Amd r9 290x review: The AMD Radeon R9 290X Review

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It may be big, hot and hungry for power, but the Hawaii GPU has certainly got game

AMD Radeon R9-290X

TechRadar Verdict

Cons
  • Very noisy in Uber mode

  • Runs hot

  • No point in it given R9-290 performance

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Finally, after all the messing around with rebranding almost its entire line of HD 7000 series cards with the new Rx prefix, AMD is launching a genuinely brand new graphics card with a brand new GPU. Ladies and gentlefolk, we give you the Radeon R9-290X and its Hawaii XT graphics processor.

This is AMD’s second stab at an ultra-enthusiast card to rival the top tier of Nvidia’s lineup, namely the GTX Titan and, more importantly, the GTX 780. The first, the dual-GPU HD 7990, had an ultra-enthusiast price point and in general it had performance to match.

The issue was that when you start banding around multi-GPU cards against similarly performing single-GPU options, there’s only going to be one winner. One GPU on its own can be trusted to simply work with any game you care to throw at it, especially a few months or years down the line. Relying on people to keep fashioning multi-GPU drivers or profiles specifically for one niche graphics array is far more of a gamble.

And so AMD had to come out with a big GPU to rival Nvidia’s hefty GK 110 silicon and, impressively, it has managed to do just that with the Hawaii XT GPU. There’s no actual new graphics technology at play here though – we’re still looking at essentially the same Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture for each of its Radeon cores. This time around, however, we’re getting some 2,816 of them. Compared with the 2,048 of the HD 7970/R9 280X, that’s a considerable jump.

You’ve also got double the ROPs count, another 1GB of GDDR5 memory on top, and they’re all running through an aggregated 512-bit memory bus. All that extra goodness inside this new card means the Hawaii XT GPU is a massive chip. It’s not quite on a par with the GK 110’s 7 billion transistors and 561mm2 die size, but at 6.2 bn transistors and a 435mm2 die it’s not far behind in sheer scale.

Heated debate

AMD hasn’t just followed Nvidia’s lead in creating a big, heavy, powerful graphics chip for its flagship graphics card; it’s also changed the way it zeros in on the GPU core clockspeed. Where Nvidia introduced GPU Boost with the inaugural Kepler cards, then re-specced it for the GTX 700 series, AMD has been playing catch-up.

Nvidia’s cards were the first to really take advantage of dynamic clockspeeds, latterly based upon target temperatures, and with the R9 290X, AMD is also basing its dynamic GPU clock almost entirely on temperature.

That then means we can no longer really talk about clockspeeds as we used to. They’re no longer a fixed entity, they move up and down the scale as power and temperature headroom allows. The R9 290X then has a core clock of up to 1GHz and how quickly it runs depends on how close to the 95ºC temperature target the GPU is running at.

Sorry, what? A target temperature of 95ºC?

Yeah, that does seem to be pretty hot for AMD to actively aim its flagship GPU at, but it’s been at pains to assure the tech world 95ºC is a «perfectly safe temperature at which the GPU can operate for its entire life. There is no technical reason to reduce the target temperature below 95ºC,» I was told. So there.

The fact that it might melt the rest of the components sat around it after a mammoth Battlefield 4 sesh is neither here nor there. The GPU will still be functional even if your actual PC isn’t.

Even if it the card is happy to run at that temperature in the default ‘Über mode’, it sounds like AMD Radeons of old. Anyone remember the ancient X1900 XTX? It sounded much like a Harrier Jump Jet straining to take off with Mr Creosote in the cockpit. When the GPU is running at its peak temperature, the R9 290X is incredibly loud. That’s fine if you’re always going to be wearing a decent, noise-cancelling headset when you’re gaming, but for a lot of us it’s just going to be too loud.

And when you consider that the ‘Über mode’ is setting a maximum fanspeed of only 55 per cent, you’ll understand just how ridiculously ear-splitting it is at 100 per cent.

The quiet life

To combat that, AMD has kept with the dual-BIOS switches of the last generation HD 7970 and introduced a ‘Quiet mode’ as the secondary position. All this seems to do is set the fanspeed to a maximum of 40 per cent in-game – meaning the GPU will hit the 95ºC target temperature well before it gets to the 1GHz maximum dynamic clock.

At that 40 per cent, the AMD reference cooler is actually pretty quiet, so it’s not going to leave your ears ringing and force you to turn your speakers up to 11 just to hear the ‘splodes of your latest Kerbal Space Program rocket failing to make it off the launchpad.

