Finally! AMD's new Radeon R9 290X is here. After running the card through its paces, I have to say I had mixed feelings about the card, and only when I heard the price was I sold, but first things first. The Radeon R9 290X is based on the new 28 nm "Hawaii" GPU which increases performance considerably over the previous generation. Averaged over our review benchmarks, we see an 18% performance improvement over the R9 280X / HD 7970 GHz Edition when using the "Quiet" BIOS and 24% when using the "Uber" BIOS. Quiet? Uber? Ahh, I see you skipped to the last page. The card comes with two BIOSes, which lets you pick between a BIOS with lower noise (2000 RPM fan max) called "Quiet" and the "Uber" BIOS that comes without a fan RPM limit, providing increased performance at the cost of more noise. Compared to NVIDIA's lineup, the R9 290X in "Quiet" mode is slightly faster than the GTX 780 and 5% slower than the GTX Titan. With the "Uber" BIOS, the card ends up a bit faster than the GTX Titan. At higher resolutions, like 2560x1600, we see the card outperform NVIDIA's offerings by another few percent.

Pure performance is not everything. Nowadays, modern graphics cards are more limited by power, heat, and noise than anything else, and the R9 290X certainly cannot impress here. We measured typical gaming power consumption in the 240W-250W range, which is a good deal higher than the GTX Titan (210W) or GTX 690 (230W). Non-gaming power consumption is very high, too, and higher than previous products from AMD, far beyond what NVIDIA has to offer. Blu-ray power consumption, for example, is 78W! Comparable NVIDIA cards handle Blu-ray tasks with under 20W. Multi-monitor power consumption is similar, negatively affecting office users with multiple screens.
With such high power consumption, it comes as no surprise that the card ends up being quite noisy too. While I could describe the "Quiet" BIOS as "acceptable" given performance, the "Uber" BIOS just is not something you could seriously use every day. AMD picked a scorching 94°C temperature target for their card, which shows that they are aware of the noise issues, but couldn't do much about it. It looks to me like the card was initially designed to operate with what is now called the "Uber" BIOS, but AMD then realized that the card was simply too noisy and added the "Quiet" BIOS option. The new PowerTune will do its best at keeping the card from overheating by clocking it down, which results in reduced performance. In "Quiet" mode, the card will basically always sit at the temperature limit, hoping for 3D load in-game to go down so it can increase clocks again. Short benchmark runs will show impressive numbers while the card is cool, though. Once you start gaming for extended periods of time, the card will get progressively slower as it heats up, and you'll be hit with a 30% performance penalty in the long run. We then made sure the card was at constantly realistic long-term-use temperatures for our benchmarks. AMD does give you some dials in Catalyst Control Center to adjust PowerTune, but you can really only make it noisier. AMD should have invested some time and money into developing their own high-end cooler, like NVIDIA did for the GTX Titan. The noise figures of this reference card only go on to show that AMD should urgently allow its board partners to launch cards with non-reference air coolers that can handle the heat at saner noise levels.

Overclocking the card in "Quiet" mode is futile since the card will actually lose performance the more you increase clocks. This is because it is already running at maximum temperature and fan speed all the time—when not overclocked. Overclocking the card will increase heat output disproportionately, which forces the card to clock down by more than it could gain from higher clock frequencies. An option here would be to increase fan speed, making the card too noisy. In "Uber" mode, overclocking works better and yields good performance increases. We also played with extra voltage, 100% fan speed, and higher power limits. Here, we saw fantastic, almost linear scaling with voltage, but the cooler could simply not handle it. You should definitely investigate what you can achieve with AMD's latest Hawaii GPU if you are an overclocker with LN2 on hand.

The real highlight of AMD's R9 290X is certainly the price. What has been rumored to cost around $700 (and got people excited at that price), will actually retail for $549! $549 is an amazing price for this card, making it the price/performance king in the high-end segment. NVIDIA's $1000 GTX Titan is completely irrelevant now, even the GTX 780 with its $625 price will be a tough sale. I think I'd be willing to overlook the power/heat/noise issues for $550; if not, a custom design GTX 780 could be an alternative for a hefty price premium. A single R9 290X will comfortably take you through the latest titles, like Battlefield 4, at resolutions up to and including 2560x1600. Check out our R9 290X CrossFire review we also posted today if you need more.