AMD R9 290 Review (1600P, 4K and CF)

Rating: 8.5.

A couple of weeks ago AMD launched their R9 290X GPU which took the market by storm … outperforming both GTX Titan and GTX 780 in the majority of situations. Just ahead of the GTX780 ti release from Nvidia – AMD unleash their more affordable high end partner card, the R9 290. How does this card fare against the other high end solutions available today?

Today we test hardware with a 30 inch Apple Cinema HD display (2,560×1,600) and with our new ASUS PQ321QE Ultra HD 4K Monitor (3,840×2,160) which featured recently in Part 2 of our AMD R9 290X review.

The 4K ASUS PQ321QE panel retails with a whopping £2999.99 asking price , however we would expect this cost to drop in 2014.

Setting up this monitor is simple with both AMD and Nvidia hardware (via DisplayPort cable) and we didn’t experience any issues. To achieve a refresh rate of 60hz after the Forceware or Catalyst drivers were installed we enable the Multi Stream Transport mode within a submenu of the Asus PQ321QE.

This review today will  feature comparisons against the fastest R280X card available today – the Sapphire R9 280X Toxic Edition. We also include results from an overclocked Palit GTX770, reference clocked GTX780, a GTX Titan and the class leading MSI GTX780 Lightning – all of which we have reviewed in the past. We also add in results from the AMD R9 290X, so we can analyse the performance differences.

All cards in this review today have been tested using the latest Catalyst and Forceware drivers (13.11 beta8 and 331.65 respectively).

The R9 290 is clocked slower than the R9 290X, from 1ghz to 947mhz. The STREAM processor count has also been reduced, from 2,816 to 2,560. Texture units also get a downgrade, from 176 to 160. Both cards have 4GB of GDDR5 connected via a very wide 512 bit memory interface running at 1,250mhz (5Gbps effective).

The R9 290, along with the R9 290X and R7 260X features a programmable audio pipeline. The R9 270X and R9 280X don’t. This new TrueAudio technology is designed for game audio artists and engineers, so they can ‘bring their artistic vision beyond sound production into the realm of sound processing’. This technology is intended to transform game audio as programmable shaders transformed graphics in the following ways:

• Programmable audio pipeline grants artistic freedom to game audio engineers for sound processing.
• Easy to access through popular audio libraries used by top game developers.
• Fundamentally redefines the nature of a modern PC graphics card.
• Spatialization, reverb, mastering limiters and simultaneous voices are only the beginning.

The R9 290 and R290X also bring bridgeless Crossfire to the table as well.

In the flesh, the AMD R9 290 looks identical to the R9 290X reviewed recently. The card is a two slot design featuring the traditional small, red AMD fan on one side of the cooler. This forces in air across the board and out the back of the case. As this is a reference design from AMD we didn't get any accessories. Hopefully we will have some AMD partner solutions in the coming months.

The AMD R9 290 reference card is built around a black and red accented plastic shroud which houses the cooler underneath. The PCB is black, identical to the R9 290X.

The card has a DVI-I, DVI-D, full sized HDMI and DisplayPort connectors.

R9 Series graphics cards can now support up to three HDMI/DVI displays for use with AMD Eyefinity technology. A set of displays which support identical timings is required to enable this feature. The display clocks and timing for this feature are configured at boot time.

As such, display hot‐plugging is not supported for the third HDMI/DVI connection. A reboot is required to enable three HDMI/DVI displays.

The R9 290 reference card takes power from a single 6 pin and a single 8 pin PCI connector.

There is no Crossfire connector on the R9 290. The 290X and 290 offer Bridgeless Crossfire capabilities. We test this later in the review, by setting up a 290 and 290X mixed Crossfire system.

In the picture above you can see a BIOS switch however unlike the 290X, this switch doesn't change any settings. Those who have read our previous editorials will already be aware that the BIOS switch on the 290X would shift between a 40% and a 55% maximum fan profile.

In my first R9 290X article, I discussed concerns with the cooling system and throttling at the 40% ‘quiet' fan setting. It would appear that AMD have taken feedback onboard and are adjusting their drivers to try and reduce this throttling.

AMD initially had planned to launch the R9 290 on Thursday the 31st of October, but less than 48 hours before launch they asked us to stop testing the card and to await a new driver. This meant that all testing to this point had to be canned. The launch was subsequently pushed back to Tuesday the 5th of November.

This is particularly interesting because we noticed some thermal throttling from the R9 290 with the BETA6 Driver – which set up a maximum fan speed of 40%. The updated BETA8 driver increased this max fan speed to 47%. We have included images above for reference. It may seem like a small change, but that 7% fan increase has really helped improve performance.

What AMD didn't know is that I had prepared BETA 6 tests at both 40% default fan and 55% fan settings (identical speeds to the R9 290X Quiet and Uber settings), as I noticed core downclocking in synthetic benchmarks and even some games at 40% default settings. Their BETA 8 adjustment helped to reduce R9 290 core downclocking under heavy load circumstances. Noise levels are a little higher, but it makes more sense to try and maximise performance from the new hardware rather than downclock the core on a fairly regular basis.

