AMD Radeon R9 290X CrossFire Video Card Review @ [H]

FrgMstr

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AMD Radeon R9 290X CrossFire Video Card Review - Move aside TITAN SLI, Radeon R9 290X CrossFire just took over as the fastest 2-way video card performance in gaming across the board, period. For the price of one TITAN Radeon R9 290X CrossFire provides the most impressive performance we've seen to date, and beats not just one, but two TITANs.
 
What happened? Have AMD Crossfire suddenly become smoother then SLI? Is this only for the 290X series, or do you see the same for the 7XXX series in CF?:

A very important note to make, while the performance shown there shows the framerate, it does not relate the smoothness and feel of the game. In this, AMD Radeon R9 290X CrossFire was a lot smoother in Far Cry 3. We found that with both TITAN SLI and 780 SLI there was an extreme choppiness and stutter to the game. Whereas, with R9 290X CrossFire, it was a smoother experience. So far, in each game, a pattern is forming favoring CrossFire for smoothness on R9 290X CrossFire.
 
Just curious. Has AMD said what PCI-E Bandwidth is the minimum you can have to run 290/290x in crossfire?

Great review...and WOW that the scaling.
 
Was this tested in the "Uber" mode?

Holy fuck, on the very first page they stated it was all done in uber mode and also suggest setting the fans to 100%.

I am honestly quite shocked that not only does AMD now have the fastest video card, but it is smoother then Nvidia when using multiple cards. The only way things could be any worse for Nvidia right now is if the card used as much or less power then the Titan or 780, considering the performance increase over both those cards, the power usage is 100% justified.
 
Good article.

I guess AMD is finally getting it together with proper MGPU support in their drivers. I may try Crossfire again one day.

I don't give a flip about impressive raw frame rate if gameplay often isn't smooth.
 
This is going to be my x-mas present to myself. Along with a new cooling setup
 
This card is becoming a real embarrassment for nVidia, especially as the drivers for it get better. They got complacent, stopped innovating, and started overpricing their cards and now they got pwned. It's like the Radeon 9700 Pro all over again.
 
This card is becoming a real embarrassment for nVidia, especially as the drivers for it get better. They got complacent, stopped innovating, and started overpricing their cards and now they got pwned. It's like the Radeon 9700 Pro all over again.

Its feeling like that ...this is already better than the 4 series release and getting up there (though will never pass) with the 9700pro. The 780 is no slouch though unlike 9700 pro's competition.
 
great review

I agree. Gotta admit, that actually playing the games and showing us what its like is WAY better then anything else out there.

The fact the [H] said that AMD Crossfire is smoother then SLI is a BIG DEAL......Everyone knows how much Kyle and Brent stressed how bad AMD was with crossfire (and numerous other forum members). So this review is a big deal.

Kudo's to AMD. Bridgeless crossfire FTW
 
Thanks for the review.

It's interesting to see the reversal of positions, AMD just works at 4k whereas the NV drivers required messing around with resolutions etc. The 20-40% lead over the 780 shows just how overpriced the 780 was and it could probably still use a little price cut. The crossfire scaling is substantial, and if it's even smoother as you mentioned, there is little reason to go NV, particularly at high resolutions (let's see about the ti).

I await the 290 which may be the star of this generation of cards, depending on price.
 
Thanks for the excellent review. Almost bit on a pair of 780 lightnings, but it looks like I will stick with AMD and grab a pair of 290x instead when they are in stock.
 
This card is becoming a real embarrassment for nVidia, especially as the drivers for it get better. They got complacent, stopped innovating, and started overpricing their cards and now they got pwned. It's like the Radeon 9700 Pro all over again.

They arent THAT complacent. The 780ti is coming out with 2880 shaders. Plus who knows what they are working on right now. Either way, the 290x is sweet once you water cool it and do crossfire. Deff a nice setup to have. Dont know if I would trade my 780 sli setup for 290x setup just yet.
 
Wow, I'm impressed, I didnt see this coming!

If anyone has a 200x card, is Skyrim smooth now?
I read that it was never smooth on earlier AMD cards.
My brother is in the market for a new card and has just started Skyrim.
 
I agree. Gotta admit, that actually playing the games and showing us what its like is WAY better then anything else out there.

