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
Bioshock Infinite
Bioshock Infinite is Irrational Games’ latest entry in the Bioshock franchise. Though it’s based on Unreal Engine 3 – making it our obligatory UE3 game – Irrational had added a number of effects that make the game rather GPU-intensive on its highest settings. As an added bonus it includes a built-in benchmark composed of several scenes, a rarity for UE3 engine games, so we can easily get a good representation of what Bioshock’s performance is like.
With Bioshock we once again see the 290 trailing the 290X by a small margin, this time of 5%. It’s the difference between technically sustaining a 60fps average at 2560 or just falling short, but only just. Meanwhile compared to the GTX 780 the 290 is handed its first loss, though by an even narrower margin of only 3%. More to the point, on a pure price/performance basis, the 290 would need to lose by quite a bit more to offset the $100 price difference.
Meanwhile, it’s interesting to note not only how much faster the 290 is than the 280X or the GTX 770, but even the 7950B. The 290 series is not necessarily intended to be an upgrade for existing 7900 series, but because the 7950’s performance was set so much lower than the 7970/280X’s, and because 290 performs so closely to the top-end 290X, it creates a sizable gap between the 7950 and its official replacement. With a performance difference just shy of 50%, the 290 is reaching the point where it’s going to be a practical upgrade for 7950 owners, particularly those who purchased it in early 2012 and who paid the full $450 price tag it launched at. It’s nowhere near a full generational jump, but it’s certainly a lot more than we’d expect to see for a GPU that’s manufactured on the same process as 7950’s GPU, Tahiti.
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dragonsqrrl - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
Fanboism? I know right?EJS1980 - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
He was referring to you, and you know this.Mondozai - Friday, December 13, 2013 - link
EJS1980 the buttboy for Nvidia has spoken!JDG1980 - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
Well, what the review fails to take into account is that for the vast majority of the card's lifetime, all or nearly all the cards actually sold will be using third-party coolers which are much better than AMD's halfhearted effort. All the noise measurements are completely irrelevant once Asus and MSI get their hands on the silicon and start releasing custom cards.A5 - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
They can't review a card they don't have. I would think they will do a 290 round-up once some of the custom designs come out.Spunjji - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
Quite right. This is a perfectly fair review.dragonsqrrl - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
And then there's the disturbing revelation on Tom's that retail cards are underperforming AMD's reference review cards by a significant margin. But it's AMD, so it's okay.I mean seriously, could you imagine the uncontrollable outrage there would be if Nvidia tried to pull something like this? There would be an uproar from the community unlike anything the interweb's seen before. But if it's AMD? Largely silence, driven by either indifference (AMD fanboys), or AMD fanboy appeasement (confrontation averse reviewers). We wouldn't want to directly oppose the AMD fanboy agenda, lest we have to deal with yet another uproar from AMD's zealous fan-base, which occurs whenever a reviewer says anything remotely negative yet entirely relevant about an AMD product (Bulldozer, HD6990, R9 290, etc...)
just4U - Wednesday, November 6, 2013 - link
I've been watching this battle since the Radeon 8500 Geforce 3 days.. and to be absolutely honest with you.. don't matter what amd or Nvidia does fanboys will rage against the rival. It's the way they are... (shrug)Both companies have had their fair share of tricks btw.. (just in case you didn't know that or had forgotten)
dragonsqrrl - Thursday, November 7, 2013 - link
Uh, definitely haven't forgotten, otherwise there would be no context for the vastly different reactions I'm referring to. And honestly dude, I think you and other people who refer to the fanboy situation on both sides being the same are just displaying your own ignorance and unfamiliarity with the situation. I've noticed that despite how bad it can get here, I've never seen it get even remotely close to the norm on Tom's. It's gotten so bad at times (Bulldozer, HD6990, recent buyers guides, etc...) that the authors and reviewers have had to address the AMD fanboy situation directly in forums and comments. To which the zealous AMD fanbase becomes even more enraged, even resorting to malicious personal attacks against Chris, Don, etc, demanding to know why Nvidia/Intel fanboys are never addressed directly in the same way. Well, because they don't behave the same way... lol.When you genuinely believe that any author who doesn't conform to your inherently biased agenda is biased and bought out, and you adamantly defend that belief (over and over again) with childish and at times downright offensive remarks directed at both the authors and other readers, then it's not something that can be ignored. It never ceases to amaze me that despite how often they're thoroughly shutdown, and lose practically every argument they start, they still press on. They just ignore and continue. In fact if anything it seems to give them strength and further cement their delusional beliefs. They're an endless source of astonishment, those AMD fanboys, I'll give them that much.
Homeles - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
From everything I've read, reference cards sell a lot more often than you'd think.