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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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".