AMD Radeon R9 290 Review: Hawaii Just Got Cheaper

Name: AMD Radeon R9 290 Review: Hawaii Just Got Cheaper
Brand: AMD

by Marco Chiappetta — Tuesday, November 05, 2013, 12:01 AM EDT

Bioshock Infinite

DirectX Gaming Performance

Bioshock Infinite

BioShock Infinite is clear game-of-the-year material. The floating city of Columbia is one of the most evocative, intense, and gorgeous environments we've ever seen in a PC game -- but how much you like it may depend on what sort of visual wizardry you prefer. BioShock Infinite is built on Unreal Engine 3, and while it pushes that framework's capabilities into the stratosphere, there's a clear difference between BioShock Infinite and, say, Crysis 3. BioShock Infinite emphasizes light, color and motion, and while the characters look more exaggerated and cartoon-like than some other games, they still look great. We tested the game at various resolutions with its DX11 code path with DOF effects enabled.

The GeForce GTX 780 and GTX Titan were easily the highest performing cards in Bioshock Infinite. At both resolutions, the GeForces led the pack.

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The GeForce cards also offered much more consistent frame times in this game. The Radeon R9 290 cars suffered from significant variations in frame time, especially towards the middle of the run. And at about the 75% mark, the Radeons all exhibited a few sharp spikes that shot up over the 90ms mark.

Tags: AMD, Radeon, Gaming, DirectX, graphics, GPU, Hawaii, R9, 290

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com