The AMD Radeon R9 290X ($549 list) graphics card is the company's answer to Nvidia's near-total domination of the high-end GPU market. It's the highest-performing GPU the company has ever launched and very nearly as fast at the Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 Ti($4,517.96 at Amazon)–for markedly less money. There's a potential trade-off in the noise department, but the R9 290X is absolutely capable of driving high-end 4K gaming.
The R9 290X is based on the same Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture that AMD debuted nearly two years ago, but with considerably more GPU cores baked in. AMD's previous highest-end GPU, the AMD Radeon HD 7970 contains 2,048 cores, a 384-bit memory bus, and 3GB of RAM. The R9 290X contains 2,816 cores—a 37.5 percent increase—but that's not all. AMD has also doubled the number of primitives the chip can process per clock (up to four, from two), 176 texture units (up from 128), and 64 render outputs (ROPs), up from 32. The ROP increase is particularly interesting, because it represents a ratio shift—this new card is putting more power into the total number of pixels it can output per second, likely in a bid to improve 4K performance.
The memory interface, too, gets an increase, from 384-bit all the way to 512-bit, and a subsequent increase in memory bandwidth to 320GBps. At 4GB of RAM, the R9 290X isn't the heaviest hitter on the block—that distinction still goes to the Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan($33,879.93 at Amazon)—but its 4GB of RAM puts it neatly in second place. Clock speeds are down slightly from the AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition,to 1GHz rather than 1.05GHz. This slight pullback on clock speeds doesn't change the fact that the card's specs are extremely potent.
How potent? It's fully a match for the Nvidia GTX Titan and Nvidia GeForce GTX 780($4,517.96 at Amazon), the two cards that have dominated the top end of the market on Nvidia's side of the business for most of this year. And this time around, AMD is fixing the troublesome frame pacing issues that have plagued it in other cards. According to the company's slides, the R9 290X includes a new DMA engine that allows for smoother playback across both multiple monitors and when running in 4K. Even more interesting is the fact that this new system doesn't require any of the external connectors that have been a feature of multi-GPU solutions since the first PCI-Express cards supporting the option were introduced almost 10 years ago.
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AMD Radeon R9 290
Nvidia GeForce GTX 780
Along with better frame pacing, the major feature AMD is pushing for the new R9 290X is 4K gaming. Technically, the R9 290X can output to a 4K display over either HDMI 1.4b or DisplayPort 1.2, that HDMI 1.4b is limited to low refresh rates. Clearly, DP1.2 is the way to go. The card sports two DVI outputs, an HDMI output, and a DisplayPort output—maximum resolution on the DVI ports will be 2,560 by 1,600 (that's a limitation of the DVI standard, not the GPU itself).
Speaking of the GPU, the R9 290X isn't actually all that imposing—or different—from the other cards AMD has launched with this latest refresh. While long, it's scarcely enormous, and it relies on a plastic shroud that looks all but identical to the housing of its lower-end cards. Nvidia's GTX Titan, GTX 780, and GTX 770 used sharply redesigned coolers with dramatic styling; the R9 290X is pedestrian by comparison. Even its power requirements—one 8-pin, one 6-pin PCIe—are well in line with what other GPUs require.
As AMD's new high-end GPU, the R9 290X is one of just two parts to contain AMD's new TrueAudio technology, which incorporates new custom audio hardware into the GPU itself, to improve advanced audio processing. Unfortunately, it's not a feature we can test yet—AMD is talking it up, but there's no hardware support for it in gaming, or even a demo. Similarly, the GPU will support AMD's new low-level API, Mantle, but the one game announced that uses it, Battlefield 4, won't add support until mid-December. For now, these features are un-testable. Still, they'll be available when supporting software eventually ships.Fan Profiles and Throttling
Much has been written since the R9 290X launched on the subject of the card's fan profiles and performance throttling at high temperatures. It's important to understand that AMD equips the R9 290X family with a BIOS switch on the side of the card. By default, the card comes switched to "Quiet," mode, which sets a 40 percent maximum fan speed by default. Users who want top performance will need to flip the switch to "Uber" which sets a 55 percent default maximum fan speed. In both cases, fan speeds can be manually adjusted in driver as well.