However, you’re sadly going to be leaving some of your £430 graphics card’s performance on the cutting room floor. With the fans limited to 40 per cent in our testing, the GPU was hitting around 850MHz – that’s a good 150MHz lower than the top reference clockspeed. And it takes a very strong-willed gamer to be capable of turning their back on something called ‘Über mode’…

That said, the fanspeed limit can easily be changed from within the Catalyst Control Centre (CCC). So if you don’t need the top performance and would rather have some peace and quiet you can lower it, then put it back up when you want some oomph.

Performance talks

But how does this brand new AMD graphics card stack up in the grand scheme of things? Well, next to a cure for cancer its import is pretty minimal. Okay, how about the less grand scheme of things? The main target for the R9 290X has to be the GTX 780. The GTX Titan is a nice goal, but thanks to the GK 110’s overclocking headroom that’s going to just about remain the fastest single-GPU graphics card for the time being. Not by much, though – and in some games not at all – and that’s why this new Radeon is so impressive.

At £430 it’s a little more expensive than the GTX 780 is right now, but is still almost half the cost of the ridiculously pricey Titan. And when the card’s sat in the deafening ‘Über mode’ it consistently outperforms the GTX 780 in the latest games, sometimes by a pretty hefty margin. In both the resource-intensive Company of Heroes 2 and the arcade race-a-thon GRID 2, the 290X takes a sizeable lead in the benchmarking stakes. Elsewhere, the lead is less sizeable, but still more than just explainable by simple variance of testing. The R9 290X is most definitely a quicker card than the GTX 780 and, in a lot of cases, the GTX Titan too. Job done, you might think. Even in ‘Quiet mode’ it’s mostly just on par with the 780-shaped competition, so lowering that fanspeed isn’t quite as harmful to relative performance as we thought.

Almost as important as the average frame rate comparisons are the minimum frame rates the competing cards achieve. Again, the AMD card has the edge, providing a slightly smoother gaming experience even where the average frame rate is at a similar level. We’d put that down to the improved memory setup the Radeon has over the GTX 780 card. Generally, when you see stuttering or serious slowdown in a game engine it’s because of streaming data back and forth; when there’s the 4GB framebuffer involved the amount of shunting around in slower storage and memory subsystems is drastically reduced. The 6GB of the Titan can’t help though, and we’re guessing that 512-bit bus bonus is what gives the R9 290X a boost against it.

Technical analysis

When four out of the six straight graphics benchmarks have AMD’s noisy R9-290X with the performance lead over Nvidia’s GTX Titan then you’ve got to call it a win for the Radeon team. Coming in with higher minimum frame rates too — possibly down to that wide 512-bit bus — means that in terms of gaming alone the AMD card will deliver a much smoother experience. Unfortunately the hot, hefty and hungry GPU is loud and needs a lot of juice, but those aren’t really performance-related problems.

DirectX 11 tessellation performance
Heaven 4.0 – FPS: higher is better

AMD R9-290X ‘Über’ – 33.7 (17.4)
AMD R9-290X ‘Quiet’ – 31.8 (16.4)
Nvidia GTX Titan – 37 (18.2)
Nvidia GTX 780 – 33.2 (16)

DirectX 11 gaming performance
Bioshock Infinite – FPS: higher is better

AMD R9-290X ‘Über’ – 57 (16)
AMD R9-290X ‘Quiet’ – 56 (16)
Nvidia GTX Titan – 60 (11)
Nvidia GTX 780 – 56 (11)

Company of Heroes 2 – FPS: higher is better
AMD R9-290X ‘Über’ – 29 (15)
AMD R9-290X ‘Quiet’ – 29 (15)
Nvidia GTX Titan – 25 (12)
Nvidia GTX 780 – 22 (11)

GRID 2 – FPS: higher is better
AMD R9-290X ‘Über’ – 86 (68)
AMD R9-290X ‘Quiet’ – 75 (61)
Nvidia GTX Titan – 77 (61)
Nvidia GTX 780 – 70 (50)

Total War: Rome II – FPS: higher is better
AMD R9-290X ‘Über’ – 36 (13)
AMD R9-290X ‘Quiet’ – 32 (14)
Nvidia GTX Titan – 33 (12)
Nvidia GTX 780 – 30 (9)

Metro Last Light – FPS: higher is better
AMD R9-290X ‘Über’ – 26 (13)
AMD R9-290X ‘Quiet’ – 23 (13)
Nvidia GTX Titan – 24 (13)
Nvidia GTX 780 – 23 (13)

Peak temperature performance
100% GPU load – ºC: cooler is better

AMD R9-290X ‘Über’ – 95
AMD R9-290X ‘Quiet’ – 95
Nvidia GTX Titan – 80
Nvidia GTX 780 – 80

Peak platform power performance
GRID 2 – Watts: lower is better

AMD R9-290X ‘Über’ – 383
AMD R9-290X ‘Quiet’ – 313
Nvidia GTX Titan – 300
Nvidia GTX 780 — 283

Green lining?