We decided to just publish results today using their new BETA8 47% fan setting, and unfortunately we had to start testing at all resolutions again. AMD said other driver changes were made, but they didn't detail exactly what.

If you have missed the new Catalyst Control Center changes then it is worth pointing out again that this has been redesigned to accommodate the new PowerTune functionality in the AMD R9 290 solution.

Overclocking and Power are now linked into a ’2 dimensional heatmap’. AMD claim that this new heat map interface will make it more intuitive for the end user to adjust product performance. The R9 290X uses a dynamic engine clock and overdriving the core speed works on a percentage.

The fan speed slider has also been reworked. Previous versions of Overdrive would set the fan to a specific RPM. This new system sets an upper limit on the fan RPM but otherwise allows the fan to be managed based on demand and graphics load. At default, the R9 290 and R9 290X fan maxes out based on the current settings of the video BIOS that was booted. Adjusting the maximum fan slider will allow the user to select a different limit.

In the ‘real world', the fan speed is limited to a maximum of 47% while the software simultaneously holds a maximum default temperature of 95C. This temperature has raised many concerns from our readers, and we feel the same. It needs to be lower long term because the R9 290 and R9 290X pump a ridiculous amount of hot air inside a case. We would imagine that AMD partners will resolve this issue in the coming months with custom cooler designs.

The R9 290X card is built to quite a high standard, although the reference cooler could have been much better. Take a look at the cooler on the Sapphire R9 280X Toxic Edition for instance which features monster 10mm heatpipes – we can only hope Sapphire will bring out a heavily customised version of the R9 290 in the coming weeks.

The AMD R9 reference card, clocked at 947mhz. The Hawaii CPU is built on the 28nm process and the card comprises 6.2 billion transistors. The R9 290 has 64 ROPS, 160 texture units and 2,560 Stream processors. The 4GB of GDDR5 memory runs at 1,250mhz (5Gbps effective) and is connected via a fat 512 bit memory interface.On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the 24.5MP Nikon D3X camera and 24-70mm ED lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source. You can right click and ‘save as’ to your computer to view later.





This is the first 4K/Ultra HD resolution monitor that Kitguru has looked at. It is based around a Sharp IGZO panel and measures 31.5 inches. The PQ321QE is a plain looking monitor, comprising a black matte plastic body and it seemed to attract dust quite easily over the last week in our labs. For those interested, the screen weighs a whopping 13.5 kg.

In the flesh, this screen is noticeably bigger than the Dell 3011U or Apple Cinema HD screens which normally grace our testing equipment. Adjusting to the 3840×2160 resolution took me a little time, even though I was regularly using a 30 inch 2560×1600 panel.

The Asus PQ321QE also features a pair of tiny speakers which are handy if you have nothing else at hand. The sound is weedy and lacking in bass although surprisingly they do reproduce voices rather well.

Along the side of the panel are the menu buttons which are traditional mechanical switches, rather than touch sensitive flat panels. ASUS supply a little sticker which you can attach to the front of the screen on the bezel. This is optional, if you feel it ruins the appearance. Just be prepared to fumble around regularly if you are adjusting the screen.

The monitor stand took me around 5 minutes to assemble, not because it was difficult, but ASUS are using little ALLEN head screws for connection to the base and then to the monitor. These are really awkward to bolt in place, especially as ASUS only supply a tiny little driver with the screen. Once assembled however it feels as if it could withstand some serious abuse. It is height adjustable and can be rotated left and right. If you want to use it in portrait mode then you need to bolt the stand to the screen at a 90 degree angle.

On the left side of the screen is the power connector alongside a power switch. This cable shown in the image above connects to an external power supply.

For those of you expecting multiple inputs, such as HDMI and DVI then you may be disappointed. The PQ321QE is DisplayPort only, although this is the only connector that supports the native 3840×2160 resolution. Alongside this are an audio in and out connector.


We wanted to show you how easy it is to read the menus, even with white windows and text behind the onscreen interface. We actually found that most of the default settings were spot on, which is very uncommon.

Initially, we were only able to get 24hz or 30hz refresh on the monitor with both AMD and Nvidia graphics cards. Within one of the submenus is a setting called ‘DisplayPort STREAM'. When changed, the PQ321QE has to reboot, taking a couple of seconds.

By changing this from SST (Single Stream Transport) to MST (Multiple Stream Transport) the refresh options changed to 50hz and 60hz.

The image above is a screenshot taken from a browser window opened to the full size of the screen. It will give you an idea of just how big the 4K resolution is.

Below is a video created by ASUS detailing how to set up the ASUS PQ312QE Monitor.
[yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_B53D32q5m0′] This review today will  feature comparisons against the fastest R280X card available today – the Sapphire R9 280X Toxic Edition. We also include results from an overclocked Palit GTX770, reference clocked GTX780, a GTX Titan and the class leading MSI GTX780 Lightning – all of which we have reviewed in the past. We also add in results from the AMD R9 290X, so we can analyse the performance differences. Later in the review we test the R9 290 and R9 290X in a bridgeless mixed Crossfire configuration.

