Hands-on with AMD's Radeon R9 290X GPU

First, some nuts and bolts: Our Radeon R9 290X reference design carries a 1000MHz GPU clock, a 1250MHz memory clock, and 4GB of DDR5 memory. It boasts 2816 graphics cores and a 512-bit memory interface. It occupies a single PCIe x16 slot. One eight-pin and one six-pin power connector serve to power the card.

The Radeon R9 290X includes two BIOS settings. A tiny physical switch on the card lets you toggle between them (the toggle takes effect after a PC restart). ‘Quiet’ mode caps performance and fan speeds to produce a quieter experience. ‘Uber’ mode aims for optimal performance, regardless of the level of noise that results.

On our game benchmarks, at Ultra settings and a resolution of 2560 by 1600 pixels, the Radeon R9 290X bested the GeForce GTX 780 nearly every time.

In our tests, we saw little difference in performance between the two modes—only a few frames per second in some games. In some instances (usually at lower resolutions), Quiet mode slightly outperformed Uber mode. But in either mode, the Radeon R9 290X was a little to a lot faster than the Nvidia reference card.

If flipping a switch seems too simple for you, note that the included Catalyst Control Center software has a redesigned OverDrive option for fine-tuning the overclocking of your graphics card. In this utility, you can increase overdriving as a percentage instead of as a clock speed.

AMD provided a 4K monitor with the card so we could see how well the Radeon R9 290X’s focus on ultra-HD gaming has paid off. To push the card to its limits, we tried every game we had that could reach that resolution, and were impressed by the resulting decent performance. Nearly every game, except Crysis 3, ran at a playable 30 fps or better at Ultra quality—that’s with everything turned up to the max.

Frame rates for games running at 4K resolution and Ultra settings were surprisingly good.

We measured the card’s running temperature at a blistering 95 degrees Celsius (203 degrees Fahrenheit). AMD said that the 290X can run at that temperature perfectly safely for its entire life, and that there’s no technical reason to reduce the target temperature—though you could lower it via OverDrive. Users who’d like to keep performance up and temperature down, should consider buying and installing a good after-market cooler.

Multiple-graphics-card enthusiasts can kiss those annoying, easy-to-lose CrossFire bridges goodbye. With the Radeon R9 290X, you can set up two cards in CrossFire mode simply by installing them on the same motherboard.

AMD’s reference design provides two DVI-I connectors, one HDMI port, and one DisplayPort on the mounting bracket. Using AMD’s EyeFinity multimonitor technology, you can connect as many as six displays to a single graphics card. GPUs in the Radeon R9 family now support up to three HDMI or DVI displays (previously the maximum was two), and the rest via the DisplayPort or DisplayPort adapters. 

The Radeon R9 290X also uses ZeroCore Power, an energy-conservation feature that powers down the graphics card completely when the PC is in an idle state. A driver monitors tasks and display contents to determine whether applications are no longer actively changing the screen contents, allowing the PC to remain active without drawing power from the GPU. Activities such as file serving, video streaming, motherboard audio, and remote access remain available even in a powered-down state. When the GPU is required, the driver instantly wakes the card.

Suggested retail pricing for the Radeon R9 290X starts at $549, which makes it about $100 cheaper than the comparable Nvidia GeForce GTX 780. Of course, as retailers release versions with fancy extras, prices could very well reach GTX 780 levels. Based on the results of our hands-on testing, however, the Radeon R9 290X could be the new GPU to beat.

Source : PCWorld