If the card is set for a 55 percent fan speed, the GPU won't throttle, even under full load. At 40 percent fan speeds, the GPU will throttle to balance noise and speed.
Performance
We've included results for the AMD Radeon R9 290( at Amazon) here as well, to show how small the gap is between the two cards. The AMD R9 290 packs all of the features of the R9 290X except for the fan profiles mentioned above; R9 290 cards default to a maximum fan speed of 47 percent. All of our performance tests on the R9 290X were performed with the card set to Uber mode.
We tested the card on an Intel DZ77GA-70K motherboard with an Intel Core i7-3770K CPU and 8GB of DDR3-1600. Windows 7 64-bit w/ SP1 and all available patches were used. All games are tested in 1,920 by 1,080, with maximum detail settings and 8xMSAA enabled, save where noted otherwise. While AMD is marketing the R9 290X as essentially 4K ready, the number of 4K displays actually on the market are few and far between; 1,920 by 1,080 remains by far the most popular and pertinent resolution. We've compared against a slightly wider number of cards here than is otherwise typical—the MSI R9 280X Gaming 3G, the AMD R9 290, the Nvidia GTX 780, and Nvidia GTX 780 Ti.
In Civilization V's Late Game View benchmark, all of the cards maintained high frame rates. The R9 280X ran at 93 frames per second (fps), the R9 290 and AMD R9 290X both hit 98fps, the Nvidia GTX 780 turned in 100fps, and the Nvidia GTX 780 Ti pulled away from the pack at 110fps.
Results in Total War: Shogun 2 offered a greater performance range. Here, the MSI R9 280X ran at 53fps, the R9 290 hit 64fps, the R9 290X was at 68fps (tied with the Nvidia GTX 780) and the Nvidia GTX 780 Ti won the test at 77fps.
In Metro 2033 with 4x MSAA (8x is unavailable), the MSI R9 280X dropped back noticeably at 39fps. The R9 290 and R9 290X were both well ahead at 49 and 51fps, respectively, beating out the Nvidia GTX 780's 45fps. The R9 290X almost caught the GTX 780 Ti in this test, but Nvidia eked out a win at 53fps.
BioShock Infinite shows the Radeon R9 280X nearly catching the GTX 780 (77fps to 82fps) while the R9 290 and R9 290X take third and second place with 91 FPS and 96 FPS respectively. Again, the GTX 780 Ti is the fastest card of all, at 112fps, though the game runs exceedingly well on all cards.
Finally, in the CPU-intensive Hitman: Absolution, the R9 290X managed a win of its own, taking the top spot at 55fps. The Nvidia GTX 780 Ti was a hair behind at 53fps, followed by the AMD R9 290 (52fps), the Nvidia GTX 780 Ti (48fps) and the MSI R9 280X (48fps).
Still, given the small gap in performance between the AMD R9 290 and R9 290X, and the price difference (significant), we're inclined to think that the performance differences here are only really going to matter for gamers who want every scrap of frame rate in a multi-monitor or 4K solution. If you aren' t pushing the cutting edge on monitor resolution, you're not going to see a dramatic difference between these GPUs and significantly cheaper cards.
Between a Rock and a Hot Place
The AMD Radeon R9 290X is very nearly as fast as the Nvidia GTX 780 Ti for $150 cheaper. It's a great graphics card and it gives AMD a much stronger position. The problem is, the AMD R9 290 offers 96 percent of the R9 290X's performance for $400 instead of $550, which is why the former is our Editors' Choice for high-end graphics cards. While the R9 290X's fan profiles give it some flexibility, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 Ti is far quieter overall—buyers who prioritize a low-noise solution will want to consider that card, if they can afford the $700 price tag.
The R9 290X does compare better against the R9 290 if you're planning to game in 4K. Other online tests show it running 8 to 10 percent faster than its cheaper counterpart at ultra-high resolutions, though the Nvidia GTX 780 Ti still tends to win many of these comparisons. With 4K still confined to a tiny fraction of the market, however, that's still a niche comparison. For most, the R9 290 will be the better value.
If you're in the market for a high-end single GPU card, the R9 290X is a great option. Just be prepared for the heat and noise when running it at full throttle.
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