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
AMD's Gaming Evolved Application
During AMD’s “partner time” block at the 2014 GPU Product Showcase, one of the projects presented was the Raptr social networking and instant messaging application. Put together by the company of the same name, AMD would be partnering with Raptr to produce an AMD branded version of the utility called the “AMD Gaming Evolved App, Powered By Raptr”.
In a nutshell, the Gaming Evolved App (GEA) is AMD’s attempt to bring another value add feature to the Radeon brand. And although AMD will never explicitly say this, to be more specific the GEA is clearly intended to counter NVIDIA successful GeForce Experience utility, which exited beta back in May and has been continuing to add features since.
Raptr/GEA contains a wealth of functionality, with the application being several years old at this point, but the key feature as a video card utility and the reason AMD has picked it up is its latest feature addition, the game optimization service. Just launched last month in beta, the optimization service is a functional clone of GeForce Experience’s optimization service. Designed with the same goals in mind, the GEA optimization service is intended to offer the ability for gamers disinterested in configuring their games – or even just looking for a place to start – a way to simply download a suitable collection of settings for their games and hardware and apply those settings to their games.
The concept is in practice very similar to the recommended settings that most games apply today, but driven by the GPU manufacturer instead of the game developer, and kept up to date with hardware/software changes as opposed to being set in stone when the game went gold. Even for someone like a professional GPU reviewer, it’s a very nifty thing to have when turning up every setting isn’t going to be practical.
To get right to the point then, while we’re big fans of the concept it’s clear that this is a case of AMD tripping over themselves in trying to react to something NVIDIA has done, by trying to find the fastest way of achieving the same thing. Like GeForce Experience, AMD has started bundling GEA with their drivers and installing it by default, but unlike GFE it’s still in beta at this point, and a very rough beta at that. And not to take an unnecessary shot at AMD, but even in beta GeForce Experience wasn’t this raw or this incomplete.
So why are we so down on GEA? There are a few reasons, but the most basic of which is that the Raptr service lacks enough performance data for GEA to offer meaningful recommendations. Even on a fairly old card like a Radeon HD 7950, GEA was only able to find settings for 5 of the 11 games we have installed on our GPU testbed, failing to include settings for a number of games that are months (if not years) old. To be fair every service has to start out somewhere, and GFE certainly didn’t launch with a massive library of games, but 5 games, none newer than March, is a particularly bad showing.
Now a lot of this has to do with how Raptr collects the performance data it uses for recommendations. NVIDIA for their part decided to do everything in house, relying on their driver validation GPU farms to benchmark games across multiple settings to find a good balance based on parameters picked by the GFE development team. Raptr, though backed by AMD, does not have anything resembling NVIDIA’s GPU farms and as such is going the crowdsourced route, relying on telemetry taken from Raptr users’ computers. Raptr’s data acquisition method is not necessarily wrong, but it means there’s no one to bootstrap the service with data, which means the service has started out with essentially nothing.
Raptr for their part is aware of the problem they’re faced with, and in time the distribution of the GEA along with their own Raptr application will hopefully ensure that there are enough users playing enough games out there to collect the necessary data. Even so, they did have to implement what amounts to a solution to the tragedy of the commons problem to make sure that data gets collected; users cannot receive settings from the Raptr service unless they provide data in return. Turning off the telemetry service will also turn off the client’s ability to pull down settings, full stop. Given the service’s requirements for data collection it’s likely the best solution to the problem, but regardless we have to point out that Ratpr is alone in this requirement. NVIDIA can offer GFE without requiring performance telemetry from users.
Moving on then, the other showstopper with GEA’s current optimization service is that it’s obvious the UI has been an afterthought. The GEA UI lists settings by the values used in a game’s settings file, rather than the name of that value. E.g. “Ultra” texture quality in Bioshock Infinite is labeled as texture detail “4”, or worse. Without sufficient labeling it’s impossible to tell just what those settings mean, let alone what they may do. As such applying GEA settings right now is something of a shot in the dark, as you don’t know what you’re going to get.
Finally, presumably as a holdover from the fact that Raptr is free, GEA runs what can only be described as ads. These aren’t straight up advertisements, rather directing users towards other services Raptr/GEA provides, such as Free-2-Play games and a rewards service. But the end game is the same as these services are paid for by Raptr’s sponsors and are intended to drive users towards purchasing games and merchandise from those sponsors. Which far be it for us to look down upon advertisements – after all, AnandTech is ad supported – but there’s something to be said for ad supported applications in a driver download. We're at something of a loss for explaining why AMD doesn't just foot the complete bill on their customized version of the Raptr client and have the ads removed entirely.