Where the GTX 780 and GTX Titan do win some friends though is in the general experience. Despite the fact that the GK 110 GPU is a larger chip, with more transistors, it runs considerably cooler and doesn’t demand quite as much from your PSU. When you compare the ‘Über mode’ to the stock performance of the GTX 780, the Radeon is drawing another 100W of power, and even when we had the temperature target of the GTX 780 set to 95ºC, it struggled to get hotter than 82ºC. Both of those factors, along with the superior Titan-esque cooler on the Nvidia card, means that it’s whisper-quiet by comparison. You’re not going to want the R9 290X sat in your little lounge-based Steam Machine hitting 55 per cent fanspeed whenever you’re gaming, simply because of the noise levels that come with it.

Verdict

This is all shaping up to be a pretty impressive win for the R9 290X then. It’s quicker than a GTX 780 and when you push the overclock up a little – to be fair you will only get a little out of it – you’ll get GTX Titan gaming performance for almost half the price. The big problem though is the second-tier Hawaii card that was released less than two weeks later. The R9 290 (without the ‘X’) is still using almost the exact same GPU. The Hawaii Pro chip in the straight R9 290 is short just a few hundred cores but is capable of delivering almost identical gaming performance.

Before we jammed the 290 into our test rig we were massively impressed with the 290X. With the second tier card though offering the same sort of frame rates , for well over £100 less, there’s almost no reason for anyone to opt for the much more expensive, hotter and louder graphics card. Nvidia will also soon release the GTX 780 Ti, which will likely take the 290X’s place as the de facto fastest graphics card around, though that will be priced ridiculously high.

If it wasn’t for the 290X’s little brother we’d have been big fans, as it is this card is suddenly almost irrelevant and we cannot recommend it as a good purchase for anyone. Graphics cards always become obsolete eventually but no-one expected it to happen so quickly here…

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AMD Radeon R9 290X review

Our Verdict

A top quality card which, at its best, will take on any stock GPU and come out on top.

Why you can trust PC Gamer
Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.

Look. It’s new. Like actually new, not just old but with a new sticker. Not necessarily new technology, but y’know, a genuine new configuration. Yup, the AMD Radeon R9 290X is the first actually new graphics card they have released in an absolute age. Sure, we’ve seen the R9 280X (actually a HD 7970 GHz), the R9 270X (actually a HD 7870) and the R7 260X (actually a HD 7790), but this is a card with a bona fide new GPU.

The Radeon R9 290X is AMD’s latest flagship graphics card aimed squarely at taking on the top-end of Nvidia’s rivalling graphics lineup. And the scary thing? It manages it.

By ‘top-end’ I’m including the ultra-enthusiast class GeForce GTX Titan in that along with the GeForce GTX 780. The fact AMD’s latest card can be mentioned in the same breath as the Nvidia’s Titan is testament to how well AMD have engineered the Hawaii XT GPU sat inside the R9 290X. So what’s in this brand new GPU? Well, as I said earlier, it’s not really new technology , but the Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture has proved pretty powerful over the last few generations so it’s no surprise to see the Hawaii XT still rocking the same Radeon cores, only this time we’re looking at some 2,816 of them, as opposed to the 2,048 cores of the R9 280X/HD7970.

That makes it a rather hefty chunk of silicon. It comes in at somewhere around 435mm2 in terms of die size, and packs in over six billion transistors. Along with this new GPU we’ve also got a broad 512-bit memory bus, helping shunt data in and out of the 4GB GDDR5 framebuffer.

Hot stuff

Because of the size and power of this new GPU though we are talking about one very hot and very power-hungry chip. AMD have been very keen to point out that the 95ºC operating temperature of the Hawaii GPU is perfectly normal, and presents no tangible risk to the working life of the chip.

I was told “95ºC is a perfectly safe temperature at which the GPU can operate for its entire life. There is no technical reason to reduce the target temperature below 95ºC.” That does make for a very hot environment for the rest of your PC components however.

AMD’s newest card uses dynamic clockspeed to tune the chip frequency and voltage depending on the temperature of the GPU itself. When you point it at 95ºC you’ll get the most out of the chip. That does, however, make it rather loud. Even with the fanspeed limited to 55% in the default mode it sounds like you’re standing in a wind tunnel once you crank up the GPU load. At 100% the fans are deafening. You can though opt to boot your Radeon R9 290X in ‘Quiet mode’ as opposed to the louder ‘Über mode’.

