AMD Radeon R9 290X Review: Challenging the Titan at half the price

[dividebyzero]

If I wanted to flash the BIOS though to a Firmware which keeps the clocks high (At the moment I'm using EVGA precision) is that possible?

With a reference card it isn't a problem.
The choices are flashing with a vendor OC BIOS or manually overclocking in EVGA Precision or Afterburner
You have the option for either utility to commence at system start up.
I'd steer clear of the NCP4206 voltage mod or some of the extreme BIOS's floating around the net (MSI's +300% power BIOS for example is meant for sub-zero benching) with a stock reference air cooled card. Maybe begin a thread if you require any BIOS flashing/Vdroop mod info and/or PM me.

 

[Guest]

It's nice to see Radeon really competing again. Nvidia's probably a little worried that their "King of the hill" Titan just got trumped at half the cost to the consumer.

Also, the R9 280X ($300) trumps the GTX 770 (~$400) in most benchmarks, too. Good stuff, Radeon!

 

[Helvetio]

It's wrong on all 99th Percentile Frame Time graphs in this article. If you check the article

So my GTX 660 (which would be relatively close to the 660Ti) having a higher count would be better than a GTX 690? I think you are misinterpreting these graphs, as lower is clearly better.

I agree with you that the lower the number the better when it comes to the 99th Percentile Frame Time. So what I'm saying is that the "(Higher is Better)" subtitle is wrong on most of the 99th Percentile Frame Time graphs in this article.

I loaded a small image of the BF3 99th Percentile Frame Time graph to imgur to show you what I see imgur.com/W0NvQS6
The correct subtitle on 99th Percentile Frame Time graphs in this article should be "(Lower is Better)".

 

[Jad Chaar]

Wow, im actually more impressed as it was starting to sound like the card may not have been a true titan competitor and more had been a GTX 780 competitor. At the price of $550, holy hot &%$* I was not expecting that price honestly. I still count that as high, but that's 100 bucks cheaper than a 780. I do hope we get some aftermarket coolers for these though ive heard that may not happen.

I may go nuts later on and buy like 4 of these for a liquid cooled setup or wait for the dual GPU variants to come out. 95 degrees is a bit high honestly, I really want to see if I could find a way with a fan or two to improve on it, hmmmmm....

Great review guys!

The temperature worried me. But imagine this beast with an aftermarket cooler...

 

[Guest]

Considering you can get almost two 290Xs for the price of a Titan... Anand's review shows the results with a 290X Crossfire at 4K and looks like for some titles you could even get away with crossfiring the upcoming less expensive R9 290 and still be above 60fps at 4K.

And we still haven't seen what Mantle can bring along, or the final phase of frame pacing fixes which could actually bring another small performance boost once they start optimizing the new memory controller code for speed (as opposed to optimizing for compatibility, which is what they are doing right now).

I'm only left wondering if their next PR campaign will be named "Never Settle Ever Again"

 

[Guest]

Competition is always good, personally I am a Nvidia fan because of several AMD cards I've owned in the past (5850's) and others that burned me of this company, but it's always great to see one of them pushing the price down. At least they are not like comm price in Canada were everyone increase and there's no real competition!

 

[Guest]

Is this R9 290X the ABSOLUTE best card that AMD offers now? Which brand should I get? MSI, XFX, ASUS, etc..? How would it handle on games that still enforce PhysX (with no way to turn it off, like on Alice).

 

[GhostRyder]

The temperature worried me. But imagine this beast with an aftermarket cooler...

Yea im with you on that, or putting it under some liquid

However one thign is true, the card can handle the temps, so its not the end of the world since hte cooler is shoving the air out of the case. I mean the 480 ran up to 100 I believe, heck I ran a set of those for awhile in SLI, they were great cards even considering the heat, but they were designed to handle it so I didnt care much (I skipped doing liquid with my crazy 4).

Im now getting curious about the R9 290 Card and its price!

Is there anywhere you can purchase these cards btw, it still shows most under the Pre-order status on newegg and a few say out of stock. Is it possible to purchase, or did I already miss the window...

Also, Linus said PCI-E 2.0 can handle the CFX of these cards just fine, so I dont see a problem after all. We still dont even saturate the PCI-E 2.0 bandwidth let alone the 3.0.

I noticed the PowerColor variant on newegg lists the boost clock as 1030 Sounds like fun right!

