{"id":59582,"date":"2013-10-24T12:10:24","date_gmt":"2013-10-24T10:10:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/?p=59582"},"modified":"2013-10-24T22:08:33","modified_gmt":"2013-10-24T20:08:33","slug":"amd-radeon-r9-290x-review-roundup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/hardware\/59582-amd-radeon-r9-290x-review-roundup","title":{"rendered":"AMD Radeon R9 290X review roundup"},"content":{"rendered":"

AMD today (24 October 2013) has finally revealed its new high-end GPU, the Radeon R9 290X, based on the GCN architecture and belonging to the new Hawaii family.<\/p>\n

The price point revealed for the R9 290X is $549 in the US and Canada. That is nearly half the price of a GTX Titan and $100 cheaper than the GTX780. In many scenarios, the R9 290X is faster than both.<\/p>\n

While the R9 290X releases today in the US, Canada, Europe, Australia and select Middle Eastern and Asian countries its smaller sibling, the R9 290, will only be launched on 31 October in the same regions. AMD is also expected to release a new driver in November with frame pacing improvements for all their cards.<\/p>\n

Hawaii is a shift in the way AMD designs graphics cards around their GCN architecture, which is also slightly revised. The Bonaire-based Radeon R7 260X\/HD7790 is the basis for the Hawaii architecture rather than Tahiti, which made up the HD7970 and now the R9 280X. Take the R7 260X and quadruple everything, along with the power improvements and AMD True Audio – you now have a R9 290X.<\/p>\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Specification
\n<\/span><\/strong><\/td>\n		Radeon R9 290X
\n<\/strong><\/td>\n		Geforce GTX 780 Ti
\n<\/strong><\/td>\n		Geforce GTX Titan
\n<\/strong><\/td>\n		Geforce GTX780
\n<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Shader Cores
\n<\/strong><\/td>\n		2816<\/strong><\/td>\n2496<\/td>\n2688<\/td>\n2304<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Raster Operators
\n<\/strong><\/td>\n		64<\/strong><\/td>\n48<\/td>\n48<\/td>\n48<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Texture units
\n<\/strong><\/td>\n		176<\/strong><\/td>\n208<\/td>\n224<\/td>\n192<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Clock speed<\/strong><\/td>\n800MHz<\/strong><\/td>\n902MHz<\/td>\n837MHz<\/td>\n863MHz<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Boost speed<\/strong><\/td>\n1000MHz<\/strong><\/td>\n954MHz<\/td>\n876MHz<\/td>\n900MHz<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Memory speed<\/strong><\/td>\n1250MHz<\/strong><\/td>\n1502MHz<\/td>\n1502MHz<\/td>\n1502MHz<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
VRAM buffer<\/strong><\/td>\n4GB<\/strong><\/td>\n3GB<\/td>\n6GB<\/td>\n3GB<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Bus width<\/strong><\/td>\n512-bit<\/strong><\/td>\n384-bit<\/td>\n384-bit<\/td>\n384-bit<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Bandwidth<\/strong><\/td>\n320GB\/s<\/strong><\/td>\n288GB\/s<\/td>\n288GB\/s<\/td>\n288GB\/s<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
TDP<\/strong><\/td>\n300W<\/strong><\/td>\n250W<\/td>\n250W<\/td>\n240W<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Launch price<\/strong><\/td>\n$549<\/strong><\/td>\nTBA<\/td>\n$999<\/td>\n$649<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table><\/div>\n

Shader performance goes up thanks to a total of 2,816 cores bunched into 11 Compute Units (CU). Just about anything that needed fixing on the Radeon HD7970 has been doubled – tessellation units, Raster Operators, stencil units, and primitive clock rates (how the GPU addresses and communicates with memory in a single clock cycle) all see a boost.<\/p>\n

The memory bus increases to 512 bits in size, standard VRAM size is now up to 4GB, and memory bandwidth increases albiet only moderately. While the R9 290X is a big improvement for today for AMD, what it holds for the future is far more interesting, especially now that 8GB of VRAM is now possible on a consumer card. AMD could tack on more CU’s to take on even larger, more powerful variants of Kepler in the near future.<\/p>\n

What it does for performance, however, is duplicated in power consumption, heat generation and noise, especially with the stock cooler. The R9 290X consumes on average 50W more power than a GTX Titan and depending on the cooler can go up as high as 94\u00ba C.<\/p>\n

The 290X it’s pretty much built for high-end watercooling setups and for use with monitors with resolutions higher than 2560 x 1440. There are use-cases of a 1080p monitor at 120Hz, although one or two in-game settings will have to be lowered to hit that target reliably with a single card. For fluid gameplay at 120Hz or 144Hz, you’ll still need two cards.<\/p>\n

As for who needs to upgrade, it’s simple – anyone still on a Radeon HD5870, HD6970, HD7870 and lower, or a Geforce GTX480, GTX580, GTX660 and lower will be well-served by the R9 290X. Performance almost triples in the case of the HD5870, which has only really begun to run out of steam this year.<\/p>\n

Keep in mind that, at a minimum, this cards needs to be driven by an AMD FX-8320 or a Core i5-4670K with 8GB of system memory. Anything lower than that is a waste of resources and money. Two of these cards would only be $100 more than a GTX Titan and would be almost twice as fast.<\/p>\n\n\t\t