‘Quiet mode’ knocks the maximum fanspeed down to just 40% and that makes for a much more pleasant-sounding gaming environment. You will have to sacrifice some clockspeed for that — in my tests I was seeing the Hawaii XT chip hit a maximum of around 850MHz as opposed to the 1GHz the ‘Über mode’ nets you.

Power play

So, it’s super-loud and super-hot. That doesn’t sound like a recipe for a world-beating GPU, but the R9 290X delivers some serious performance. If the current pricing of $550 / £450 sticks around after launch today then you’re looking at a card that’s almost half the price of a GTX Titan and almost always has it beat.

In my graphics benchmarks, with the Titan at stock speeds and the R9 290X in ‘Über mode’, the Radeon card wins four out of the six tests. That’s pretty convincing, especially when you take into account the wins in the minimum frame rates too.

I’m still reticent to give the R9 290X the nod as the outright fastest single-GPU graphics card around however. To me it seems like AMD’s Radeon R9 290X is running close to the ragged edge in terms of performance — I doubt we’re going to see a lot else out of it given the heat and power draw at reference clocks. Nvidia’s GTX Titan, however, still has a lot of overclocking overhead if you want to take advantage of it.

That’s moot when you consider the price gap between the two. The AMD Radeon R9 290X is the fastest single-GPU graphics card any sane person would buy. The poor GTX 780, at the moment, is some £50 more expensive and consistently performs slower in every test you care to mention.

It’s a win for AMD then, and a quite convincing one if I’m honest. Personally, the heat and noise would give me pause for thought — and it’s definitely not a card I’d recommend for any lounge-based Steam Machine for the aural assault alone. If you’re talking pure gaming performance, the R9 290X is the current graphics card king. Now the pressure’s on the Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 Ti and also the incoming R9 290 without the X to raise the bar. Nvidia will be desperate to dethrone this new graphics card and, will at this moment, be testing and tweaking their new silicon to beat it.

Benchmarks

All graphics tests were carried out using the latest drivers releases on the same Intel i7-4770K / Z87 test system. Because of the high-end nature of the cards involved all the benchmarks noted here were run at 2560 x 1600 with 4x anti-aliasing and the highest settings available. The initial figures are the average frame rate and the figures in parentheses are the minimum frame rates in the test.

If you guys want me to post the 1080p performance pipe up and I’ll update the review with them.

DirectX 11 tessellation performance

Heaven 4.0 – FPS: higher is better

AMD R9-290X ‘Über’ – 33.7 (17.4)

AMD R9-290X ‘Quiet’ – 31.8 (16.4)

Nvidia GTX Titan – 37 (18.2)

Nvidia GTX 780 – 33.2 (16)

DirectX 11 gaming performance

Bioshock Infinite – FPS: higher is better

AMD R9-290X ‘Über’ – 57 (16)

AMD R9-290X ‘Quiet’ – 56 (16)

Nvidia GTX Titan – 60 (11)

Nvidia GTX 780 – 56 (11)

Company of Heroes 2 – FPS: higher is better

AMD R9-290X ‘Über’ – 29 (15)

AMD R9-290X ‘Quiet’ – 29 (15)

Nvidia GTX Titan – 25 (12)

Nvidia GTX 780 – 22 (11)

GRID 2 – FPS: higher is better

AMD R9-290X ‘Über’ – 86 (68)

AMD R9-290X ‘Quiet’ – 75 (61)

Nvidia GTX Titan – 77 (61)

Nvidia GTX 780 – 70 (50)

Total War: Rome II – FPS: higher is better

AMD R9-290X ‘Über’ – 36 (13)

AMD R9-290X ‘Quiet’ – 32 (14)

Nvidia GTX Titan – 33 (12)

Nvidia GTX 780 – 30 (9)

Metro Last Light – FPS: higher is better

AMD R9-290X ‘Über’ – 26 (13)

AMD R9-290X ‘Quiet’ – 23 (13)

Nvidia GTX Titan – 24 (13)

Nvidia GTX 780 – 23 (13)

Peak temperature performance

100% GPU load – ºC: cooler is better

AMD R9-290X ‘Über’ – 95

AMD R9-290X ‘Quiet’ – 95

Nvidia GTX Titan – 80

Nvidia GTX 780 – 80

Peak platform power performance

GRID 2 – Watts: lower is better

AMD R9-290X ‘Über’ – 383

AMD R9-290X ‘Quiet’ – 313

Nvidia GTX Titan – 300

Nvidia GTX 780 — 283

*** UPDATE ***

The 1080p gaming performance of the Radeon R9 290X does make for slightly better reading for Nvidia with the GTX Titan winning three out of the five tests. But only by a small amount. These high-end cards aren’t really designed for 1080p gaming — anyone spending nigh-on £500 on a graphics card with only a 1920×1080 screen I’d definitely recommend upgrading that next.