We are using one of our brand new test rigs supplied by PCSPECIALIST and built to our specifications. If you want to read more about this, or are interested in buying the same Kitguru Test Rig, check out our article with links on this page.

We are featuring results today with an Apple 30 inch Cinema HD Display at 2560×1600 resolution and an Asus PQ321QE Ultra HD 4K screen running at 4K 3840 x 2160 resolution.

Room ambient was held at 23c throughout testing.

Comparison cards:
AMD R9 290X (1000mhz core / 1,250 mhz memory)
Nvidia GTX Titan (837mhz core / 1,502 mhz memory)
Nvidia GTX780 (863mhz core / 1,502mhz memory)
MSI GTX780 Lightning (980mhz core / 1,502mhz memory)
Sapphire R9 280X Toxic Edition (1,150mhz core / 1,600mhz memory)
Palit GTX770 OC (1046mhz core / 1753mhz memory)

Software:
Windows 7 Enterprise 64 bit
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
Unigine Valley Benchmark
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
3DMark
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark

Games:
Sleeping Dogs
Total War: Rome 2
Dirt Showdown
Tomb Raider
Metro Last Light
GRID 2
Splinter Cell Blacklist
Batman Arkham Origins
Battlefield 4

All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform generally under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests games across five closely matched runs and then average out the results to get an accurate median figure. If we use scripted benchmarks, they are mentioned on the relevant page.
Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset.

A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.

Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

• Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
• Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
• Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
• Multicore CPU support
• Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
• Powerful C++ API
• Comprehensive performance profiling system
• Flexible XML-based data structures

We use the settings shown above at 2560×1600.

Interesting to see just how much the R9 290X was throttling in the ‘quiet' bios mode at 40% fan. The AMD R9 290 manages to outperform the more expensive card …  until the Uber BIOS on the 290X is selected.
Valley Benchmark is a new GPU stress-testing tool from the developers of the very popular and highly acclaimed Heaven Benchmark. The forest-covered valley surrounded by vast mountains amazes with its scale from a bird’s-eye view and is extremely detailed down to every leaf and flower petal. This non-synthetic benchmark powered by the state-of-the art UNIGINE Engine showcases a comprehensive set of cutting-edge graphics technologies with a dynamic environment and fully interactive modes available to the end user.

We test with the settings above both at 2560×1600.

AMD don't seem to optimise their hardware for this specific benchmark, letting Nvidia lead the pack by a considerable margin.
Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7. This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.

Excellent all round performance, closely matched against the reference clocked GTX780.
3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

The R9 290 scores well in this test, just behind the reference clocked GTX Titan, just over 14,000 points.
3DMark is an essential tool used by millions of gamers, hundreds of hardware review sites and many of the world’s leading manufacturers to measure PC gaming performance.

Futuremark say “Use it to test your PC’s limits and measure the impact of overclocking and tweaking your system. Search our massive results database and see how your PC compares or just admire the graphics and wonder why all PC games don’t look this good.

To get more out of your PC, put 3DMark in your PC.”

The R9 290 scores exceptionally well, just over 10,000 points and in behind the GTX 780 Lightning.
Aliens V Predator has proved to be a big seller since the release and Sega have taken the franchise into new territory after taking it from Sierra. AVP is a Direct X 11 supported title and delivers not only advanced shadow rendering but high quality tessellation for the cards on test today. To test the cards we used a 2560×1600 resolution with DX11, Texture Quality Very High, MSAA Samples 1, 16 af, ambient occulsion on, shadow complexity high, motion blur on.

The R9 290 scores a little more than the reference clocked GTX780 card, averaging 73 frames per second.
Aliens V Predator has proved to be a big seller since the release and Sega have taken the franchise into new territory after taking it from Sierra. AVP is a Direct X 11 supported title and delivers not only advanced shadow rendering but high quality tessellation for the cards on test today. To test the cards we used a ULTRA HD 4K resolution (3840×2160) with DX11, Texture Quality Very High, MSAA Samples 1, 16 af, ambient occulsion on, shadow complexity high, motion blur on.


The AMD R9 290 averages 39 frames per second at 4K, which places it 2 frames behind the MSI GTX780 Lightning. The all important frame rates are identical however.

Sleeping Dogs started development as an original title, but was announced in 2009 as True Crime: Hong Kong, the third installment and a reboot of the True Crime series. As a result of the game’s high development budget and delays, it was canceled by Activision Blizzard in 2011. Six months later, it was announced that Square Enix had picked up the publishing rights to the game, but the game was renamed Sleeping Dogs in 2012 since Square Enix did not purchase the True Crime name rights.

This game is still a system killer at these maximised settings. We test at 2560×1600.

