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 3
Still one of our most punishing benchmarks, Crysis 3 needs no introduction. With Crysis 3, Crytek has gone back to trying to kill computers and still holds “most punishing shooter” title in our benchmark suite. Only in a handful of setups can we even run Crysis 3 at its highest (Very High) settings, and that’s still without AA. Crysis 1 was an excellent template for the kind of performance required to drive games for the next few years, and Crysis 3 looks to be much the same for 2013.
Crysis 3 happens to be another game that the 290X sees significant throttling at, and as such this is another game where the 290X and 290 are neck and neck. With all of a .4fps difference between the two, the two cards are essentially tied, once more showcasing how the 290X is held back in order to get reasonable acoustics, and how fast the 290 can go when it does the opposite and lets loose.
This also ends up being a very close matchup between the 290 and the GTX 780, with the 290 losing to the GTX 780 by just 1%, making for another practical tie. Which coincidentally will make our power and noise tests all the more meaningful, since this is the game we use for those tests.
Meanwhile compared to the GTX 770 and 280X, this is actually the narrowest victory for the 290. Despite the solid performance of the 290 and 290X, it beats the GTX 770 by just 11%. The margin of victory over the 280X however is closer to normal at 29%.
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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!