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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carlob - Saturday, December 7, 2013 - link
At the top of the card, above first row of memory chips, there is one micro switch. If i see well, it's written SW1.Does anybody know what is the purpose of the switch? Thanks.
jonabatero - Thursday, December 19, 2013 - link
HELLO: guys test the R9 290 with LUMION 3D . please .could someone please test the performance of the R9 290 with Lumion 3d. serial great buy with the performance of a GTX 770 in Lumion
xaml - Sunday, December 22, 2013 - link
"Ultimately there will be scenarios where this is acceptable – namely, anything where you don’t have to hear the 290, such as putting it in another room or putting it under water (...)."Or the scenario, the one that's neither unreasonable nor rare, which was conveniently left out, namely playing with a headset. I understand, however, that there has to be a balance between more powerful fans and their noise output, especially with cards which typically grew in size, yet reaching a point where both the cards as well as their fans cannot further grow. A truly negative review would have been one where the fan was loud and where it wouldn't adequately support the airflow.
c1phertxt - Tuesday, December 24, 2013 - link
I don't think a lot of people realise how hot this card gets under load. I have a CM HAF XB and an XFX R9 290.When the card is at 100% load, the existing "fan-temp" curve is insufficient to prevent throttling. I see the temps stabilising at 95 C while the fan is at 46%. As a result clocks throttle down to 662 Mhz. I have to set a custom fan profile that sets the fan to atleast 65% to keep the temps at 85C. Even then, the clocks go down to 850Mhz (a 100 Mhz throttle).
Anything over 65% fan speed is deafening (sounds like a blow dryer and at 80%+ it sounds like a vacum cleaner).
Seriously contemplating putting this under water or getting an after market cooler.
jaris - Thursday, June 19, 2014 - link
Been gaming since the mid 70's, so fairly seasoned, the review is good upto the point regards noise, then it becomes silly. Most gamers don't sit in the front room playing whilst the wife watches tv, well I don't, plus I like loud, thats why i use a headset, all the time. R290 is going into my i7 4790k, like quickly. Might have to close the den door a little but well... I have a very decent headset, won't hear anything other than the game playing. ;)