Again we see the problems with the default QUIET bios setting on the R9 290X, as the R290 manages to equal the average frames per second, with a slightly better minimum frame rate.Sleeping Dogs started development as an original title, but was announced in 2009 as True Crime: Hong Kong, the third installment and a reboot of the True Crime series. As a result of the game’s high development budget and delays, it was canceled by Activision Blizzard in 2011. Six months later, it was announced that Square Enix had picked up the publishing rights to the game, but the game was renamed Sleeping Dogs in 2012 since Square Enix did not purchase the True Crime name rights.

We used the ‘HIGH’ graphics level setting at 4K- 3840×2160. This uses a mixture of high and extreme graphics settings, detailed above.


The AMD R9 290 manages to match the GTX780 Lightning at 4K in average frames, and scores slightly more in the minimum frame rate. Those extra 2 frames however from 23-25 means that at the R9 290 is perfectly smooth.
Total War ROME 2 is the eighth stand alone game in the Total War series, it is the successor to the successful Rome: Total War title. The Warscape Engine powers the visuals of the game and the new unit cameras will allow players to focus on individual soldiers on the battlefield, which in itself may contain thousands of combatants at a time.

Creative Assembly has stated that they wish to bring out the more human side of war this way, with soldiers reacting with horror as their comrades get killed around them and officers inspiring their men with heroic speeches before siege towers hit the walls of the enemy city. This will be realised using facial animations for individual units, adding a feel of horror and realism to the battles.

We test with the ULTRA profile at 2560×1600. Details shown in the screenshots above.

Very closely matched at 2560×1600 and all cards are perfectly playable, except for the GTX770 which struggles to maintain smooth frame rates. The R9 290 is slightly behind the R9 290X in Quiet BIOS mode.

Total War ROME 2 is the eighth stand alone game in the Total War series, it is the successor to the successful Rome: Total War title. The Warscape Engine powers the visuals of the game and the new unit cameras will allow players to focus on individual soldiers on the battlefield, which in itself may contain thousands of combatants at a time. Creative Assembly has stated that they wish to bring out the more human side of war this way, with soldiers reacting with horror as their comrades get killed around them and officers inspiring their men with heroic speeches before siege towers hit the walls of the enemy city. This will be realised using facial animations for individual units, adding a feel of horror and realism to the battles.

We test at 4K – 3840×2160 with the Very High Preset selected, as shown in the screenshots above.


The R9 290 scores very well, just a single frame per second behind the MSI GTX780 Lightning, averaging 42 frames per second. The R9 290X takes top position.
Dirt Showdown is the latest title in the franchise from Codemasters, based around the famous Colin McRae racing game series, although it no longer uses his name, since he passed away in 2007.

Today we test the hardware at 2560×1600 with the Ultra profile and 8 x MSAA.

A favourite AMD engine and both R9 290X and 290 take top positions at this resolution.
Dirt Showdown is the latest title in the franchise from Codemasters, based around the famous Colin McRae racing game series, although it no longer uses his name, since he passed away in 2007.

Today we test with the ULTRA profile, at 4K 3840×2160 resolution and with 8 times Anti Aliasing.


At 4K the R9 290 and 290X pull away from the Nvidia boards, although both GTX780 and GTX Titan are perfectly playable at this resolution.After a delayed release from late 2012 to March 2013, the game received much anticipation and hype. Tomb Raider received much acclaim from critics, who praised the graphics, the gameplay and Camilla Luddington’s performance as Lara with many critics agreeing that the game is a solid and much needed reboot of the franchise. Much criticism went to the addition of the multiplayer which many felt was unnecessary. Tomb Raider went on to sell one million copies in forty-eight hours of its release, and has sold 3.4 million copies worldwide so far.

We use the ULTIMATE profile shown above and test at 2560×1600.

The added shader power of the R9 290X allows it to pull away into top spot with the GTX780 Lightning taking up second place. The GTX Titan also outperforms the AMD R9 290 by a couple of frames per second.
After a delayed release from late 2012 to March 2013, the game received much anticipation and hype. Tomb Raider received much acclaim from critics, who praised the graphics, the gameplay and Camilla Luddington’s performance as Lara with many critics agreeing that the game is a solid and much needed reboot of the franchise. Much criticism went to the addition of the multiplayer which many felt was unnecessary. Tomb Raider went on to sell one million copies in forty-eight hours of its release, and has sold 3.4 million copies worldwide so far.

We test at 4K 3840×2160 resolution with the ULTRA profile setting enabled –  details in the images above.


The AMD R9 290 averages 38 frames per second, slightly behind the GTX Titan and MSI GTX 780 Lightning. The R9 290X takes top spot.
Metro: Last Light takes place one year after the events of Metro 2033, proceeding from the ending where Artyom chose to call down the missile strike on the Dark Ones. The Rangers have since occupied the D6 military facility, with Artyom having become an official member of the group. Khan, the nomad mystic, arrives at D6 to inform Artyom and the Rangers that a single Dark One survived the missile strike. 4A Games’ proprietary 4A Engine is capable of rendering breathtaking vistas, such as those showing the ruined remnants of Moscow, as well as immersive indoor areas that play with light and shadow, creating hauntingly beautiful scenes akin to those from modern-day photos of Pripyat’s abandoned factories and schools.