At any rate we do have some faith that in time these issues can be dealt with and the GEA can essentially be fixed, but right now the GEA is far too raw for distribution. It needs to go back into development for another few months or so (and the service bootstrapped with many more computer configurations and games) before it’s going to be of suitable quality for inclusion in AMD’s drivers. Otherwise AMD is doing their users a disservice by distributing inferior, ad supported software alongside the software required to use their products.
The Test
For the launch of the Radeon R9 290, the press drivers and the launch drivers will be AMD’s recently released Catalyst 13.11 Beta v8 drivers. Along with containing support for the 290 and the 47% fan speed override, the only other changes in these drivers involve Batman: Arkham Origins and Battlefield 4, games which we aren’t using for this review. So the results will be consistent with past drivers. Meanwhile for NVIDIA’s cards we’re continuing to use their release 331.58 drivers.
| CPU: | Intel Core i7-4960X @ 4.2GHz |
| Motherboard: | ASRock Fatal1ty X79 Professional |
| Power Supply: | Corsair AX1200i |
| Hard Disk: | Samsung SSD 840 EVO (750GB) |
| Memory: | G.Skill RipjawZ DDR3-1866 4 x 8GB (9-10-9-26) |
| Case: | NZXT Phantom 630 Windowed Edition |
| Monitor: | Asus PQ321 |
| Video Cards: |
AMD Radeon R9 290X AMD Radeon R9 290 XFX Radeon R9 280X Double Dissipation AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition AMD Radeon HD 7970 AMD Radeon HD 6970 AMD Radeon HD 5870 NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 |
| Video Drivers: |
NVIDIA Release 331.58 AMD Catalyst 13.11 Beta v1 AMD Catalyst 13.11 Beta v5 AMD Catalyst 13.11 Beta v8 |
| OS: | Windows 8.1 Pro |
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TheJian - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
Simple economics...NV doesn't make as much as they did in 2007. They are not gouging anyone and should be charging more (so should AMD) and neither side should be handing out free games. Do you want them to be able to afford engineers and good drivers or NOT? AMD currently can't afford them due to your price love, so you get crap drivers that still are not fixed. It's sad people don't understand the reason you have crap drivers is they have lost $6Billion in 10yrs! R&D isn't FREE and the king of the hill gets to charge more than the putz. Why do you think their current card is 10db’s higher in noise, 50-70 watts higher and far hotter? NO R&D money.NV made ~550mil last 12 months (made $850 in 2007). Intel made ~10Billion (made under 7B 2007, so profits WAY UP, NV way down). Also INtel had 54B in assets 2007, now has 84billion! Who's raping you? The Nvidia hate is hilarious. I like good drivers, always improving products, and new perf/features. That means they need to PROFIT or we'll get crappy drivers from NV also.
Microsoft 2007=14B, this year $21B (again UP HUGE!)
Assets 2007=64B, 2013=146Billion HOLY SHITE.
Who's raping you...IT isn't Nvidia...They are not doing nearly as well as 2007. So if they were even raping you then, now they're just asking you to show them your boobs...ROFL. MSFT/INtel on the other hand are asking you to bend over and take it like a man, oh and give me your wallet when I'm done, hey and that car too, heck sign over your house please...
APPLE 2007=~3Bil profits 2013=41Billion (holy 13.5x the raping).
Assets 2007=25B, wait for it...2013=176Billion!
bend over and take it like a man, oh and give me your wallet when I'm done, hey and that car too, heck sign over your house please...Did you mention you're planning on having kids?...Name them Apple and I want them as slaves too...LOL
Are we clear people. NV makes less now than 2007 and hasn't made near that 850mil since. Why? Because market forces are keeping them down which is only hurting them, and their R&D (that force is AMD, who by the way make ZERO). AMD is killing themselves and fools posting crap like this is why (OK, it's managements fault for charging stupidly low prices and giving out free games). You can thank the price of your card for your crappy AMD drivers
Doesn't anyone want AMD to make money? Ask for HIGHER PRICES! Not lower, and quit demonizing NV (or AMD) who doesn't make NEAR what they did in 2007! Intel killed their chipset business and cost them a few hundred million each year. See how that works. If profits for these two companies don't start going up we're all going to get slower product releases (witness what just happened, no new cards for 2yrs if you can even call AMD's new as it just catches OLD NV cards and runs hot doing it), and we can all expect CRAP DRIVERS with those slower released cards.