DirectX 11 1080p gaming performance

Bioshock Infinite – FPS: higher is better

AMD R9-290X ‘Über’ – 93 (18)

AMD R9-290X ‘Quiet’ – 91 (17)

Nvidia GTX Titan – 100 (11)

Nvidia GTX 780 – 92 (10)

Company of Heroes 2 – FPS: higher is better

AMD R9-290X ‘Über’ – 48 (26)

AMD R9-290X ‘Quiet’ – 48 (26)

Nvidia GTX Titan – 42 (21)

Nvidia GTX 780 – 38 (19)

GRID 2 – FPS: higher is better

AMD R9-290X ‘Über’ – 108 (84)

AMD R9-290X ‘Quiet’ – 105 (82)

Nvidia GTX Titan – 109 (90)

Nvidia GTX 780 – 105 (87)

Total War: Rome II – FPS: higher is better

AMD R9-290X ‘Über’ – 48 (11)

AMD R9-290X ‘Quiet’ – 45 (9)

Nvidia GTX Titan – 49 (25)

Nvidia GTX 780 – 46 (20

Metro Last Light – FPS: higher is better

AMD R9-290X ‘Über’ – 47 (14)

AMD R9-290X ‘Quiet’ – 43 (16)

Nvidia GTX Titan – 42 (20

Nvidia GTX 780 – 39 (20)

AMD Radeon R9 290X: Price Comparison

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AMD Radeon R9 290X review

A top quality card which, at its best, will take on any stock GPU and come out on top.

Dave has been gaming since the days of Zaxxon and Lady Bug on the Colecovision, and code books for the Commodore Vic 20 (Death Race 2000!). He built his first gaming PC at the tender age of 16, and finally finished bug-fixing the Cyrix-based system around a year later. When he dropped it out of the window. He first started writing for Official PlayStation Magazine and Xbox World many decades ago, then moved onto PC Format full-time, then PC Gamer, TechRadar, and T3 among others. Now he’s back, writing about the nightmarish graphics card market, CPUs with more cores than sense, gaming laptops hotter than the sun, and SSDs more capacious than a Cybertruck.