We test this game with the built in benchmark with very high quality settings at 1920×1080 – details shown in the image above.

All very closely matched in this benchmark. The GTX780 Lightning may be in third place, but it, along with the GTX Titan have the best minimum frame rates.
Metro: Last Light takes place one year after the events of Metro 2033, proceeding from the ending where Artyom chose to call down the missile strike on the Dark Ones. The Rangers have since occupied the D6 military facility, with Artyom having become an official member of the group. Khan, the nomad mystic, arrives at D6 to inform Artyom and the Rangers that a single Dark One survived the missile strike. 4A Games’ proprietary 4A Engine is capable of rendering breathtaking vistas, such as those showing the ruined remnants of Moscow, as well as immersive indoor areas that play with light and shadow, creating hauntingly beautiful scenes akin to those from modern-day photos of Pripyat’s abandoned factories and schools.

We test this game with the built in benchmark, with the settings detailed above. Direct X 11 mode, Quality is set at medium, 16 AF, normal Motion blur, Tessellation Normal, Advanced PhysX disabled and SSAA disabled.


The AMD R9 290X and R9 290 outperform the Nvidia cards at Ultra HD 4k, taking the top two positions.Grid 2 is the sequel to the racing video game Race Driver: Grid.  It was developed and published by Codemasters. The game includes numerous real world locations such as Paris, numerous United States locations, and many more, and also includes motor vehicles spanning four decades. In addition, it includes a new handling system that developer Codemasters has dubbed ‘TrueFeel’, which aims to hit a sweet spot between realism and accessibility.

We test at 2560×1600 with the Ultra image quality preset, as shown above. 8x MSAA was enabled to improve image quality.

The R9 290X is the dominant force at this resolution, although the R9 290 manages to outperform the GTX Titan. That said, this engine is well known to favour AMD hardware.Grid 2 is the sequel to the racing video game Race Driver: Grid.  It was developed and published by Codemasters. The game includes numerous real world locations such as Paris, numerous United States locations, and many more, and also includes motor vehicles spanning four decades. In addition, it includes a new handling system that developer Codemasters has dubbed ‘TrueFeel’, which aims to hit a sweet spot between realism and accessibility.

We select 4K 3840×2160 resolution and enabled the ULTRA profile with 8 times anti aliasing, as shown in the screenshots above.


The AMD R9 290X and 290 claim top positions at Ultra HD 4k. All of the cards are playable at this settings, with even the overclocked GTX770 holding a 25+ frame per second minimum at all times.
Splinter Cell Blacklist is the sixth installment in the series. The game begins with Sam Fisher and his old friend Victor Coste who are about to depart from Andersen AFB in Guam when an unknown enemy force destroys the entire base. Assisted by hacker specialist Charlie Cole, Sam and Vic manage to escape, although Vic is injured after protecting Sam from a grenade.

Soon after, a terrorist group calling itself “The Engineers” assumes responsibility for the attack and announce that it was the first of a deadly countdown of escalating attacks (called “The Blacklist”) on United States assets, declaring that they will halt the attacks only after the U.S. government accomplish the demand of calling back all American troops deployed abroad.

We test with a series of high image quality settings as shown above and with 4x MSAA and 16 x Anisotropic filtering enabled.

The MSI GTX780 Lightning takes top position at these settings, with the AMD R9 290X and GTX Titan in second and third place respectively.Splinter Cell Blacklist is the sixth installment in the series. The game begins with Sam Fisher and his old friend Victor Coste who are about to depart from Andersen AFB in Guam when an unknown enemy force destroys the entire base. Assisted by hacker specialist Charlie Cole, Sam and Vic manage to escape, although Vic is injured after protecting Sam from a grenade.

Soon after, a terrorist group calling itself “The Engineers” assumes responsibility for the attack and announce that it was the first of a deadly countdown of escalating attacks (called “The Blacklist”) on United States assets, declaring that they will halt the attacks only after the U.S. government accomplish the demand of calling back all American troops deployed abroad.

We selected 4K – 3840×2160 resolution and the ‘High’ Graphics quality preset. Screenshots shown above.


The Nvidia GTX Titan holds top spot alongside the R9 290X in UBER Mode. The R9 290 is a single frame per second behind the GTX 780 Lightning.
Batman Arkham Origins moved development away from series creators Rocksteady Studios, and is written by Corey May and Dooma Wendschuh. The game’s main storyline is set five years before that of 2009′s Batman: Arkham Asylum and follows a younger and less refined Batman who has a bounty placed on his head by crime lord Black Mask, drawing eight of the world’s greatest assassins to Gotham City on Christmas Eve.

The game is presented from the third-person perspective with a primary focus on Batman’s combat and stealth abilities, detective skills, and gadgets that can be used in both combat and exploration. Arkham Origins is the first game in the series to feature multiplayer gameplay.