AMD finally made a profit in the last year 1/2 this Q (only 48mil and less depending on if you look gaap, non-gaap). AMD has lost over 6Billion in 10yrs. They are not charging you enough. I expect them to lose money again as they owe $200mil to GF Dec 31st which will wipe out last Q profit and kill this Q also. See the point? They need to make money. How is it possible for either side to be ripping us off if neither has made as much as they did in 2007 for 6 years with AMD losing their collective ARSE?
I could give you the Hard Drive makers profits etc and would show the same (or worse) as MS, Apple, Google. The flood allowed them all triple profits (quad in Seagates case). YES, this is ripping us off.
Spunjji - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
TL;DRSenti - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
Good drivers from NV? Ha-ha-ha! You've never run anything besides few overhyped games I guess. They are awful the moment you start programming them:You use some obscure feature of standard that is not used in games? Here, have a bluescreen! Even AMD video drivers weren't so bad recently.
File in bug report? Ignored, who cares about you, you are not making one of top tier games.
Want OpenCL 1.2 like the rest of the world has (even integrated Intel videocards)? No, it's not important – here you are ten new versions of CUDA!
And how about crippled OpenGL for non-Quadro cards? Sure I know what I'm talking about since I have Quadro too.
dragonsqrrl - Monday, November 11, 2013 - link
Your comment is nothing but an exercise in ambiguity. So basically what you're saying is that because Nvidia's drivers don't work perfectly for every user, AMD's drivers are superior. Really?The one sentence that's actually applicable to gaming is just about as vague as you can get, maybe because you don't actually know what you're talking about? Bluescreen, really? Okay... And from an end user perspective wtf does it even mean to program a driver? Are you suggesting you're something more than an end user? Are you suggesting you work for Nvidia? lol...
Whatever driver related bsod problems you were having is unlikely to be systemic, and may not even be driver related at all. Almost all of the Nvidia driver issues I've read about in recent memory (past couple of years) have been isolated incidents that may result in instability for certain users, none of which I've experienced myself (GTX480). Optimizations compared to the competition have been spot on, and title support has been fantastic. The only exception I can think of was the fan controller issue a couple years ago. Compare that to AMD's recent driver issues (xfire, surround, 4k, frame pacing, etc), all of which are systemic and widespread. I think most AMD fanboys choose to either ignore these problems, or accept them as the norm (same with fan noise on stock coolers), which is stupid and self defeating in my opinion. That sort of attitude doesn't drive AMD or Nvidia to improve.
Senti - Wednesday, November 13, 2013 - link
I'm talking from developer's point, can you even read? You probably have no clue about programming if those sounded ambiguous and you even suggested that I work for NV, lol.I don't say that AMD's drivers are superior, but I can surely say that "NV drivers are superior" is one big lie. They are both bad, really.
I can tell you some fun things about AMD's drivers too: like, uploading textures of certain sizes crashes them, or how their OpenCL compiler crashes on certain C99 features. But those are just program-level crashes (not system-level) and I see texture crash only in recent beta versions, not the last stable version; haven't really investigated OpenCL ones. On the other hand I can reliably send NV drivers into bluescreen, but as already said, it's quite obscure feature and simple users have very low chance to stumble upon it.
Conclusion: we do love AMD for their performance/price ratio while there is nothing to love NV for except being mindless fanboy. My personal view of current situation, feel free to disagree.
nsiboro - Wednesday, November 6, 2013 - link
TL;DRNvidia isn't doing only GPU. Do not forget Tegra - acquisition of comm IP, etc. do require $$$.
The raping is true.
GPU revenue dump into ARM/mobile for future survival.
Drumsticks - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
I like how they actually explicitly recommend against the card and the first 5 comments are praising it XD.That's a LOT of noise... but when we get custom coolers this will be really, really exciting.
RussianSensation - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
Yup, customs coolers will fix both the noise levels and temperature issues. After that, this card will be a must buy. 2 Windforce 3x (dual slot) and $699 780Ti is irrelevant. In fact, after-market versions of R9 290 will make 780/R9 290X and 780Ti very overpriced. They can't get here soon enough.dragonsqrrl - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
Well, sometimes you just can't fix fanboism.Tetracycloide - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
How puerile.