Wednesday, October 16th 2013
Radeon R9 290X Pitted Against GeForce GTX TITAN in Early Review
Here are results from the first formal review of the Radeon R9 290X, AMD's next-generation flagship single-GPU graphics card. Posted by Chinese publication PCOnline.com.cn, the it sees the R9 290X pitted against the GeForce GTX TITAN, and GeForce GTX 780. An out-of-place fourth member of the comparison is the $299 Radeon R9 280X. The tests present some extremely interesting results. Overall, the Radeon R9 290X is faster than the GeForce GTX 780, and trades blows, or in some cases, surpasses the GeForce GTX TITAN. The R9 290X performs extremely well in 3DMark: FireStrike, and beats both NVIDIA cards at Metro: Last Light. In other tests, its half way between the GTX 780 and GTX TITAN, leaning closer to the latter in some tests. Power consumption, on the other hand, could either dampen the deal, or be a downright dealbreaker. We'll leave you with the results.More results follow.
Source:
PCOnline.com.cn
121 Comments on Radeon R9 290X Pitted Against GeForce GTX TITAN in Early Review
:twitch:
We should know if anyone has these under water clocked to 1.3 GHz, to see how much voltage is needed and if clocks get lowered under load at all ... it will be interesting for sure
Yes I know I just get lazy sometimes...
On another note, when are the actual reviews suppose to come out, is it today, tomorrow or later this month?
Even if the 290x ends up being a bigger performance jump than they show here, it is unlikely anyone with a 780 will "upgrade" and if the 780 drops in price most people will go for the better performance/dollar ratio. AMD is looking rather lackluster if you ask me.
I have been crossfiring 7970 (@1100/1575) the past 1¾ years, getting performance far exceeding the results in these charts by R9 290X, Titan, 780..., for instance Crysis 3 Ultra runs a steady 60 fps vsync on my 2560x1600 screen; there isn't a game that doesn't run smooth as butter with these.
To those with a 7970 and a crossfire capable motherboard and no 600~650 bucks to upgrade i'd suggest to pair it with a second one or with a 280X and be done with this whole "new cards" rage. Getting the best result for the least cash. :D
Same goes for the 780 which can easily match a Titan OCed. If the power numbers end up being an accurate reflection then even if the 290x is a serious OCing card it won't be worth the minor performance gain. If it is subpar for overclocking the 780 will beat it flat out and AMD will be in trouble if nVidia drops their prices as expected.
Keep in mind nVidia also has another generation of cards coming out Q1 2014, if AMD can't beat the current cards effectively that's not a good sign.
Power consumption figures don't mean jackshit on Nvidia's side and even if they were fair (which they aren't), I'll happily take a card that's cheaper and performs at its full potential that takes a few more watts at load than a gimped piece of crap like the Titan which is throttled & broken out of the factory and with almost no OC potential thanks to shitty power delivery circuitry and no custom PCB designs. Nvidia better halve the price of the Titan & drop the rest of their cards' prices (GTX 780 & 770 by at least 30%-40%) and come up with a $600 successor consisting of a fully enabled GK110 core, fast, or they can piss off out of the GPU race permanently this year and prepare for lots more doom and gloom analyst predictions and shitty Q4 results (and we can prepare for lots of butthurt statements from Nvidia execs for why they failed -- "because we didn't even try"..."we let AMD have the market this year"..."wait for Maxwell"...etc etc).
This is yet another dubious leak, so it should be taken with a pile of salt and then some.
Also Mantle means nothing at this point. Better FPS in BF4 and that's it. No other games are confirmed to use Mantle, so for now Mantle can be completely ignored when it comes to possible benchmarking figures. Until somebody confirms they're using Mantle to port a game to PC, anyone claiming Mantle will make AMD dominate PC game benchmarks is entirely misdirected to the Nth degree.
And Mantle has direct ties with AMD's consoles, all of which run on AMD GCN GPUs -- regardless of how effective it will be, it is of more value to the average user than all of Nvidia's bullshit gimmicky features combined, including PhysX and the rest of the proprietary garbage they run. Since Mantle promises to make porting to the PC easier, it has a far brighter future ahead of it than anything Nvidia has to date.
And BTW, the GPU market share on Steam includes a crapton of old GPU users like me, who are running Nvidia's golden age cards like Fermi and G92, who will at some point be looking to upgrade. Fact is AMD is taking more market share from Nvidia and faster than it ever has before and lots of people with money to spare, like me, will switch to AMD without a second thought if the performance is there. The only reason I am holding off pre-ordering a R290X right now is because A. I have a 3D Vision 2 monitor, which I wish AMD supported as well as Nvidia, but they don't, and B. My nearly 4 year old, VRAM starved GTX 460 still manages to run BF4 beta at a half decent framerate. The minute it dies or I find something tempting enough to upgrade to, I will.
Oh and BF4, just like BF3 and BFBC2 before it, will be the main, if not the only reason I will upgrade, so I don't need to "wait and see" to know how Mantle will turn out. BF4 will be the deciding factor in my purchase, so if Dice say "Mantle makes a 290X mop the floor with the Titan" or "gives it an advantage over equivalent or overpriced Nvidia cards", it is already of more worth to me than anything Nvidia can promise.
...amd would never deceive us...
....wow how late did this post show up..
Source sites.amd.com/us/Documents/AMD_Radeon_290X_Battlefield4_Limited_Ed.pdf