XFX Double Dissipation R9 290 (4GB) Review – Rock Solid Value!

GAME TESTS 

Since on our last GPU review we used the GTX 670, and 970 we will be using them for comparison.

MIDDLE EARTH: SHADOW OF MORDOR 

Monolith’s latest game based in the Lord of the Rings universe has gotten a lot of well deserved attention recently. It’s an open world game that features advanced AI and high-resolution textures. So, it should be a good test for our XFX R9 290. For our tests we’ll be running it at both 1080p and 1440p at the “Ultra” preset.

As you can see here our 290 Performs well but has a wider range between max and minimum frames, which can cause issues since keeping stable frames is very important. Still though outside of that small hiccup the card performed quite well, absolutely decimating the older GTX 670 and beating the 970 by a fair bit at stock clocks. Once overclocked the bottleneck and frame drop gets much closer to the 970.

Again we see the 290 having a lot more variance in the frame rate. This will be a problem for those of you looking for the smoothest experience. Our AMD card kept up in average FPS and lead in max but for the most part we’d rather it be a little more consistent, if you were playing this at home we’d recommend turning down the settings to get a better experience, although for the most part ultra settings will do you just fine.

TOMB RAIDER (2013)

Crystal Dynamic’s successful 2013 reboot of the Tomb Raider series is easily one of the most beautiful games released that year and it still competes graphically with many games released recently. We’ll be testing it at both 1080p and 1440p at the “Ultimate” preset with TressFX hair effects on and FXAA anti-aliasing.

Tomb Raider shows us that the 290 gets ahead of the 970, something that I had not expected the 970 has slightly better minimum FPS and average FPS at stock but just cant keep up once overclocked.

Here we see at 1440P the Nvidia competitor is taking a pretty large lead getting 85FPS Max compared to the 72 of our 290 when both are overclocked. This stays very close in minimum and average, something we think is more important. Stock speeds are very close for both the cards with the Nvidia card having a higher max FPS, but a lower average and minimum. Our older 670 just can’t keep up.

CRYSIS 3

The third installment of Crytek’s Crysis is one of the most beautiful and graphically intensive games available. The Crysis series has a long track record of being incredibly demanding which makes them perfect for benchmarking. We’re testing it at both 1080p and 1440p at “Very High” settings with FXAA anti-aliasing.

Taking a look at Crysis 3 we see the STRIX 970 taking a solid lead over the XFX R9 290  but frankly this card is performing very well for its lower price point.

Here we see yet again the STRIX 970 beating our AMD Card, but by a solid margin here, even overclocked the AMD Card is getting around 40FPS Average with the  STRIX only slightly ahead at 44FPS