Radeon R9 290X Pictured, Tested, Beats Titan

[btarunr]

Here are the first pictures of AMD's next-generation flagship graphics card, the Radeon R9 290X. If the naming caught you off-guard, our older article on AMD's new nomenclature could help. Pictured below is the AMD reference-design board of the R9 290X. It's big, and doesn't have too much going on with its design. At least it doesn't look Fisher Price like its predecessor. This reference design card is all that you'll be able to buy initially, and non-reference design cards could launch much later.

With its cooler taken apart, the PCB is signature AMD, you find digital-PWM voltage regulation, Volterra and CPL (Cooperbusmann) chippery, and, well, the more obvious components, the GPU and memory. The GPU, which many sources point at being built on the existing 28 nm silicon fab process, and looks significantly bigger than "Tahiti." The chip is surrounded by not twelve, but sixteen memory chips, which could indicate a 512-bit wide memory interface. At 6.00 GHz, we're talking about 384 GB/s of memory bandwidth. Other rumored specifications include 2,816 stream processors, four independent tessellation units, 176 TMUs, and anywhere between 32 and 64 ROPs. There's talk of DirectX 11.2 support.



It gets better, the source also put out benchmark figures.

The R9 290X is significantly faster than NVIDIA's GeForce TITAN graphics card among the two games it was tested on, Aliens vs. Predators 3, and Battlefield 3. It all boils down to pricing. AMD could cash in on its performance premium, by overpricing the card much like it did with HD 7990 "Malta," or it could torch NVIDIA's high-end lineup by competitively pricing the card.



View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[VulkanBros]

Anything that rises the the performance and lower the prizes are welcome!

 

[jigar2speed]

Amazing - hope this brings down the pricing of TITAN and GTX 780 making things more competitive.

 

[RCoon]

It will cost half a human soul on release of course, if the final card does indeed beat a Titan. It's going to be severely overpriced, then a few months later (when NVidia release the GK110 without any parts disabled), it will drop in price to pre GTX7xx 7970 price.

 

[amdftw]

Titanfall, booom!

 

[Fluffmeister]

AvP 3?

 

[Frick]

It will cost half a human soul on release of course,

10 cents then. Seems like a good deal.

(i hate people)

EDIT. Seriously though, if this is correct it would be quite nice in any case.

 

[RCoon]

10 cents then. Seems like a good deal.

(i hate people)

Haha Anyone hoping this card releases with a reasonable price is delirious. It's going to be as badly priced as the Titan until somebody gets AMD off of the pedastal.

 

[m6tzg6r]

Who cares if it beats a titan, many of my games had issues with amd, with nvidia my problems were solved.

 

[Fragman]

What good is a new card when there drivers sucks totaly im gona change to nvidia for a while to see how that is going

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

What good is a new card when there drivers sucks totaly im gona change to nvidia for a while to see how that is going

crack on over to the ass slappin line and stop trolling amd threads then

you too random number name dude

 

[RCoon]

What good is a new card when there drivers sucks totaly im gona change to nvidia for a while to see how that is going

I've been to both sides, cant say I'm impressed or disappointed with either. I just go where the best performance for my budget is, and so should everyone else.

 

[Fragman]

crack on over to the ass slappin line and stop trolling amd threads then

you too random number name dude

Hey im running amd 5870 crossfire right now and the amd catalyst drivers sucks

 

[RCoon]

Hey im running amd 5870 crossfire right now and the amd catalyst drivers sucks

My boss has been running 5770 crossfire for 4 years, and I've still yet to hear a complaint from him.

 

[MuhammedAbdo]

The card tested is overclocked , the final silicon will probably be a little slower than Titan , in other words slightly faster than 780 or equal to it .

 

[THE_EGG]

The card tested is overclocked , the final silicon will probably be a little slower than Titan , in other words slightly faster than 780 or equal to it .

Source? I'd like to know how much it was overclocked (if it was).