 

[Julio Franco]

I might be wrong, but I think the 99th Percentile Frame Time graphs should read (Lower is Better), not (Higher is Better).

Which graph is listed as (Higher is Better)? Unless they have already been edited, I didn't see one and looked at all of them.

We corrected the graphs last night after publishing the review, but our CDN cache hasn't updated. I just manually cleared cache for all graphs so we should be good now

 

[lipe123]

And the real winner here is: Nvidia Geforce 660Ti SLI

I mean come on price, performance and everything is better than any of the big boy cards. (uses more power but who doesn't have 700-800W already in a gaming rig?)

I don't see how any normal person can justify $500+ on a video card EVER for gaming purposes alone. Maybe a rendering card for work or something but I just can't see how PC Gamers in general benefit from these behemoth video cards with insane prices.
Just look at real world data: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/

If Nvidia (or AMD) did just a little bit of thinking they would release something like a dual 660 single slot card like the 690 is two 680's but something normal people can afford.
I'd be more willing to pay 400$ for a dual 660 card thats faster than the 670 by quite a bit for the same price.

 

[Boilerhog146]

There's the problem, Nvidia is not going to scuttle 670 sales and 760 sales.which is what that would do..

 

[Per Hansson]

This card needs a better cooler for anything but short benchmarking runs it seems to me.
It throttles heavily if left at the stock fan setting, and even with the "Uber" jet-engine setting it throttles still.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/R9_290X/30.html

I'm sure it would be lovely on water or with an improved cooler

 

[Burty117]

GhostRyder

Meh, I agree but the 780 is also limited my heat as well so put a custom cooler on both I bet the 780 would still outpace the R9 290x time will tell!

The 780Ti will probably beat the 290x on stock clocks which means it'll probably be fifty quid more.

The R9 290x is available in the UK for more than the 780!
only £15 mind you, still, look at the 780 you can get for cheaper than a stock 290x

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/3gb-...mhz-gddr5-gpu-980mhz-boost-1033mhz-cores-2304

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/4gb-...-gpu-1000mhz-2816-streams-dp-dvi-hdmi-plusbat

That's right, a Jet Stream version 780 is cheaper than the 290x.
WTF?!

 

[Steve]

"cramming 7080 million transistors"

Well, at least this guy is consistent. I would have simply said 7+ billion transistors or 7.1 billion.

It's a little unorthodox don't you think? Most people would just say 2 billion. No big deal really, just unusual to me.

You would think so but unfortunately a billion can mean very different numbers in different countries. We do it this way to avoid any confusion.

 

[dividebyzero]

That's right, a Jet Stream version 780 is cheaper than the 290x.
WTF?!

Actually seems to be quite a common occurrence. A thread we have over at TPU shows that U.S. pricing isn't all that indicative.
In NZ, you're looking at :
R9-290X $NZ1030 (not in stock) - $NZ1264 ( $US 859-1055 / £ 530-722)
GTX 780 $NZ 976 (reference) - $NZ1030 (overclocked) - $NZ1149 (premium overclocked)
R9-280X (premium SKU's) and GTX 770 $NZ600-650 in most cases.
R9-280X (mild OC), GTX 760 (premium OC) $460-530

Basically a big premium for the 290X unless you value BF4 at $200+

 

[GhostRyder]

And the real winner here is: Nvidia Geforce 660Ti SLI

I mean come on price, performance and everything is better than any of the big boy cards. (uses more power but who doesn't have 700-800W already in a gaming rig?)

I don't see how any normal person can justify $500+ on a video card EVER for gaming purposes alone. Maybe a rendering card for work or something but I just can't see how PC Gamers in general benefit from these behemoth video cards with insane prices.
Just look at real world data: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/

If Nvidia (or AMD) did just a little bit of thinking they would release something like a dual 660 single slot card like the 690 is two 680's but something normal people can afford.
I'd be more willing to pay 400$ for a dual 660 card thats faster than the 670 by quite a bit for the same price.

They have in the past bro, though these were done by the companies EVGA (Theres a second one as well), Powercolor, and VisionTek. They were not bad, however they were pricey for what they were and just did not have things enough to interest people at the time.

GhostRyder

Meh, I agree but the 780 is also limited my heat as well so put a custom cooler on both I bet the 780 would still outpace the R9 290x time will tell!

The 780Ti will probably beat the 290x on stock clocks which means it'll probably be fifty quid more.

