AMD Radeon R9 290X Review: Welcome To Hawaii

Name: AMD Radeon R9 290X Review: Welcome To Hawaii
Brand: AMD

by Marco Chiappetta — Thursday, October 24, 2013, 12:01 AM EDT

Hitman: Absolution

DirectX 11 Gaming Performance

Hitman: Absolution

Hitman: Absolution follows Agent 47, a cold-blooded assassin, who takes on his most dangerous contract to date. Betrayed by those he once trusted - and now hunted by the police - he suddenly finds himself at the center of a dark conspiracy and must embark on a personal journey through a corrupt and twisted world. We tested the game at multiple resolutions, with all in-game options set to their maximum values and global illumination and 4X anti-aliasing enabled.

Hitman Absolution ran exceptionally well on the new Radeon R9 290X. Both in terms of average and minimum frame rates, the Radeon R9 290X ruled the roost, outpacing every other card we tested. We did, however, notice some more weirdness here. Quiet mode put up much higher minimum frame rates, which shouldn't really happen since the only thing Uber mode changes is the max fan speed.

Click To Enlarge

Click To Enlarge

And our FCAT results somewhat correlate to what the frame rates said. When operating in Quiet mode, the R9 290X had no major issues with frame time, whereas Uber mode showed some much larger deltas in the middle and at the end of the run.

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

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