 

[RCoon]

Source? I'd like to know how much it was overclocked (if it was).

http://videocardz.com/45837/amd-hawaii-gpu-2816-stream-processors

"That said we believe 1020 MHz (1GHz) clock was obtained with this mode enabled. The real clock is lower (around 900 MHz). Without Turbo R9 290X will be slower than TITAN."

 

[john_]

Good numbers and if Kaveri is as strong as many expect it, especially in graphics (I am reading about 832 shaders), AMD is going to increase it's market share in gpus easily.

PS $600 from what I am reading, so don't be so sure that the price will be extremely high.
Don't forget than AMD has nothing over $400 if I am not mistaken. You can't have two models with $600 difference in price (I am not counting 7990) from $400 to $1000 because Nvidia is going to do a party in between these prices.

 

[Xzibit]

http://videocardz.com/45837/amd-hawaii-gpu-2816-stream-processors

"That said we believe 1020 MHz (1GHz) clock was obtained with this mode enabled. The real clock is lower (around 900 MHz). Without Turbo R9 290X will be slower than TITAN."

They're talking out of there back-side.

They cant confirm anything and are just posting bits of guessing nothing concrete. They have 9 articles with nothing solid other then speculations and guestimations.

"We believe" is another way of saying we have no clue.

No-one knows or has confirmed the base or the boost clocks.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

Hey im running amd 5870 crossfire right now and the amd catalyst drivers sucks

works fine for me and has the last two yearsyeh really ,frame pacing just made it better but any further me trollin just pm me as this is off topic

As were both your posts in a new gen card release thread dude if you have a driver issue goto a driver issue thread and drop a complaint there because doing it here IS just trollin if you intend that or not

Good numbers and if Kaveri is as strong as many expect it, especially in graphics (I am reading about 832 shaders), AMD is going to increase it's market share in gpus easily.

PS $600 from what I am reading, so don't be so sure that the price will be extremely high.
Don't forget than AMD has nothing over $400 if I am not mistaken. You can't have two models with $600 difference in price (I am not counting 7990) from $400 to $1000 because Nvidia is going to do a party in between these prices.

wow i didnt see kaveri having that many shaders , that would make a nice steam box
im expecting to pay 450 -550uk notes for a R9 290X

 

[RCoon]

works fine for me and has the last two yearsyeh really ,frame pacing just made it better but any further me trollin just pm me as this is off topic

As were both your posts in a new gen card release thread dude if you have a driver issue goto a driver issue thread and drop a complaint there because doing it here IS just trollin if you intend that or not



wow i didnt see kaveri having that many shaders , that would make a nice steam box
im expecting to pay 450 -550uk notes for a R9 290X

I expect it to be competitavely priced based upon its performance against the 780. Somewhere in the £550 range sounds about right.

 

[renz496]

if the base performance indeed exceeding nvidia Titan i can see it will give pressure to drop the price of 780. but i doubt it will change the price of titan at all

 

[Assimilator]

Meh, all of this is willy-waving until reputable reviewers have the actual cards in their hands. At the very least it should drop the price of the GeForce 700 series, which is what I'm looking forward to... been burned by crappy AMD drivers too many times.

And on the topic of crappiness, AMD need to get rid of that POS blower cooler. It works fine at stock clocks, but as soon as you try squeezing an overclock out of it you need to push the fan speeds to unacceptable noise levels to keep the card reasonably cool.

 

[RCoon]

And on the topic of crappiness, AMD need to get rid of that POS blower cooler. It works fine at stock clocks, but as soon as you try squeezing an overclock out of it you need to push the fan speeds to unacceptable noise levels to keep the card reasonably cool.

Reference cards are designed for reference clocks. Nowhere does it say AMD or anyone else design their blower coolers to specifically support the temperatures generated from overclocking. That's what board partners and aftermarket coolers are for

 

[Zubasa]

And on the topic of crappiness, AMD need to get rid of that POS blower cooler. It works fine at stock clocks, but as soon as you try squeezing an overclock out of it you need to push the fan speeds to unacceptable noise levels to keep the card reasonably cool.

There will be plenty of cards with aftermarket coolers anyways