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128MB PCI-EGeForce 6800 LE PCI-EGeForce 6800 256MB AGPGeForce 6800 128MB AGPGeForce 6800 LE AGPGeForce 6800 GS AGPGeForce 6800 GS PCI-EGeForce 6800 XTGeForce 6600 GT PCI-EGeForce 6600 GT AGPGeForce 6600 DDR2GeForce 6600 PCI-EGeForce 6600 AGPGeForce 6600 LEGeForce 6200 NV43VGeForce 6200GeForce 6200 NV43AGeForce 6500GeForce 6200 TC 64(256)GeForce 6200 TC 32(128)GeForce 6200 TC 16(128)GeForce PCX5950GeForce PCX 5900GeForce PCX 5750GeForce PCX 5550GeForce PCX 5300GeForce PCX 4300GeForce FX 5950 UltraGeForce FX 5900 UltraGeForce FX 5900GeForce FX 5900 ZTGeForce FX 5900 XTGeForce FX 5800 UltraGeForce FX 5800GeForce FX 5700 Ultra /DDR-3GeForce FX 5700 Ultra /DDR-2GeForce FX 5700GeForce FX 5700 LEGeForce FX 5600 Ultra (rev. 2)GeForce FX 5600 Ultra (rev.1)GeForce FX 5600 XTGeForce FX 5600GeForce FX 5500GeForce FX 5200 UltraGeForce FX 5200GeForce FX 5200 SEGeForce 4 Ti 4800GeForce 4 Ti 4800-SEGeForce 4 Ti 4200-8xGeForce 4 Ti 4600GeForce 4 Ti 4400GeForce 4 Ti 4200GeForce 4 MX 4000GeForce 4 MX 440-8x / 480GeForce 4 MX 460GeForce 4 MX 440GeForce 4 MX 440-SEGeForce 4 MX 420GeForce 3 Ti500GeForce 3 Ti200GeForce 3GeForce 2 Ti VXGeForce 2 TitaniumGeForce 2 UltraGeForce 2 PROGeForce 2 GTSGeForce 2 MX 400GeForce 2 MX 200GeForce 2 MXGeForce 256 DDRGeForce 256Riva TNT 2 UltraRiva TNT 2 PRORiva TNT 2Riva TNT 2 M64Riva TNT 2 Vanta LTRiva TNT 2 VantaRiva TNTRiva 128 ZXRiva 128 9Fury XRadeon R9 FuryRadeon R9 NanoRadeon R9 390XRadeon R9 390Radeon R9 380XRadeon R9 380Radeon R7 370Radeon R7 360Radeon R9 295X2Radeon R9 290XRadeon R9 290Radeon R9 280XRadeon R9 285Radeon R9 280Radeon R9 270XRadeon R9 270Radeon R7 265Radeon R7 260XRadeon R7 260Radeon R7 250Radeon R7 240Radeon HD 7970Radeon HD 7950Radeon HD 7870 XTRadeon HD 7870Radeon HD 7850Radeon HD 7790Radeon HD 7770Radeon HD 7750Radeon HD 6990Radeon HD 6970Radeon HD 6950Radeon HD 6930Radeon HD 6870Radeon HD 6850Radeon HD 6790Radeon HD 6770Radeon HD 6750Radeon HD 6670 GDDR5Radeon HD 6670 GDDR3Radeon HD 6570 GDDR5Radeon HD 6570 GDDR3Radeon HD 6450 GDDR5Radeon HD 6450 GDDR3Radeon HD 5570 GDDR5Radeon HD 3750Radeon HD 3730Radeon HD 5970Radeon HD 5870Radeon HD 5850Radeon HD 5830Radeon HD 5770Radeon HD 5750Radeon HD 5670Radeon HD 5570Radeon HD 5550Radeon HD 5450Radeon HD 4890Radeon HD 4870 X2Radeon HD 4870Radeon HD 4860Radeon HD 4850 X2Radeon HD 4850Radeon HD 4830Radeon HD 4790Radeon HD 4770Radeon HD 4730Radeon HD 4670Radeon HD 4650Radeon HD 4550Radeon HD 4350Radeon HD 4350Radeon HD 43500 (IGP 890GX) Radeon HD 4200 (IGP)Radeon HD 3870 X2Radeon HD 3870Radeon HD 3850Radeon HD 3690Radeon HD 3650Radeon HD 3470Radeon HD 3450Radeon HD 3300 (IGP)Radeon HD 3200 (IGP)Radeon HD 3100 (IGP)Radeon HD 2900 XT 1Gb GDDR4Radeon HD 2900 XTRadeon HD 2900 PRORadeon HD 2900 GTRadeon HD 2600 XT DUALRadeon HD 2600 XT GDDR4Radeon HD 2600 XTRadeon HD 2600 PRORadeon HD 2400 XTRadeon HD 2400 PRORadeon HD 2350Radeon X1950 CrossFire EditionRadeon X1950 XTXRadeon X1950 XTRadeon X1950 PRO DUALRadeon X1950 PRORadeon X1950 GTRadeon X1900 CrossFire EditionRadeon X1900 XTXRadeon X1900 XTRadeon X1900 GT Rev2Radeon X1900 GTRadeon X1800 CrossFire EditionRadeon X1800 XT PE 512MBRadeon X1800 XTRadeon X1800 XLRadeon X1800 GTORadeon X1650 XTRadeon X1650 GTRadeon X1650 XL DDR3Radeon X1650 XL DDR2Radeon X1650 PRO on RV530XTRadeon X1650 PRO on RV535XTRadeon X1650Radeon X1600 XTRadeon X1600 PRORadeon X1550 PRORadeon X1550Radeon X1550 LERadeon X1300 XT on RV530ProRadeon X1300 XT on RV535ProRadeon X1300 CERadeon X1300 ProRadeon X1300Radeon X1300 LERadeon X1300 HMRadeon X1050Radeon X850 XT Platinum EditionRadeon X850 XT CrossFire EditionRadeon X850 XT Radeon X850 Pro Radeon X800 XT Platinum EditionRadeon X800 XTRadeon X800 CrossFire EditionRadeon X800 XLRadeon X800 GTO 256MBRadeon X800 GTO 128MBRadeon X800 GTO2 256MBRadeon X800Radeon X800 ProRadeon X800 GT 256MBRadeon X800 GT 128MBRadeon X800 SERadeon X700 XTRadeon X700 ProRadeon