R9 290X review (hardware.info)

[boxleitnerb]

I was honestly hoping for at least a Titan with higher clocks, and on the really optimistic side a 2880 SP @ 902mhz aka K6000. Instead they seem to have delivered neither of those.

Afaik, the 780 Ti is not the end of it. There will be a Titan "Ultra".

 

[moonbogg]

I wonder if mantle would give this thing an even bigger boost in BF4. If so, i'd have to grab one of these cards and suck it up and move to windows 8.

EDIT: LOL@ Titan Ultra comment above. Only thing ultra about it will be the $1,200.00 price tag.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

Is + or - 1-4 fps on the high end cards enough to indicate a CPU bottleneck at 1080p? That's within the realm of variation for these kinds of tests isn't it?

I'm thinking mainly in Crysis 3 and Metro. Don't Nvidia cards get slightly better CPU utilization than their AMD counterparts?

 

[Granseth]

Is + or - 1-4 fps on the high end cards enough to indicate a CPU bottleneck at 1080p? That's within the realm of variation for these kinds of tests isn't it?

I'm thinking mainly in Crysis 3 and Metro. Don't Nvidia cards get slightly better CPU utilization than their AMD counterparts?

Yes, Nvidia has better drivers in CPU limited games. At least most of the time.

 

[Imouto]

Afaik, the 780 Ti is not the end of it. There will be a Titan "Ultra".

Getting fully functional GK110 chips out of the Tesla/Quadro lines to make a $1k GPU that barely beats the 290X would be one of the most stupid things Nvidia could do.

 

[HurleyBird]

The problem with a hypothetical Titan Ultra is that even if it beats the stock R9 290X, it probably won't beat the more aggressive aftermarket editions that will be out when it launches. It will probably also lose to aftermarket 780Ti cards. In order to make an impact, Titan Ultra needs to come out very close to the 290X launch.

 

[Dark Shroud]

Even then will it be able to beat after market 290x models? Probably not if those cards have beefed up cooling & build quality for a little more head room.

The problem with a hypothetical Titan Ultra is that even if it beats the stock R9 290X, it probably won't beat the more aggressive aftermarket editions that will be out when it launches. It will probably also lose to aftermarket 780Ti cards. In order to make an impact, Titan Ultra needs to come out very close to the 290X launch.

 

[3DVagabond]

So the 290x allegedly (barely) beats the titan. I don't know what AMD was thinking with their announcements.

The 7970 will be the fastest card this year. Then even more recently, they said something about they are not aiming to compete with the titan. Yeah maybe they meant the pricepoint but why state something at all. (I don't recall the exact wording but it stuck me as if this card might not quite catch the titan.

They were either being cheeky about pricing, or playing possum.

 

[3DVagabond]

K6000 are cherry-picked cores and would make no sense to sell them for consumer/gaming market at 1/3 - 1/4 the price.

Especially considering how long it took to bring it to market. It either took this long to save up enough fully functioning dies, or yields recently have improved. The only scenario that fits into a consumer version of the K6000 is the 2nd, yields improved recently. They would have had to improved pretty dramatically to go from not enough chips to release even a low number SKU like the K6000, to now being able to make "enough for everyone to own one". It is possible though that this has happened.

 

[3DVagabond]

I wonder if mantle would give this thing an even bigger boost in BF4. If so, i'd have to grab one of these cards and suck it up and move to windows 8.

EDIT: LOL@ Titan Ultra comment above. Only thing ultra about it will be the $1,200.00 price tag.

You do remember the quote, "Hawaii will ridicule Titan in BF4 with Mantle", don't you?

 

[blackened23]

You do remember the quote, "Hawaii will ridicule Titan in BF4 with Mantle", don't you?

Didn't the same guy say a single Hawaii would beat a battle box at 4k..? Nobody trusts this guy right? That said, I think it's great AMD are doing value added features like Mantle. But I would not trust random marketing guy for a second at their word.

