee - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
Well, I have the headphones on while gaming so I don't care about the noise. Sounds like a good deal to me. Good to see some competition!asphix - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
1st -- to anyone claiming that after market coolers will solve the heat/noise issue... you are correct.. but it will come at a cost. Say hello to a $450-$500 R9 290. Only time will tell, but my guess is they will either be mediocre solutions to keep the price down, or expensive (as will need to be to deal with that kind of dissipation).2nd -- AMD has one goal and only one goal with these extreme price points and that's to get themselves out of this catch 22 situation with mantle. In order for developers to program for mantle, there needs to be a user base. The user base will grow if there is mantle. Release cards that are relatively cheap with steep trade-offs to grow userbase. I feel the next release cycle will have more expensive cards with less trade-offs (noise/heat) and even better performance. It all depends on if mantle takes off which depends on people purchasing these cards.
I love the competition! I really dislike these sacrifices AMD are making to compete with Nvidia. However, i understand why the're doing it the way they are and I hope they're successful with it.
haukionkannel - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
If you compare the price of reference 7970 and aftermarket cooler version of 7970, the difference is 10-50$ Nothing too bad... This just shows how bad this AMD reference is... ingredible!http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-r9-290-...
But we vary, there may be something fishy with AMD press cards! It may be that retail makers are making even worse job with reference cooler, but now it is time to wait some good aftermarket cooler cards!
MarkcusD - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
"290 is essentially twice as loud as the GTX 780"Lol. What a POS. Seriously it may improve with some non-stock coolers, but I wouldn't touch this card.
willis936 - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
If you convert to linear sound levels it's actually three times as loud. That's mostly academic though.supamark - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
Actually, it's just short of 10 times as loud - it's a log scale.jonjonjonj - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
i get that anand cant recommend the card because of the noise. but i think amd is going to sell a lot of these cards because in the end its all about performance and price. plus who buys a reference card anyway? on the asus cards i have owned you can turn the fan to 100% and its silent. some 3rd party card will come out with a quiet cooler that also unleashes the 290.superjim - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
Wait for OEMs to get out their custom cards with the quiet/cooler open air fans and the 290 will be near perfect at $400.jb14 - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
This card is like a drag race car. Pedal flat to the floor, screamingly loud, burning through petrol, pretty cheap (50W increase - crazy)! The only good thing here is the price/performance shaking things up alittle. NV could also quite happily dump an extra 50W through their cards and we could have to two screaming cards next to each other!I have an AMD card in my laptop but wouldn't consider touching this card in the desktop unless it had some seriously beefed up non-custom coolers. Let's see what the AMD partners can do to try and tame this beast!