X700Radeon X600 XTRadeon X600 ProRadeon X550 XTRadeon X550Radeon X300 SE 128MB HM-256MBR adeon X300 SE 32MB HM-128MBRadeon X300Radeon X300 SERadeon 9800 XTRadeon 9800 PRO /DDR IIRadeon 9800 PRO /DDRRadeon 9800Radeon 9800 SE-256 bitRadeon 9800 SE-128 bitRadeon 9700 PRORadeon 9700Radeon 9600 XTRadeon 9600 PRORadeon 9600Radeon 9600 SERadeon 9600 TXRadeon 9550 XTRadeon 9550Radeon 9550 SERadeon 9500 PRORadeon 9500 /128 MBRadeon 9500 /64 MBRadeon 9250Radeon 9200 PRORadeon 9200Radeon 9200 SERadeon 9000 PRORadeon 9000Radeon 9000 XTRadeon 8500 LE / 9100Radeon 8500Radeon 7500Radeon 7200 Radeon LE Radeon DDR OEM Radeon DDR Radeon SDR Radeon VE / 7000Rage 128 GL Rage 128 VR Rage 128 PRO AFRRage 128 PRORage 1283D Rage ProIntelArc A770 16GBArc A770 8GBArc A750Arc A380Arc A310NVIDIAGeForce RTX 4090GeForce RTX 4080GeForce RTX 4080 12GBGeForce RTX 3090 TiGeForce RTX 3090GeForce RTX 3080 TiGeForce RTX 3080 12GBGeForce RTX 3080GeForce RTX 3070 TiGeForce RTX 3070GeForce RTX 3060 TiGeForce RTX 3060 rev. 2GeForce RTX 3060GeForce RTX 3050GeForce RTX 2080 TiGeForce RTX 2080 SuperGeForce RTX 2080GeForce RTX 2070 SuperGeForce RTX 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GTX 460 SEGeForce GTX 460 1024MBGeForce GTX 460 768MBGeForce GTS 450GeForce GT 440 GDDR5GeForce GT 440 GDDR3GeForce GT 430GeForce GT 420GeForce GTX 295GeForce GTX 285GeForce GTX 280GeForce GTX 275GeForce GTX 260 rev. 2GeForce GTX 260GeForce GTS 250GeForce GTS 240GeForce GT 240GeForce GT 230GeForce GT 220GeForce 210Geforce 205GeForce GTS 150GeForce GT 130GeForce GT 120GeForce G100GeForce 9800 GTX+GeForce 9800 GTXGeForce 9800 GTSGeForce 9800 GTGeForce 9800 GX2GeForce 9600 GTGeForce 9600 GSO (G94)GeForce 9600 GSOGeForce 9500 GTGeForce 9500 GSGeForce 9400 GTGeForce 9400GeForce 9300GeForce 8800 ULTRAGeForce 8800 GTXGeForce 8800 GTS Rev2GeForce 8800 GTSGeForce 8800 GTGeForce 8800 GS 768MBGeForce 8800 GS 384MBGeForce 8600 GTSGeForce 8600 GTGeForce 8600 GSGeForce 8500 GT DDR3GeForce 8500 GT DDR2GeForce 8400 GSGeForce 8300GeForce 8200GeForce 8100GeForce 7950 GX2GeForce 7950 GTGeForce 7900 GTXGeForce 7900 GTOGeForce 7900 GTGeForce 7900 GSGeForce 7800 GTX 512MBGeForce 7800 GTXGeForce 7800 GTGeForce 7800 GS AGPGeForce 7800 GSGeForce 7600 GT Rev.2GeForce 7600 GTGeForce 7600 GS 256MBGeForce 7600 GS 512MBGeForce 7300 GT Ver2GeForce 7300 GTGeForce 7300 GSGeForce 7300 LEGeForce 7300 SEGeForce 7200 GSGeForce 7100 GS TC 128 (512)GeForce 6800 Ultra 512MBGeForce 6800 UltraGeForce 6800 GT 256MBGeForce 6800 GT 128MBGeForce 6800 GTOGeForce 6800 256MB PCI-EGeForce 6800 128MB PCI-EGeForce 6800 LE PCI-EGeForce 6800 256MB AGPGeForce 6800 128MB AGPGeForce 6800 LE AGPGeForce 6800 GS AGPGeForce 6800 GS PCI-EGeForce 6800 XTGeForce 6600 GT PCI-EGeForce 6600 GT AGPGeForce 6600 DDR2GeForce 6600 PCI-EGeForce 6600 AGPGeForce 6600 LEGeForce 6200 NV43VGeForce 6200GeForce 6200 NV43AGeForce 6500GeForce 6200 TC 64(256)GeForce 6200 TC 32(128)GeForce 6200 TC 16(128)GeForce PCX5950GeForce PCX 5900GeForce PCX 5750GeForce PCX 5550GeForce PCX 5300GeForce PCX 4300GeForce FX 5950 UltraGeForce FX 5900 UltraGeForce FX 5900GeForce FX 5900 ZTGeForce FX 5900 XTGeForce FX 5800 UltraGeForce FX 5800GeForce FX 5700 Ultra /DDR-3GeForce FX 5700 Ultra /DDR-2GeForce FX 5700GeForce FX 5700 LEGeForce FX 5600 Ultra (rev. 2)GeForce FX 5600 Ultra (rev.1)GeForce FX 5600 XTGeForce FX 5600GeForce FX 5500GeForce FX 5200 UltraGeForce FX 5200GeForce FX 5200 SEGeForce 4 Ti 4800GeForce 4 Ti 4800-SEGeForce 4 Ti 4200-8xGeForce 4 Ti 4600GeForce 4 Ti 4400GeForce 4 Ti 4200GeForce 4 MX 4000GeForce 4 MX 440-8x / 480GeForce 4 MX 460GeForce 4 MX 440GeForce 4 MX 440-SEGeForce 4 MX 420GeForce 3 Ti500GeForce 3 Ti200GeForce 3GeForce 2 Ti VXGeForce 2 TitaniumGeForce 2 UltraGeForce 2 PROGeForce 2 GTSGeForce 2 MX 400GeForce 2 MX 200GeForce 2 MXGeForce 256 DDRGeForce 256Riva TNT 2 UltraRiva TNT 2 PRORiva TNT 2Riva TNT 2 M64Riva TNT 2 Vanta LTRiva TNT 2 VantaRiva TNTRiva 128 ZXRiva 128

