Final Words & Conclusion

Final Words & Conclusion

With the release of the Radeon R9 290X series AMD brings an incredibly fast product to the market. It rocks all performance scores in pretty much any game to date. Having that much raw unadulterated horsepower under the hood will bring options to the table. You play your games at 2560x1440 and flick on every quality setting that you can think of. Even then the cards will do a terrific job. For the few of you that already made the step towards UHD or 4K gaming at 3840 x 2160 that where these card do make sense. Admittedly just one 290X would probably be borderline acceptable when you select the finest image quality settings. So I foresee that the Ultra High Definition games simply will go for two R9-290X cards setup in Crossfire, which would be my recommendation. The product is often as fast or faster then a GeForce GTX Titan, whilst it is going to be priced a good chunk below the GeForce GTX 780. So that in retrospect means (even at this price level) performance for money. Honestly I am really excited to see prices below 499 EUR (incl VAT for this little powerhouse of a graphics card. But let's bullet some stuff up and walk through the several segments and experiences from the review.

Cooling & Noise Levels

The cooling itself really is, how to put this... you can't complain about but it could have been better as well. New for the R9-290 series are of course the temperature targets that AMD now is using. The default setting for this will a whopping 94 degrees C, this is configurable though. If you like to have a temperature target of 80 Degrees C you can select that, but at the cost of performance. But sure, what brings flexibility and a nice balance in-between performance, power consumption and temperature. Honestly the R290X reminds me a little of the GTX 480. Most of you would however preferred something a little lower temperature wise. You can obviously change the temperature target of the fan RPM yourself. But at say 80 degrees C and at that level the noise levels are okay. Really, with one card installed you are absolutely fine. In idle you can not hear the cooling solution and under stress, well you can hear airflow but that's it. Not bad, not good either... average noise levels would sum it up well. 

Again AMD On This: We have designed the 290 Series to operate at a steady state of 95C. By running at 95C, we are both maximizing the performance and minimizing the acoustics of the product. Be assured, that 95C is a perfectly safe temperature at which the GPU can operate for its entire life. There is no technical reason to reduce the target temperature below 95C. 

Power Consumption

Honestly, I expected worse, power consumption is not bad, the card is rated by us having a 290 Watt TDP. That is high but in perspective, it is 30 to 40 Watts away from Titan. So that definitely could have been worse. I think enthusiast consumers at this performance level will not mind that much about the power draw and be forgiving. That 290 Watt TDP also will make running multi-GPU solutions a bit more complicated. With two card we think an 800~900 Watt PSU would be sufficient. So yeah, it's not great to have a GPU consuming that much power, but it could have been a lot worse.

Game Performance

The AMD R9 290X in most scenarios will be performing roughly at Titan like performance, that it pretty kick ass for just one GPU. Realistically I should be comparing towards the GeForce GTX 780 as the product is cheaper then that. So if the pricing is fair. It'll all balance out well. Don't forget that you will receive a free copy of Battlefield 4 (Deluxe version with extras and DLC) as well with certain SKUs. Performance wise really there's not one game that won't run seriously good at either of the cards, and that is at the very best image quality settings. And you do it all with a nice 30" monitor of course, at 2560x1440/1600. I mean BioShock infinite at Ultra quality levels is still oozing out 60+ FPS there. Or what about Hitman Absolution with 67 FPS at 2560x1600 High quality and 2xMSAA?  It's really nice performance. And especially for those with Ultra High Definition gaming in mind, the 290X will make sense, that or when released, two 290 cards setup in Crossfire. That would be a sweet spot and you'd have 4 GB of graphics memory per GPU, nice!

On game performance, I noticed some media reviews with far greater performance differences, they probably have not updated their GeForce results with new driver. We have been using the latest GeForce 331.58 WHQL Driver with the GeForce GTX 780 and Titan, just so that you know, ok?

Overclocking

Overclocking then, a thing or two have changed, the new boost modes for example. Just set your BIOS at Uber mode and disable that stuff. You will now have 50% extra on the power limiter and can play around with a fixed core and memory frequency. I applaud AMD for giving us enthusiasts the option for that Uber mode, NVIDIA can learn from that. Voltage tweaking still needs to be supported by the tweaking tools though. These GPUs can take 1050~1100 MHz fairly well really, and at that stage you added another 10% performance already. The memory can definitely to 6 Gbps more even a notch higher. Please do read-up on what I noted with overclocking through CCC, we highly dis-recommend it.

Price & Final Words 

Much like the GeForce GTX Titan release, we feel that for now the 290X series will be a limited run of cards initially, so get them while they are available would be my recommendation as the pricing is really nice. See, the 28nm 6.2 Billion transistor based GPU simply will be a tough cookie to bake. We expect low yields and thus high wafer prices. As such we think the 290X cards will become available in perhaps multiple thousands in the first weeks then maybe 10K~20K in the first batched and we are sure we'll see additional batches fairly soon depending on sales.

Pricing wise you can expect this:

This is all based on MSRP, street/retail and etail prices as such will vary when time passes. Included until stock runs out will be a download coupon for Battlefield 4 Deluxe Edition, including all DLC and I think some extra weapons. Sound like really good pricing, eh? That's even a nice chunk cheaper then GTX 780. And considering the R290X is continuously at Titan like performance levels I think you guys should be pleasantly surprised.

Concluding

Overall I am very much impressed with the R9-290X cards that AMD brings to the table. And hey 6.2 Billion transistors baked at a 28nm fabrication daaauuumn, that is an accomplishment all by itself. The end-result is a product that can compete with the GeForce GTX 780 and Titan extremely really well, and hey that is what it's all about. AMD is putting some more pressure on the pricing and you know what that means, in the end that will make the entire enthusiast segment will go down a little in pricing. I expect that in the first two weeks the pricing will be over inflated due to demand and stock, but then once Radeon R9-290X sits at 499 EUR, that where they'll make a real difference. Realistically though we expect sales volume sizes to be on the low side, and that could have an adverse effect on overall pricing. 
 

AMD inserted a VERY nice graphics card into its line-up today. And despite it's a lot of money, these cards are priced really fair. It is an attractive product with 4GB of graphics memory that will bring a truckload of gaming performance into your PC. The heat levels, and somewhat higher noise level is the trade-off, well I'll leave it up-to you to decide whether or not you find it acceptable. Bare in mind though that initially only reference boards will be available in the channel, later on in the December time-frame you might see a couple of custom build boards from AIB partners. It might sound a little weird at this price level, but for the money the R9-290X is good value for money. As such we can and will seriously recommend it and give even this reference product an award!

Read our Radeon R9-290X Crossfire article right here.

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