We test at Ultra HD 4K with a mixture of high image quality settings and 2 MSAA, shown above.


The Nvidia hardware dominate this engine with the GTX780 and GTX Titan in top positions.
Battlefield 4 (also known as BF4) is a first-person shooter video game developed by EA Digital Illusions CE (DICE) and published by Electronic Arts. The game is a sequel to 2011's Battlefield 3. Battlefield 4 is built on the new Frostbite 3 engine. The new Frostbite engine enables more realistic environments with higher resolution textures and particle effects. A new “networked water” system is also being introduced, allowing all players in the game to see the same wave at the same time.Tessellation has also been overhauled.

We test at Ultra HD 4K with the high image quality profile, shown above.


The R9 290 and R9 290X score very highly in this game, outperforming the reference Nvidia GTX Titan by a single frame per second. The GTX780 Lightning scores the same at Ultra HD 4K as the R9 290.
AMD's R9 290 and R9 290X use XDMA Bridgeless Crossfire. No longer do you have to hunt around for a bridge connector, which is sure to prove popular with all of the high end gamers out there.

Without the Crossfire bridge connector on the 290/290X the Crossfire data and transfer is fed through the PCI Express bus that connects the cards to the system. AMD have said that this XDMA interface is a step forward for Ultra HD 4K because by accessing the graphics card memory through the PCIe interface they claim it will resolve sync issues and help improve bandwidth.

Today we are going to show some results by pairing up the R9 290 and R9 290X.

With both cards in the system, the Catalyst driver immediately detected and enabled Crossfire.

We overclocked the R9 290 to the same core clock speed of the R9 290X – from 947mhz to 1GHZ. This required a 5.5% clock increase. Both R9 290X and 290 fan speeds were set to a maximum of 55% in Catalyst Control Center.

As we detailed earlier in the review, there are some architectural differences between the R9 290X and R9 290 but we thought the ‘mixed' results on the following pages would be an interesting addition to the review.

The STREAM processor count has been reduced between R9 290X and 290, from 2,816 to 2,560. Texture units also get a downgrade, from 176 to 160. Both cards have 4GB of GDDR5 connected via a very wide 512 bit memory interface running at 1,250mhz (5Gbps effective).
Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7. This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.


With both R9 290X and R9 290 paired up in Crossfire, the score increases to 65,174 points.3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.


With the R9 290X and R9 290 in mixed Crossfire, the graphics section of the score increases to 22,465 points – 8,000 points ahead of the GTX Titan.3DMark is an essential tool used by millions of gamers, hundreds of hardware review sites and many of the world’s leading manufacturers to measure PC gaming performance.

Futuremark say “Use it to test your PC’s limits and measure the impact of overclocking and tweaking your system. Search our massive results database and see how your PC compares or just admire the graphics and wonder why all PC games don’t look this good.

To get more out of your PC, put 3DMark in your PC.”


The graphics score increases to a whopping 20,238 points – the highest to date.Sleeping Dogs started development as an original title, but was announced in 2009 as True Crime: Hong Kong, the third installment and a reboot of the True Crime series. As a result of the game’s high development budget and delays, it was canceled by Activision Blizzard in 2011. Six months later, it was announced that Square Enix had picked up the publishing rights to the game, but the game was renamed Sleeping Dogs in 2012 since Square Enix did not purchase the True Crime name rights.

We used the ‘HIGH’ graphics level setting at 4K- 3840×2160. This uses a mixture of high and extreme graphics settings, detailed above.

The mixed Crossfire performance results are impressive, with the frame rate increasing to an average of 77.Total War ROME 2 is the eighth stand alone game in the Total War series, it is the successor to the successful Rome: Total War title. The Warscape Engine powers the visuals of the game and the new unit cameras will allow players to focus on individual soldiers on the battlefield, which in itself may contain thousands of combatants at a time. Creative Assembly has stated that they wish to bring out the more human side of war this way, with soldiers reacting with horror as their comrades get killed around them and officers inspiring their men with heroic speeches before siege towers hit the walls of the enemy city. This will be realised using facial animations for individual units, adding a feel of horror and realism to the battles.

We test at 4K – 3840×2160 with the Very High Preset selected, as shown in the screenshots above.

A healthy increase when both R9 290 and R9 290X are paired up in Crossfire.
Dirt Showdown is the latest title in the franchise from Codemasters, based around the famous Colin McRae racing game series, although it no longer uses his name, since he passed away in 2007.

Today we test with the ULTRA profile, at 4K 3840×2160 resolution and with 8 times Anti Aliasing.

The average frame rate is increased dramatically, to an average of 86.After a delayed release from late 2012 to March 2013, the game received much anticipation and hype. Tomb Raider received much acclaim from critics, who praised the graphics, the gameplay and Camilla Luddington’s performance as Lara with many critics agreeing that the game is a solid and much needed reboot of the franchise. Much criticism went to the addition of the multiplayer which many felt was unnecessary. Tomb Raider went on to sell one million copies in forty-eight hours of its release, and has sold 3.4 million copies worldwide so far.

