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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Leyawiin - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
I'd just wait for the ASUS DirectCU II version or something equivalent. Something as hot, loud and power hungry as the old GTX 480 isn't acceptable to me, but drop a couple of those cons and I'd be on board.FuriousPop - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
No... But..........the.......................noise...................is........... just............too........ loud.......... are....you......getting..............this.......*puts on headphones*
Now then, as i was saying its very loud but but i want it whisper quiet, so buzz off else where then. your 2cents here is not appreciated.
as a CFx7970 owner (not to mention i had 2xgtx670's just before that which 1 became DOA and yes just as loud as current GPU's) i can safely say - noise is NOT a reason to be placing the whole argument onto when deciding about price/performance wise when there are sooo many different things you can do to reduce the noise generated from your case - if your unwilling to then obviously logic dictates that you would NOT purchase this, clearly.... but but i still wanna compare my 6 month old GPU to this one....... of course you can junior.... of course you can...
Custom coolers will come and will reduce the temps/noise, maybe not by a massive amount, but maybe just enough to convert some of those green boys over!
stangflyer - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
I am a older gamer at almost 50. I have had many cards since my first 3DFx card. Both AMD/ATI and Nvidia have been in my cases. I have a 1440p monitor but also game at 5040x1050 eyefinity.Currently run 2x7950 sapphire flex boost cards. They run relatively quiet as I have a empty slot in-between the cards.
I listened to some of the sound clips of the 290/x and they reminded me of my 5970 that I ran before my 7950's. I swore I will never have anything that loud in my pc again.
Will wait and see what the custom coolers bring to the table as I am hoping to go to one card even though I know I will lose some performance. Or just wait for 20nm.
I was over at my cousins and he showed me his new 780gtx with the acx cooler. Mild OC and it was extremely quiet.
I will play with either red or green cards but I do know that I will pay 100 bucks for the noise diff of the 780gtx.
We will see.
lnanek - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
Hmm, loud cards are good for me, I always use earbuds anyway.Sancus - Wednesday, November 6, 2013 - link
Everyone who says "just use headphones" probably doesn't realize that these AMD cards are so loud that they would actually be quite disturbing to anyone else in the room, and in the case of Crossfire, probably your entire house or adjacent apartments. 2x 290X's in CF Uber mode are approaching vacuum cleaner levels of noise.Not recommending these cards due to noise is not 'biased' it's merely a common sense, practically based choice.
ClexRex - Wednesday, November 6, 2013 - link
Agrred ive played with the 290x and unless you keep your pc in the other room defiantly hold out till the aftermarket cool is here otherwise youll be pissed and havto spend another 50 on aftermarket cooling once available.Also a lot of people hatng on the 780 forget one thing..that it overclocks better than the 290/290x flat out...it also have the option for custom bios which in return will boost the 780 above the 290 and do it at a lower power comsumption/noise/heat
Also to crossfire the 290 you will need a min. of 1000w psu as we ran intoissues with 800w psu's during testing with crossfire and heavily overclocked cpu's.
rtho782 - Wednesday, November 6, 2013 - link
This card actually hits louder noise levels than the old FX5800 Ultra! http://techreport.com/review/4966/nvidia-geforce-f... Not exactly the same method to measuring but this was 10 years ago...AnnihilatorX - Wednesday, November 6, 2013 - link
The above statement I feel is an over-simplication.
I would imagine the actual instantaneous clock-for-clock power consumption will actually decrease due to the lower computation units. However, R290 or R290X cannot sustain their boost clock and are nearly always throttled by their thermal limits. Hence, the practical power consumption is similar, and since at the same power output R290 would have to have a higher clock to match the speed to R290X, the theoretical efficiency is somewhat lower, but I don't think they differ by much.
UGMan - Wednesday, November 6, 2013 - link
Come on AMD, get this beauty out with coolers from ASUS, MSI, Sapphire et. al. and then TAKE MY MONEY ! Please !!!Nothing out there touches it for the price, and AMD have finally sorted out crossfire. I've got a feeling that Mantle is going to shock and awe with it's performance.
Bring it on !!!
Vorl - Wednesday, November 6, 2013 - link
for everyone using stupid sound comparisons, like "a 747 taking off". Here are some real comparisons.Whisper Quiet Library at 6' 30dB
Normal conversation at 3' 60-65dB
Telephone dial tone 80dB
http://www.gcaudio.com/resources/howtos/loudness.h...
I think that the reviewer is biased considering how big a deal they make of noise now, but in the past with noisy nvidia cards it was more like "meh, they are noisy, BUT FAST". Now they are all over "how loud the card is".