The R9 290x is available in the UK for more than the 780!
only £15 mind you, still, look at the 780 you can get for cheaper than a stock 290x

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/3gb-palit-gtx-780-super-jetstream-pcie-30-(x16)-6200mhz-gddr5-gpu-980mhz-boost-1033mhz-cores-2304

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/4gb-...-gpu-1000mhz-2816-streams-dp-dvi-hdmi-plusbat

That's right, a Jet Stream version 780 is cheaper than the 290x.
WTF?!

As for you my friend Challenge accepted, we shall meet back here in 2 weeks, ill have my R90X and you will have your 780 and they will do battle to the death

However, I have no idea why your prices are so high, here in America these are the prices we have (ill stick with reference)

EVGA GTX 780 $649

HIS R9 290X $549

I dunnno, honestly there.

 

[Steve]

And the real winner here is: Nvidia Geforce 660Ti SLI

I don't see how any normal person can justify $500+ on a video card EVER for gaming purposes alone.

Not really the frame time results were much worse and if SLI doesn't work you have a single card which would be too slow for the settings people expecting that kind of performance would be playing with.

You just said everyone go 660 Ti SLI and in the next sentence say its crazy for anyone to spend $500+ on a graphics card. How much do a pair of GTX 660 Ti cards cost? Think you will find its at least $500.

The reason AMD and Nvidia don't make dual-GPU cards out of mid-range GPU's isn't because they don't want your money, its because it doesn't make any sense. If you had the choice of SLI GTX 660 Ti's or the R9 290X you would have to be crazy to pick the SLI setup. However if you already have a GTX 660 Ti then it makes sense to get another one, only in this situation is the GTX 660 Ti SLI a smarter option.

 

[slamscaper]

I'll take a wicked fast GPU over two lesser GPU's in SLI any day of the week. Experience has taught me so...

 

[Lionvibez]

And the real winner here is: Nvidia Geforce 660Ti SLI

I mean come on price, performance and everything is better than any of the big boy cards. (uses more power but who doesn't have 700-800W already in a gaming rig?)

I don't see how any normal person can justify $500+ on a video card EVER for gaming purposes alone. Maybe a rendering card for work or something but I just can't see how PC Gamers in general benefit from these behemoth video cards with insane prices.
Just look at real world data: http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/videocard/

If Nvidia (or AMD) did just a little bit of thinking they would release something like a dual 660 single slot card like the 690 is two 680's but something normal people can afford.
I'd be more willing to pay 400$ for a dual 660 card thats faster than the 670 by quite a bit for the same price.

Some people don't like dealing with Crossfire/ SLI issues with drivers and game profiles.

and its why I stick to $400-$500 single gpu's

 

[Burty117]

As for you my friend Challenge accepted, we shall meet back here in 2 weeks, ill have my R90X and you will have your 780 and they will do battle to the death

Your on! When you get your R9 290x. game on! xD
How we measuring? 3D Mark Fire Strike?

However, I have no idea why your prices are so high, here in America these are the prices we have (ill stick with reference)


EVGA GTX 780 $649


HIS R9 290X $549

I dunnno, honestly there.

dividebyzero

Why is the R9 290x so expensive everywhere else except for America? Maybe they knew most the reviews would go through American Sites thus making sure the price is lower to make it seem higher value?

 

[Steve]

Why is the R9 290x so expensive everywhere else except for America? Maybe they knew most the reviews would go through American Sites thus making sure the price is lower to make it seem higher value?

As always with a new product release, give it 2 weeks for prices to settle.

 

[Burty117]

As always with a new product release, give it 2 weeks for prices to settle.

It Just upsets me it's "Pre-Settled" in America

 

[Steve]

It Just upsets me it's "Pre-Settled" in America

Add Australia to that list as well, its exactly $100 cheaper than the GTX 780 here.

 

[Quigg15405]

If only I had had the patience to wait a month and a half instead of buying the 780, or at least a cheaper 780. :|

 

[GhostRyder]

Your on! When you get your R9 290x. game on! xD
How we measuring? 3D Mark Fire Strike?



dividebyzero

Why is the R9 290x so expensive everywhere else except for America? Maybe they knew most the reviews would go through American Sites thus making sure the price is lower to make it seem higher value?

In order, I think the contest should have a segment where we see which card can cook a roast more evenly, if we can play Crysis, things like that

I dunno why were so much cheaper on these cards, its probably the stores/sites up charging because its new and theres so much hype. I cant get one no matter how hard I try on newegg, though im shooting for 2.