The AMD Radeon R9 290 Review
by Ryan Smith on November 5, 2013 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- AMD
- Radeon
- Hawaii
- Radeon 200
With the launch of AMD’s Radeon R9 290X less than 2 weeks ago, the video card marketplace has become very active very quickly. The 290X not only reasserted AMD’s right to fight for the video card performance crown, but in doing so it has triggered an avalanche of pricing and positioning changes that have affected both NVIDIA and AMD.
NVIDIA for their part cut the price of the GTX 780 and GTX 770 to $500 and $330 respectively, repositioning the cards and giving them their first official price cuts since their spring launches. Meanwhile AMD has also made some changes, and although 290X is unaffected for the moment, 290 was affected before it even launched, receiving an arguably significant specification adjustment. Consequently with GTX 780’s price cut being NVIDIA’s counter to 290X, 290 has gone from just being a lower tier Hawaii card to also being AMD’s counter-counter, and in the process has become a somewhat different card than what it was going to be just one week ago.
But before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s start at the beginning. With the successful launch of the 290X behind them, and the equally successful launch of their new flagship GPU Hawaii, AMD is ready to make their next move. Launching today will be the Radeon R9 290, the obligatory lower-tier part for AMD’s new flagship lineup. Making the usual tradeoffs for a lower-tier part, AMD is cutting down on both the number of functional units and the clockspeeds, the typical methods for die harvesting, in exchange for a lower price. Now officially AMD has not announced the Radeon R9 290 in advance, but with listings for it having already gone up on the same day as the 290X, it’s something that everyone has been expecting.
As always we’ll offer a full breakdown of performance and other attributes in the following pages, but before we even begin with that we want to point out that the 290 is going to be one of AMD’s most controversial and/or hotly debated launches in at least a couple of years. The merits of 290X were already hotly debated in some gaming circles for its noise relative to its performance and competition, and unfortunately 290 is going to be significantly worse in that respect. We’ll have a full rundown in the following pages, but in a nutshell AMD has thrown caution into the wind in the name of maximizing performance.
AMD GPU Specification Comparison | ||||||
AMD Radeon R9 290X | AMD Radeon R9 290 | AMD Radeon R9 280X | AMD Radeon HD 7970 | |||
Stream Processors | 2816 | 2560 | 2048 | 2048 | ||
Texture Units | 176 | 160 | 128 | 128 | ||
ROPs | 64 | 64 | 32 | 32 | ||
Core Clock | 727MHz | 662MHz | 850MHz | 925MHz | ||
Boost Clock | 1000MHz | 947MHz | 1000MHz | N/A | ||
Memory Clock | 5GHz GDDR5 | 5GHz GDDR5 | 6GHz GDDR5 | 5.5GHz GDDR5 | ||
Memory Bus Width | 512-bit | 512-bit | 384-bit | 384-bit | ||
VRAM | 4GB | 4GB | 3GB | 3GB | ||
FP64 | 1/8 | 1/8 | 1/4 | 1/4 | ||
TrueAudio | Y | Y | N | N | ||
Transistor Count | 6.2B | 6.2B | 4.31B | 4.31B | ||
Typical Board Power | ~300W (Unofficial) | ~300W (Unofficial) | 250W | 250W | ||
Manufacturing Process | TSMC 28nm | TSMC 28nm | TSMC 28nm | TSMC 28nm | ||
Architecture | GCN 1.1 | GCN 1.1 | GCN 1.0 | GCN 1.0 | ||
GPU | Hawaii | Hawaii | Tahiti | Tahiti | ||
Launch Date | 10/24/13 | 11/05/13 | 10/11/13 | 12/28/11 | ||
Launch Price | $549 | $399 | $299 | $549 |
Diving right into the hardware specifications, Radeon R9 290 is a bit more powerful than usual for a lower-tier part. AMD has cut the number of CUs from 44 to 40 – disabling 1 CU per SE – while adjusting down the base GPU clockspeed and boost GPU clockspeed to from 727MHz and 1000MHz to 662MHz and 947MHz respectively. However AMD has not cut the amount of memory, the memory clockspeed, the memory bus width, or the number of ROPs, leaving those at 5GHz for the memory clockspeed, 512-bits for the memory bus width, and all 64 ROPs for the back-end hardware.
As a result the differences between the 290 and 290X are on paper limited entirely to the clockspeed differences and the reduced number of CUs. At their top boost bins this gives 290 95% the clockspeed of 290X, and 91% of the shader hardware, giving 290 100% of 290X’s memory performance, 95% of 290X’s ROP and geometry performance, and 86% of 290X’s shading/texturing performance.
Compared to AMD’s last generation offerings, the 290 is going to be closer to 290X than 7950 was to 7970. 290 retains a larger percentage of 290X’s shader and ROP performance, never mind the fact that the full 320GB/sec of memory bandwidth is being retained. As such despite the wider price difference this time around, performance on paper is going to be notably closer. Paper will of course be the key word here, as in the case of 290 more so than any other card we’ve looked at in recent history theory and practice will not line up. Compared to the 290X, practice will be favoring the 290 by far.
