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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just4U - Wednesday, November 6, 2013 - link
You have to ask yourself is Ryan biased with Nvidia or AMD... or maybe it's simply just his tolerance for noise that is the issue.Anyway.. people buying these cards will have some options. For me the 95C is a no go as is the noise. Something I'd tolerate until a good aftermarket solution could be implemented. AMD and Nvidia (until their titan reference cooler) have always been a little meh.. with reference coolers. We all know this..
My last two cards have been AMD ones and if I was in the market for a card today I'd go straight for the Nvidia 780. Not because of it's speeds, certainly not because of its drivers, and not because I am a fan. I simply like their kickass reference cooler and games bundle.
Im not in the market though lol. Quite happy with my Radeon 7870.. and not looking to upgrade yet.
jbs181818 - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
With all that power consumption, what size PSU is required? Assuming 1 GPU and a haswell CPU, 1 SSD.dwade123 - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
290x doesn't make sense when the cheaper 290 performs almost identical. And neither can max out Crysis 3. Gamers are better off waiting for real next-gen cards like Maxwell, and with next-gen console ports coming in 2014 suggests it is common sense to do so.polaco - Tuesday, November 12, 2013 - link
"neither can max out Crysis 3" what the hell are you talking about?52 fps at 2560x1440 HQ + FXAA
77 fps at 1920x1080 HQ + FXAA
with that line of thinking then nor 780 or Titan are worthy since fps diff is minimal
"gamers are better off waiting for real next-gen cards like Maxwell"
well, 290 and 290X are AMD true next gen cards, maybe you feel fooled by having bought a 780 for almost 700 bucks and then you feel like Maxwell will relief that pain, or maybe you work for NVidia marketing deparment... for the time NVidia came out with it AMD will be pushing their next gen too, will you recommend waiting then too? so we wait forever then uh?
"and with next-gen console ports coming in 2014 suggests it is common sense to do so"
you mean to wait for NVidia card to run games that will be optimized to AMD hardware that is inside every next gen console?
please go to see a doctor....
TempAccount007 - Saturday, November 9, 2013 - link
Who the hell uses a reference cooler on any AMD card? The only people that buy reference cards are those who are going to water cool them.NA1NSXR - Monday, November 11, 2013 - link
If I was in the market for a card I'd wait until the aftermarket cooler designs come out. Should make the noise and temp situation a little more bearable. Still, the proprietary nVidia value-adds like HBAO+, adative vsync, TXAA, etc. are hard to give up for me. It is a hard call. If the 780 was only $50 more than the 290 I'd take the 780, but since the difference is $100....I don't know. Really tough call.beck2448 - Tuesday, November 12, 2013 - link
Too noisy and hot.devilskreed - Tuesday, November 12, 2013 - link
Hail High AMD..The gamers saviour!!!Hail High AMD..The price/performance king
Hail High AMD..The peoples choice..
Healthy competition from AMD's side,i stopped buying nvidia after 8800GT :p purely due to price/performance benefits that AMD offers..
bloodbones - Thursday, November 14, 2013 - link
The battle between amd ex ati and nvidia has been around since i was 18 years old and i am 30 now. Over the years i have try a huge numbers of video cards from both companies and the only conclusion is that things have always been the same, nothing change over the years: more or less the same performance and:Nvidia = more expensive cards but more quality cards, lower noise levels lower temps
Ati/Amd = cheaper cards with higher noise levels higher temps
Period.
horse07 - Thursday, November 14, 2013 - link
Guys, when will you update the 2013 GPU benchmarks with the recent R7/R9 and 700 series?