
Metro’s Very High detail preset is demanding, so it’s telling that all of these cards serve up such playable performance at 1920x1080. The step up to 2560x1440 knocks the R9 280X under 40 FPS on average. Meanwhile, R9 290X averages more than 50 FPS at both of its BIOS settings.


This game’s built-in benchmarking utility applies a highly variable load. We can see, however, at both resolutions, that the most taxing sequences have AMD’s R9 290X well ahead. Whereas GeForce GTX Titan and 780 dip down to 30 FPS or so at 2560x1440, the R9 290X maintains around 40 FPS at its worst.

Dual-GPU cards again demonstrate the highest frame time variance. But a worst-case result under 2 ms is still plenty smooth, practically.
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Summary
- Hawaii: A 6.2 Billion Transistor GPU For Gaming
- CrossFire: Farewell Bridge Connector; Hello DMA
- TrueAudio: Dedicated Resources For Sound Processing
- PowerTune: Balancing Performance And Acoustics
- Overclocking: PowerTune Changes Things
- The Radeon R9 290X
- Test System And Benchmarks
- Results: Arma III At 1920x1080 And 2560x1440
- Results: Arma III At 3840x2160
- Results: Battlefield 3 At 1920x1080 And 2560x1440
- Results: Battlefield 3 At 3840x2160
- Results: BioShock Infinite At 1920x1080 And 2560x1440
- Results: BioShock Infinite At 3840x2160
- Results: Crysis 3 At 1920x1080 And 2560x1440
- Results: Crysis 3 At 3840x2160
- Results: Metro: Last Light At 1920x1080 And 2560x1440
- Results: Metro: Last Light At 3840x2160
- Results: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim At 1920x1080 And 2560x1440
- Results: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim At 3840x2160
- Results: Tomb Raider At 1920x1080 And 2560x1440
- Results: Tomb Raider At 3840x2160
- CrossFire: Arma III At 7680x1440
- CrossFire: Battlefield 3 At 7680x1440
- CrossFire: BioShock Infinite At 7680x1440
- CrossFire: Crysis 3 At 7680x1440
- CrossFire: Metro: Last Light At 7680x1440
- CrossFire: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim At 7680x1440
- CrossFire: Tomb Raider At 7680x1440
- Power Consumption
- Noise
- CAD: AutoCAD 2013
- CAD: Autodesk Inventor 2013
- OpenGL: Maya 2013 And LightWave
- OpenCL: Bitmining, LuxMark, And RatGPU
- R9 290X: A Taste Of Paradise That Won’t Break The Bank
Ask a Category Expert
This is win-win-win for everyone (except maybe Nvidia).
Hope we never have to deal with a $1000 single GPU fiasco again. Good riddance.
- AMD: We're not aiming for the ultra high end.
I think Nvidia just got trolled.
- AMD: We're not aiming for the ultra high end.
I think Nvidia just got trolled.
Most of the higher resolution gaming wins come from the larger memory bandwidth and of course more vs the 780.
That's a good sign. Maybe NVidia will drop prices and push this to $400-$450 and I will pick one up when there is a Vapor-X version of course,
This is win-win-win for everyone (except maybe Nvidia).
Hope we never have to deal with a $1000 single GPU fiasco again. Good riddance.