Moving on to power consumption, perhaps because of AMD’s more aggressive specifications for their lower-tier card this time around, power consumption is not dropping at all. AMD is still not throwing us any useful hard numbers, but based on our performance data we estimate the 290 to have a nearly identical TDP to the 290X, leading us to keep it at an unofficial 300W. Lower-tier parts typically trade performance for power consumption, but that will not be the case here. Power consumption will be identical while performance will be down, so efficiency will be slipping and 290 will have all the same power/cooling requirements as 290X.
Meanwhile like the 290X launch, the 290 launch is going to be a hard launch, and a full reference launch at that. As such we’ll be seeing 290 cards go up for sale at the usual retailers today, with all of those cards using AMD’s reference cooler and reference board, itself unchanged from the 290X.
As for pricing and competitive positioning, AMD will be launching the 290 at what we consider to be a very aggressive price of $399. Based on the initial specifications, the performance, and the competition, we had been expecting AMD to launch this at $449, mirroring the launch of the 7950 in the process. But AMD has gone one step further by significantly undercutting both themselves and NVIDIA.
290’s immediate competition on the AMD side will be the $549 290X above it and the $299 280X below it, while on the NVIDIA side the competition will be the $499 GTX 780 above it and the $329 GTX 770 below it. Pricing wise this puts 290 as closer competition to 280X/GTX 770 than it does the high-tier cards, but as we’ll see in our benchmarks AMD is aiming for the top with regards to performance, which will make price/performance comparisons both interesting and frustrating at the same time.
NVIDIA for their part will have their 3 game Holiday GeForce Bundle on the GTX 780 and GTX 770, presenting the same wildcard factor for overall value that we saw with the 290X launch. As always, the value of bundles are ultimately up to the buyer, especially in this case since we’re looking at a rather significant $100 price gap between the 290 and the GTX 780.
Fall 2013 GPU Pricing Comparison | |||||
AMD | Price | NVIDIA | |||
Radeon R9 290X | $550 | ||||
$500 | GeForce GTX 780 | ||||
Radeon R9 290 | $400 | ||||
$330 | GeForce GTX 770 | ||||
Radeon R9 280X | $300 | ||||
$250 | GeForce GTX 760 | ||||
Radeon R9 270X | $200 | ||||
$180 | GeForce GTX 660 | ||||
$150 | GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost | ||||
Radeon R7 260X | $140 |
295 Comments
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Tetracycloide - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
I love you use steam surveys to justify comparing the cards at 1080p because "1080/1200p is running on 98.5% of our screens" and then reference a review that benchmarks based on bleeding edge overclocks of each GPU...geok1ng - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
well, while it may be true that an overclocked 780 is about as fast as an overclocked 290/X, it is also true that under water a 290/x will blow away an OC 780, and that the cost of a waterblock more than compensates the price NVIDIA asks for a 780. it may well be true that most of 780 and 290 buyers are running it at 1080p, it only points towards how irrational/stupid enthusiasts can behave, i am speaking as a 1600p gamer whose games do not demand more than a 4870x2 but has upgraded to a 6950 and then to a 7950. There is one point in favor of the 290/X that all your whining can not deny: THESE CARDS ARE 4K GAMING READY. We are ending 2013, and buying a new card today may well mean that one will use it on a 4k display over the next 2 years.Galidou - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
''buying a new card today may well mean that one will use it on a 4k display over the next 2 years''Or simply means that one will use it to continue maxing graphics no 1080p for the enxt 2 years... like if new gen consoles and games will not make graphics improve so 1080p will never ever be a challenging resolution for 2 years old graphics card... sigh...
Spunjji - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
Sparks, dripping fire? Was it a GTX 590? Sorry, didn't watch the vid ;) Nothing quite like a fanboy making up the other side's arguments for them.swing848 - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
It looks like you and Anand almost see eye to eye, GeForce fan boys. If I remember correctly the GeForce 480 [and 470] fan was very noisy in an effort to keep the HOT GPU from melting down, along with may be part of your motherboard.[IMG]http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p266/Swing848/A...[/IMG]
Fallen Kell - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
Well, as long as your PC is in sound dampened closet with a usb extension cable and your dvi/hdmi cables comming out of it, yes, this is an amazing card. But I certainly wouldn't want something that is in the mid 50db range in my bedroom or office.Galidou - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
Then wait for Asus or gigabyte cards with aftermarket coolers... comon you guys denying amazing cards because they have 2 weeks to be sold with a crappy cooler... COMON are you that stupid?yacoub35 - Wednesday, November 6, 2013 - link
7970 is still the best bang-for-the-buck right now. This card will be too, once it's been out for a year or so and has a price drop to $299.Galidou - Wednesday, November 6, 2013 - link
I've got to agree that the 7970 at the current price is the bargain hunter best deal. If you run 1080p monitor and even above, you REALLY can't go wrong. It usually performs better than GTX 770 and can be overclocked like... Anyway, you get the point.mgl888 - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
Too much of the article was dedicated to noise.Personally, if it came down to saving $100 or having my GPU run loudly (but stably at factory speeds), I'd take the $100 savings any day.