Reviews - AMD Radeon R9 290X

[wyte_w0lf]

I know this may seem a dumb comment, but isnt the difference between general nvidia gpu's and the titan is that Titan did double-precision floating point at full speed. That was why it became higher priced. Its not just a gaming card it has other uses ( like a quadro)

Is that correct?

Does this card do the same thing or is it purely for gaming?

And those temps are high, custom cooler is a must. But the price is very impressive. Its nice to see competition coming back. Nvidia price cuts in time for christmas me thinks.

[Tarinder]

I've heard that AIBs will begin shipping in late November.

[watercooled]

I've heard that AIBs will begin shipping in late November.

Custom coolers?

[kalniel]

I know this may seem a dumb comment, but isnt the difference between general nvidia gpu's and the titan is that Titan did double-precision floating point at full speed. That was why it became higher priced. Its not just a gaming card it has other uses ( like a quadro)

That was one of the differences, but it still uses consumer drivers rather than the more robust ones nVidia supply for their professional cards.

Does this card do the same thing or is it purely for gaming?

This card should have fantastic compute power as well, well over a GFLOP of double precision, and >5 GFLOPs of single.

And those temps are high, custom cooler is a must.

Er, no it's not a must, or they wouldn't have designed it like that

[watercooled]

TFLOPS, not GFLOPS.

I'm confused why AMD would disallow custom coolers at launch, if that's really what's happening. Although not necessarily a problem, to biggest negative people seem to have about this card is the temperature, which a custom cooler could easily solve, and it would probably be a fair bit quieter than the stock blower fan to boot.

I guess there wouldn't really be a need for the quiet/uber profiles on a cooler with sufficient thermal headroom either; it could just stick to max clocks with reasonable fan speeds.

[John P. Myers]

This card should have fantastic compute power as well, well over a GFLOP of double precision, and >5 GFLOPs of single.

Single is 5.6 TFLOPS, so it's good there. But double precision? ;( Instead of being the expected 1:4 as it is in the 7000 series, it's only 1:8 for the 290X, making FP64 only 704 GFLOPS. In this regard, it's definitely not a Titan killer. Not even close, though it still beats every other Nvidia GPU.

Of course this won't hurt your games at all. But for those of us who use CAD, F@H or BOINC, it's a pretty big let-down. The 7970GE is ~45% faster in this area.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Single is 5.6 TFLOPS, so it's good there. But double precision? ;( Instead of being the expected 1:4 as it is in the 7000 series, it's only 1:8 for the 290X, making FP64 only 704 GFLOPS. In this regard, it's definitely not a Titan killer. Not even close, though it still beats every other Nvidia GPU.

Of course this won't hurt your games at all. But for those of us who use F@H or BOINC, it's a pretty big let-down. The 7970GE is ~45% faster in this area.

It will be interesting to see what rate the professional cards based on AMD Hawaii will be locked down to. The consumer cards might be artificially limited on purpose.

[Roobubba]

I recently came from a 5870 to a factory overclocked 780. I'm not disappointed with my purchase, and I'm also not disappointed to see that it's put down (at least a little) by AMD's new offering. More competition in the market at the high end is a GREAT thing for customers overall! I'm a little concerned by the power draw, noise and temperatures of even the stock 290X, but that said its performance is undeniably fantastic for the price.

GJ AMD, though not enough to completely dethrone Nvidia (which is a good thing so the high end remains competitive).

[kalniel]

Single is 5.6 TFLOPS, so it's good there. But double precision? ;( Instead of being the expected 1:4 as it is in the 7000 series, it's only 1:8

Gah, reviews are inconsistent. Some say 1:4 still, others 1:8.

Still, most compute done on a desktop card is single precision.

[boryssts]

could we see the benchmark with HD7990 ? because on paper HD7990 is better and now price is the same as R9 290X, it would be much a appreciated

[dfour]

The 7990 is still faster from what I have seen on gugr3d review. 33% faster in 1440p in bf3!! Almost makes me wonder if buying a 290X was the best idea but I just want to go back to a single card setup now after using xfire for a while.

[NaciremaDiputs]

Reviews like this are good news for the community regardless of which brand you prefer.

[Razorback1327]

I get paid on Monday. How am I gonna stop myself from buying this card!

[sula]

Very good for those who can afford such high end cards. Price / performance ratio is absolutely stunning for a high end card. Althrough cards with non-reference cooling will propably be much better choice considering review results with default reference cooling.

[sula]

One more thing.

Upcoming 290 version should be very appealing and very good deal as well. It really seems like NVIDIA is losing badly on price / performance field.

[1stRaven]

Well, mine arrived tomorrow. Stupid lack of willpower.