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Reviews of video cards AMD Radeon R9 290X:

  • MSI R9 290X Lightning video card review and testing

    MSI R9 290X Lightning

  • Cooled Radeon R9 290X according to ASUS. Testing the video card R9290X-DC2OC-4GD5

    ASUS R9290X-DC2OC-4GD5

  • Heavyweights. Radeon R9 performance comparison290X and GeForce GTX 780 Ti in 23 test applications

    AMD Radeon R9 290X

Review of the Gigabyte Radeon R9 290X video card: it will pull it all

The tested model is built on the basis of a very productive AMD graphics chip, as well as an advanced and efficient cooling system that will cope with the most serious loads during operation. This video card does not care about any games, even in higher resolution than Full HD. nine0129

Package contents

Paper documentation, software CD and two power adapters are supplied with the video card

Design The R9 290X doesn’t look bulky.

The cooling system is covered with a metal casing, which fits 100% into the design of the video card. The length of the card is 29.4 mm, while the elements of the radiator practically do not go beyond the printed circuit board. The design of the video card involves the use of two slots.

Available interfaces include two connectors DVI-D, DisplayPort, HDMI.

The graphics card is based on the AMD Hawaii XT graphics chip, made using the 28nm process technology. The core clock speed is 1040 MHz, which is slightly higher than AMD’s reference solution. 4 GB of GDDR5 memory is assembled using sixteen ELPIDA chips with a capacity of 256 MB each. They are connected via a 512-bit bus and operate at an effective frequency of 5000 MHz. nine0095

The power supply system is implemented according to the 6 + 8 scheme.

Cooling System and Overclocking

WINDFORCE advanced cooling system consists of two aluminum radiators connected by copper pipes and three powerful 74mm fans.

At maximum load and automatic fan speed, the temperature of the graphics chip rose to 81 ° C.

The blades were spinning at 76% of the maximum speed — 3470 rpm. nine0095

The noise of the cooling system can be described as average. Given the power of the solution, this is normal.

For overclocking, Gigabyte has developed a proprietary utility OC Guru II. In it, we raised the voltage of the graphics core by 32 mV and overclocked the frequency to 1140 MHz. During overclocking, the coolers were already running at 100%, and the GPU temperature did not exceed 90°C.

Taking into account the need for such intensive operation of the cooling system, you should be prepared for a fairly high noise level. nine0095

As a result, the performance gain after overclocking the video card was about 12% — definitely a worthy figure for a solution of this level.

Impressions

The Gigabyte Radeon R9 290X is a truly powerful graphics card with an efficient cooling system. Such a graphics adapter is perfect for building an advanced gaming computer, which will be able to handle the most complex gaming projects of recent times.

Features:

• Successful layout •

• performance •

• Reliable components •

• Good overclocking possibilities •

• Effective cooling system •

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Model

Gigabyte Radeon R9 290X rev. 1.0 GV-R929XOC-4GD

GPU

Radeon R9 290X (AMD Hawaii XT)

Process

28 nm

Memory type

GDDR5

Memory size

4.096 GB

GPU base frequency

1040 MHz

Memory frequency

5000 MHz

Memory bus

512 bit

Interface

PCI Express 3.0 x16

Outputs

2 x DVI-D, 1 x DisplayPort, 1 x HDMI

DirectX

support

DirectX 11.2

Food

nine0002 8 + 6 pin

Dimensions

29.

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