We test at 4K 3840×2160 resolution with the ULTRA profile setting enabled –  details in the images above.

Tomb Raider shows good scaling, averaging 75 frames per second at these settings.Metro: Last Light takes place one year after the events of Metro 2033, proceeding from the ending where Artyom chose to call down the missile strike on the Dark Ones. The Rangers have since occupied the D6 military facility, with Artyom having become an official member of the group. Khan, the nomad mystic, arrives at D6 to inform Artyom and the Rangers that a single Dark One survived the missile strike. 4A Games’ proprietary 4A Engine is capable of rendering breathtaking vistas, such as those showing the ruined remnants of Moscow, as well as immersive indoor areas that play with light and shadow, creating hauntingly beautiful scenes akin to those from modern-day photos of Pripyat’s abandoned factories and schools.

We test this game with the built in benchmark, with the settings detailed above. Direct X 11 mode, Quality is set at medium, 16 AF, normal Motion blur, Tessellation Normal, Advanced PhysX disabled and SSAA disabled.

This benchmark is incredibly demanding at Ultra HD 4K, however the mixed Crossfire configuration shows good results, averaging 69 frames per second.Grid 2 is the sequel to the racing video game Race Driver: Grid.  It was developed and published by Codemasters. The game includes numerous real world locations such as Paris, numerous United States locations, and many more, and also includes motor vehicles spanning four decades. In addition, it includes a new handling system that developer Codemasters has dubbed ‘TrueFeel’, which aims to hit a sweet spot between realism and accessibility.

We select 4K 3840×2160 resolution and enabled the ULTRA profile with 8 times anti aliasing, as shown in the screenshots above.

Huge frame rate increases in Crossfire, averaging 92 frames per second.
Splinter Cell Blacklist is the sixth installment in the series. The game begins with Sam Fisher and his old friend Victor Coste who are about to depart from Andersen AFB in Guam when an unknown enemy force destroys the entire base. Assisted by hacker specialist Charlie Cole, Sam and Vic manage to escape, although Vic is injured after protecting Sam from a grenade. Soon after, a terrorist group calling itself “The Engineers” assumes responsibility for the attack and announce that it was the first of a deadly countdown of escalating attacks (called “The Blacklist”) on United States assets, declaring that they will halt the attacks only after the U.S. government accomplish the demand of calling back all American troops deployed abroad.

We selected 4K – 3840×2160 resolution and the ‘High’ Graphics quality preset. Screenshots shown above.

Splinter Cell is a demanding game however it runs butter smooth with the R9 290X and the R9 290 in Crossfire, averaging over 80 frames per second.
The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 24c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this.Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes.Load measurements were acquired by playing Crysis Warhead for 30 minutes and measuring the peak temperature. We also have included Furmark results, recording maximum temperatures throughout a 30 minute stress test. All fan settings were left on automatic.


As we discussed earlier in the review changes to Catalyst Control Center for the R9 290 series cards add new options. The fan speed is limited to a maximum of 47 percent while the software simultaneously holds a maximum default temperature of 95c.

AMD have clearly had to work out a rather sophisticated set of parameters to try and maintain a maximum default core temperature of 95c, which seems very high in our opinion.

We discussed this with AMD and we were told ‘R9 290 GPU running at 95C is absolutely normal and intentional.’ I am not so sure, but in six months time we will know if there has been a high return rate for the reference cards. Hopefully partners will bypass this poor reference cooling system and use their own custom coolers.We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with almost completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run looped 3dMark tests.

We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the closed chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation. Ambient noise in the room measures close to the limits of our sound meter at 28dBa.

Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.

KitGuru noise guide

10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

The cooler is certainly far from the best we have tested. While the dBa rating is not too high at the default settings, there is a quite annoying pitch, inherent with all of the small AMD fans built into their reference coolers. Nvidia can build their reference coolers well, but AMD have always struggled.

The cooler on both R9 290 and R9 290x is disappointing.
To test power consumption today we are using a Keithley Integra unit and we measure power consumption from the VGA card inputs, not the system wide drain. We measure results while gaming in Crysis Warhead and the synthetic stress test Furmark and record both results.

Power consumption is down a little from the R9 290X, averaging between 200 watts and 220 watts when gaming.To overclock the R9 290 today we use Catalyst Control Center in the latest BETA8 driver.

If you have read the whole review from the start then you will already be aware of AMD OverDrive changes to accommodate the new R9 290 hardware. Our testing today has highlighted that the R9 290 is a hot running card – set by default by AMD to hold at 95c, even if this means downclocking the core speed.

The higher we set the ‘maximum fan speed’ the better chance we have of holding the core clock speed at a constant 1,000mhz. We didn’t reduce the 95c ‘target GPU temperature’ as it means that the GPU core is more likely to downclock under any given circumstance.

To overclock we set the Maximum fan speed to 75% and the target GPU temperature at 95c.