 

[3DVagabond]

Didn't the same guy say a single Hawaii would beat a battle box at 4k..? Nobody trusts this guy right? That said, I think it's great AMD are doing value added features like Mantle. But I would not trust random marketing guy for a second at their word.

IIRC he said that Crossfired Hawaii will beat 4xTitan. When I read it I remember thinking it would be because of 4x scaling isn't good. The idea that it won't give any boost though doesn't make sense.

 

[moonbogg]

You do remember the quote, "Hawaii will ridicule Titan in BF4 with Mantle", don't you?

If it ridicules Titan in BF4 with Mantle, then it can do so from inside my rig because i'll be buying one. The only game I will give any sort of crap about in the next 2 years will be BF4. The winner for this game is what i'm getting. Also, 4gb of Vram is nice. So sick of buying gimped cards from Nvidia. People with 7970's are still laughing their asses off.

EDIT: Also, the poor folks who recently bought GTX 770's? Are you kidding? Those cards are gimped out of the box upon release, provided you didn't splurge on the large Ram models (which you shouldn't have to do for 1080p for god's sake). 770's should cost $250 for that sad reason.

 

[cmdrdredd]

If it ridicules Titan in BF4 with Mantle, then it can do so from inside my rig because i'll be buying one. The only game I will give any sort of crap about in the next 2 years will be BF4. The winner for this game is what i'm getting. Also, 4gb of Vram is nice. So sick of buying gimped cards from Nvidia. People with 7970's are still laughing their asses off.

Actually the opposite may be true when everyone said "2GB isn't enough" and here we are two years later and it's still fine.

 

[moonbogg]

Actually the opposite may be true when everyone said "2GB isn't enough" and here we are two years later and it's still fine.

Fine for what? Certainly not BF4 at 1080p.

 

[Jacky60]

Actually the opposite may be true when everyone said "2GB isn't enough" and here we are two years later and it's still fine.

If you bought a 770 yesterday you'd have to fear for the future.

 

[Enigmoid]

Take this with a grain of salt...

This chart is completely borked. GTX 690 at 9 fps and 690 SLI even lower. Crossfire scaling for 7950 Boost is more than 100%.

 

[cmdrdredd]

If you bought a 770 yesterday you'd have to fear for the future.

Maybe not if I was going to buy a second one cheap for SLI. It's relative to your point of view.

Fine for what? Certainly not BF4 at 1080p.

As has been posted before about the Beta. Performance is fine, including minimums with 2GB cards. It is well known that VRAM usage reports are often inflated.

 

[Will Robinson]

Nice performance numbers and (much to some people's distress) the power usage numbers look acceptable.
If they can bring it in for under $600 it will be a win for AMD Radeon.:thumbsup:

 

[3DVagabond]

Nice performance numbers and (much to some people's distress) the power usage numbers look acceptable.
If they can bring it in for under $600 it will be a win for AMD Radeon.:thumbsup:

Some people are grasping at straws trying to find anything negative to point out. Furmark benches are the worse thing they can find. LOL.

You'd think regardless of what brand you prefer the 290X being able to knock the Titan/780 down and reduce the prices would be desirable. Hell, I'm hoping it beats Titan by 10%, O/C's like the 780, and comes out in the $500 range.

One can only hope.

Oh, and I almost forgot, Mantle gives it a 50% performance boost. Now that would really make some people sit up and pay attention.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Others are attempting to bait like novices as they always do.

 

[chimaxi83]

Others are attempting to bait like novices as they always do.

Don't worry, the pro baiters are still around ^^ :sneaky:

 

[BallaTheFeared]

I would have gone with master baiters, personally.

Legit reviews should be, fun, we should see them banging out some heated battles here real quick.

I'm hoping we seem some 290X vs Titan vs 780 overclocking results, as well as the new 780 Ti, but more importantly the R290 needs to be tossed into the mix and hopefully soon.

 

[Firestorm007]

Those numbers are looking sweet if true. I think this card will be amazing. Now, all we need is AMD to unleash this Beast.

 

[ozzy702]

Do we still not have an official launch/release date?