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

We also ran a handful of tests on the Radeon R9 290, R9 290X and GeForce GTX 780 using a tiled 4K display with a native resolution of 3840x2160. Unfortunately, for these tests, we could not record frame times using our FCAT tools. We’ve been fighting with the setup for weeks, trying to get captures working using the HDMI inputs on the screen, but have been unsuccessful in our attempts. We are still trying though, and are hoping to include FCAT results at 4K in the future. For now, we only have minimum and average frame rates to share.

For these tests, we cranked the quality down a notch in a quartet of games. In AvP, we lowered the anti-aliasing to 2X, from the 4X we use in our standard tests. In Hitman and Sleeping Dogs, we lowered the AA level to 2X as well, in addition to reducing in-game image quality options to their high-quality settings. We simply increased the resolution in Bioshock, however.

As you can see, save for Bioshock Infinite, where the GeForce GTX 780 finished just slightly ahead of the Radeon R9 290, the Radeons offered the best performance overall at 4K. In AvP, Hitman Absolution, and Sleeping Dogs, the Radeon R9 290 was about 10% faster than the GeForce GTX 780.

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