We set the power limit to 26% and overclocked the GPU core by 14% achieving the 1080mhz final speed. Memory received a 6.2% increase to 1,328mhz.

The noise levels got high however, registering 43.3dBa under full load, not something I would want to live with on a regular basis. It was quite painful actually.


The overclock helped performance substantially – increasing the final graphics score from 14,004 points to 15,752 points – at these speeds, the card actually outperformed the R9 290X in UBER mode at default clock speeds.
The AMD R9 290 is a very powerful graphics card capable of dealing with the latest Direct X 11 titles at both 1600p and Ultra HD 4K resolutions.

Both R9 290X and R9 290 have 4GB of GDDR5 memory connected via a broad 512 bit memory interface. The memory is clocked at the same 1,250mhz (5Gbps effective) speeds. The 290X has the higher STREAM processor count – 2,816 compared to 2,560 on the R9 290. Texture units have also been downgraded, from 176 to 160.

Both of these cards have been designed to handle Ultra HD 4K resolutions and they are often right at the top of the performance charts. If you want to game at 1080p then the AMD R9 280X seems a  more cost effective solution.

Right now the cost of a good 4K monitor is prohibitive and very few people will be able to afford one, although prices will surely drop in 2014. We have recently added the £3,000 ASUS PQ321QE 31.5 inch 4K monitor into our labs and there is no doubt that gaming at this resolution has to be seen in the flesh to be fully enjoyed.

Not every game has been designed to scale well to Ultra HD 4K, but titles such as Battlefield 4 and Batman Arkham Origins really do help to showcase the ASUS monitor at the native 3,840 x 2,160 resolution. Playing either of these games at Ultra HD 4K on the R290x/290 or GTX Titan/GTX 780 is simply breathtaking.

Mixed 290x/290 Crossfire was also a surprisingly positive experience, and we could notice the frame rates smoothing out at Ultra HD 4k. It may seem like a lot of cash, but if you are forking out £3,000 for a monitor we would imagine that paying for two high end video cards wouldn't be too much of a financial stretch.

Sadly, it isn't all peaches and cream for AMD. The R9 290 is hampered with the same reference cooler that is fitted to the R9 290X. AMD have been keen to point out that holding a 95C temperature long term is perfectly fine, but I really can't agree.

Not only does the PCB get boiling hot to the touch after gaming for any length of time, but both of these cards pump a lot of radiated hot air into a chassis. Good exhaust airflow and cable management is a prerequisite if you are building a system around one, or two of these reference cooled cards.

AMD's Catalyst Control Center does allow for end user adjustments, but you need to be very careful on the settings. If you set the working temperature to a maximum of 85c for instance, but don't increase the maximum fan speed, then the card will throttle substantially more under load – AMD have set it to 95c for a reason, not because they suddenly worked out that ‘hotter is fine'. The end user either has to accept a high running temperature or an increase in fan noise when playing games.

AMD are clearly battling this problem internally as the original launch date for the 290 was changed last minute, after we had most of our tests completed with the BETA 6 driver. We noticed that the BETA 8 driver had increased the fan profile from a maximum of 40% to 47% to try and squeeze every ounce of performance from the hardware. While the noise levels are higher, it was a good move as I had documented a lot of throttling under load at 40%.

For the gaming audience living in a particularly warm climate there is a good chance that the R9 290 and R9 290X will downclock the core clock fairly regularly unless you increase the fan speed from the default settings. I tested these cards in an air conditioned environment with temperatures held between 22c and 24c, but at 30c? Be prepared to increase the default fan profile if you want to get as much performance as possible from the hardware.

No matter how AMD attempt to spin this, we do feel they needed to create a better reference cooler. If this cooler was fitted to a lower performance card it would probably be perfectly fine, but the 290/290X are very hot running cards and would undoubtedly perform to a higher level fitted with a version of the Tri cooler featured on the superb R9 280X Toxic Edition which featured whopping 10mm heatpipes. Lowering the noise levels would also be very beneficial to the overall experience of the new hardware.

Just before publication AMD told us that the SEP of the Radeon R9 290 will start at 289€+VAT / $399 USD. After factoring in 20% VAT we would translate this into a £319.99 inc vat asking price in the United Kingdom. There is no doubt that the R9 290 will offer outstanding value for money.

The cooling issues are the only reason that the 290 has not earned our ‘MUST HAVE' award today. We love the performance of the solution at ultra high resolutions, but until we get our hands on custom versions of the hardware from the likes of Sapphire then it is difficult to give either 290 or 290x our highest award. A different version of the triple fan cooler fitted to the dual GPU HD7990 would have undoubtedly worked and I still can't understand why AMD didn't work harder on this reference cooling solution.

Pros:

• Fantastic price point.
• superb performance.
• designed for Ultra HD 4K gaming.

Cons:

• can get loud.
• will run hot.
• core clock can downclock depending on ambient temperature and fan speed.

Kitguru says: A fantastic, high value for money proposition, but we advise our audience to wait on custom cooled versions of the hardware before parting with the cash.

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