
Radeon R9 290X scales well in Battlefield 3. A win with one card turns into a win with two, even if both hardware combinations manage frame rates that appear plenty-playable.

Charting frame rate over time shows that AMD's advantage comes from the beginning of the benchmark, inside an aircraft carrier.

A CrossFire'd configuration does incur higher variance, though. Here's the thing: it's subjectively really hard to tell the practical difference between two Titans and two R9 290X cards in this game. There is clear tearing and stutter from both solutions, but this is a persistent issue with Battlefield that I'd chalk up to DICE's engine, rather than a multi-GPU technology.
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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.