The fact the [H] said that AMD Crossfire is smoother then SLI is a BIG DEAL......Everyone knows how much Kyle and Brent stressed how bad AMD was with crossfire (and numerous other forum members). So this review is a big deal.

Kudo's to AMD. Bridgeless crossfire FTW

better check some other sources before being so sure
 
They arent THAT complacent. The 780ti is coming out with 2880 shaders. Plus who knows what they are working on right now. Either way, the 290x is sweet once you water cool it and do crossfire. Deff a nice setup to have. Dont know if I would trade my 780 sli setup for 290x setup just yet.

What do you mean it is sweet once you water cool them? [H] didn't water cool their cards and yet the 290x x-fire spanked the shit out of the 780 and titan sli. This whole "heat wahhhhhh" crap is getting out of hand, if these cards can beat the shit out of nvidias offerings while running at 95c, it should be really interesting to see what happens when they get custom coolers.
 
i'm very curious how after market cards from Sapphire, MSI ans Asus will be, with mature drivers. i really apreciate AMD for not robbing us, they learned their lesson.
 
"It is of no surprise that the GTX TITAN and GTX 780 cards’ heatsinks and fans are more efficient. NVIDIA put a lot of effort into the cooling devices, and AMD seems to have left that part of the video card to be customized by add-in-board manufacturers."

I'm not sure why it is "no surprise" Nvidia's H/S fans are more efficient. Does AMD somehow lack the tech ability to at least match/copy a system that has been out for so long? Or are you saying AMD can't muster the "effort" to even try?
Or is it, silly comments aside on your part, you're really saying AMD has restricted this for its board partners to hit serious home runs with killer H/S combo's?
 
If I'm not mistaken (and by all means please correct me) aren't all the titles reviewed AMD optimized? Or at the very least the majority definitely are. It would have been nice to see some non AMD centric games thrown into the mix as well. Would also have loved to see overclocked performance comparisons.

Regardless I'm happy to see AMD bringing some competition to the market to help reign in prices and increase performance.
 
If I'm not mistaken (and by all means please correct me) aren't all the titles reviewed AMD optimized? Or at the very least the majority definitely are. It would have been nice to see some non AMD centric games thrown into the mix as well. Would also have loved to see overclocked performance comparisons.

Regardless I'm happy to see AMD bringing some competition to the market to help reign in prices and increase performance.

Metro Last Light is NV sponsored - has PhysX support as well. The rest are AMD though I believe.
 
If I'm not mistaken (and by all means please correct me) aren't all the titles reviewed AMD optimized? Or at the very least the majority definitely are. It would have been nice to see some non AMD centric games thrown into the mix as well. Would also have loved to see overclocked performance comparisons.

Regardless I'm happy to see AMD bringing some competition to the market to help reign in prices and increase performance.

I mean is it AMD's fault alot of the newer titles are AMD centric games?

Metro has Nvidia Physx.....but yea you cant blame reviews for using AMD sponsered games since ALOT of the newer games are....
 
I mean is it AMD's fault alot of the newer titles are AMD centric games?

Metro has Nvidia Physx.....but yea you cant blame reviews for using AMD sponsered games since ALOT of the newer games are....

And come to think of it a lot of the games NV has sponsored as of late haven't been too demanding to run (like the new Splinter Cell) so wouldn't be a good fit in an eval like this.
 
"It is of no surprise that the GTX TITAN and GTX 780 cards’ heatsinks and fans are more efficient. NVIDIA put a lot of effort into the cooling devices, and AMD seems to have left that part of the video card to be customized by add-in-board manufacturers."

I'm not sure why it is "no surprise" Nvidia's H/S fans are more efficient. Does AMD somehow lack the tech ability to at least match/copy a system that has been out for so long? Or are you saying AMD can't muster the "effort" to even try?
Or is it, silly comments aside on your part, you're really saying AMD has restricted this for its board partners to hit serious home runs with killer H/S combo's?

AMD has pretty much used the same generic heatsink design across the last 5-6 generations of cards, it's not really a surprise that it sucks on the 290x as well, it's just how AMD has done it. they don't make that many reference cards to begin with. they are mostly there just to help their partners get cards on the market then leave it in their hands to do the rest after the reference card allotment is sold off in the first 2-3 months.


And come to think of it a lot of the games NV has sponsored as of late haven't been too demanding to run (like the new Splinter Cell) so wouldn't be a good fit in an eval like this.


definitely have to agree with you there. a lot of the Nvidia "supported" games really haven't been all that demanding.
 
I mean is it AMD's fault alot of the newer titles are AMD centric games?

Metro has Nvidia Physx.....but yea you cant blame reviews for using AMD sponsered games since ALOT of the newer games are....

For the sake of comparing performance of newer titles, I'd personally like to see Arkham City and AC4 Black Flag as well. Also from what I can see there are others on the horizon such as watch dogs and COD ghosts. I don't think it's fair to say most newer games are AMD optimized given that. As for being graphics heavy games while I do agree, I agree less so with the idea of only using AMD optimized games to present and objective overview (though Metro is admittedly nv optimized, that's still only one of the games reveiwed).
 
Far Cry 3 runs like shit in crossfire for me. I even see the same regular dips in your graph that only seem to appear on the crossfire result. That honestly felt smooth?
 
Another excellent, professional review, as always. Much thanks for all the hard work.

Looks like Titan is only a good buy now if you actually need/use the COMPUTE capabilities of the card.

When I buy a 4k monitor in 2014 I'll definitely be picking up a 290X if Nvidia hasn't upped the ante.
 
Far Cry 3 runs like shit in crossfire for me. I even see the same regular dips in your graph that only seem to appear on the crossfire result. That honestly felt smooth?

might be something wrong with your machine or one of your cards.

of course it didnt felt smooth for Hardocp they lied right?

/Ironi off.
 
might be something wrong with your machine or one of your cards.

of course it didnt felt smooth for Hardocp they lied right?

/Ironi off.

Well from what I can tell he has tri-fire 7950's......So yea his complaint means nothing in this thread.

But when I had tri-fire 7950, Farcry was smooth as butter until it dropped below 60fps... This was before frame-pacing drivers.
 
Yes one game with my two r9 290x crossfire doesn't perform well. Must be a hardware issue. You can't have a fucking discussion about video cards on this forum.

Edit: FC3 is the one game where I constantly see complaints about crossfire performance. There are recent threads on OCN about the issue. There are also a lot of dips in the crossfire result in this article. Hence why I asked.
 
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If people are uncomfortable with the temps why don't they just go into CCC and raise the fan cap to something higher than 55% ?
 
If people are uncomfortable with the temps why don't they just go into CCC and raise the fan cap to something higher than 55% ?

Because the fan is loud as fuck. But really the heat shouldn't be an issue. Although there is an issue with regard to the card throttling at 95 degrees, demanding that the fan be kept fast enough to prevent this happening which is causing all the problems.

Personally I don't know why anyone would want to have two reference cards in CF config, I#d much rather have them under water or using custom cards/cooling.
 
might be something wrong with your machine or one of your cards.

of course it didnt felt smooth for Hardocp they lied right?

/Ironi off.

It's not an unfair question on Bababooey's part. Far Cry 3 has a rather broken engine that stutters on a lot of hardware, and not just AMD hardware. I personally don't know how good xfire is in comparison to SLI for FC3 specifically, but like I said - not an unfair question. FC3 is kind of a mess in terms of smoothness and input lag in my experience, but it doesn't detract from an excellent overall game. Kind of similar to how Fallout 3 and New Vegas are - both of those games stutter on every hardware combination i've tried.
 
Its feeling like that ...this is already better than the 4 series release and getting up there (though will never pass) with the 9700pro. The 780 is no slouch though unlike 9700 pro's competition.

Nothing will touch the 9700pro, except maybe the 8800 GTX for pwnage. That said - great article. Congratulations, AMD. It's great to have competition again.
 
This card is becoming a real embarrassment for nVidia, especially as the drivers for it get better. They got complacent, stopped innovating, and started overpricing their cards and now they got pwned. It's like the Radeon 9700 Pro all over again.

Overreaction. New AMD Cards on new Arches vs Many Months Old Cards on refreshed Arches....Did you expect something different?

Look out for the 780Ti next week.
 
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