AMD R9 290 4GB Graphics Card Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

AMD’s R9 290 is going to cost $399 which is $150 cheaper than the R9 290X which costs $549. The GTX 780 currently costs about $499, the GTX 770 $329 and the GTX Titan still fetches a $1000 premium. I think AMD have done excellent with the pricing and we can see a vaguely similar pattern from what we had with the HD 7970 and HD 7950 (they had pricing of $549 and $449 respectively at launch) except only this time the HD 7950 equivalent is cheaper – which is excellent news for consumers.

We have also been informed UK pricing should start from £319.99 inc VAT, you can check out a range of launch AMD R9 290 graphics cards here at Overclockers UK, while EU pricing will be €289 + VAT depending on the country (€346 with 20%, €333 with 15%) . For reference the GTX Titan starts at about £800/€900 and the GTX 780 starts at about £385/€490.

Conclusion

Like the AMD R9 290X the R9 290 has impressed me immensely, perhaps more so. We’ve seen performance that is generally better than both the GTX Titan (by a small margin) and consistently better than the GTX 780. The R9 290, at least from our results, only appears to be around 5-7.5% behind the R9 290X – in some benchmarks it is barely 2-3% behind. Considering you get that for $150 less, well it is a no-brainer when it comes to a buying decision in my opinion. Save $150 instead of an R9 290X, buy an R9 290 with a custom cooler (when they are released) and overclock it because it overclocks great (which I hope dispels the “myth” that the reason these R9 290(X) chips run so hot is because they are clocked to their limits – they are certainly not even close to those limits, they run so hot because the stock cooler is so weak). Unless you’re looking to run 4K and you really need that extra bit of performance then I can’t really see the (financial) logic in buying the R9 290X over this, unless you want the pure bragging rights.

I still found from my results that the R9 290’s performance is being throttled by the poor reference cooling solution, by as much as 6.3%. When the non-reference versions of the R9 290 hit the market they are going to get snapped up like hotcakes because they will offer such epic bang-for-buck . When you factor overclocking into the equation; things are going to get even more interesting. With Nvidia’s GTX 780 costing $499, their GTX 770 costing $329 and the GTX 780 Ti costing $699 I still see AMD being highly competitive at this market segment thanks to their aggressive pricing. For consumers the R9 290 and the R9 290X are great graphics cards whether you like AMD or not because they have forced Nvidia to slash the MSRP of the GTX 780 down from $649 to $499 and the GTX 770 down from $399 to $329.

The only thing I can really criticise the AMD R9 290 graphics card for is the power and the heat. As I also mentioned in the R9 290X review the heat problem created by the weak stock cooler will be addressed by AMD partners when they release their custom solutions with advanced coolers. As far as power consumption goes the R9 290 consumes more than the GTX Titan and offers similar performance, so yes the GTX Titan is more power efficient but it also costs 2.5X the price – are you willing to pay more than twice the price for some power efficiency? Against the GTX 780 the R9 290 looks very power efficient because it offers more performance and similar levels of power usage.

AMD have landed a sizeable punch with the R9 290 and forced Nvidia to respond, and at the end of the day both Nvidia and AMD buyers will benefit.

Pros

• Excellent performance for a single GPU graphics card of its price
• CrossFire no longer needs a bridge/connector
• Excellent price relative to the competition
• 4GB of GDDR5 as standard at its price point

Cons

• Slightly high (relative) power consumption to the GTX Titan
• Reference cooler is weak – it does run hot and loud

“AMD’s R9 290 retains nearly all of what’s great about the R9 290X, and for a cheaper price. For that lower price you lose very little, only around 5-7.5% of the performance, while all the other great features are still present – such as the new PowerTune functionality, the end of needing a CrossFire bridge and a hefty 4GB of GDDR5. With the R9 290 AMD has an extremely high-end graphics card which is unmatched at its price point. The stock cooler still disappoints, but also in a strange way excites, because we know the R9 290 has so much more to give. We look forward to seeing what AMD’s partners can offer in the way of innovative cooling and PCB designs, and when we see “proper” overclocking capable custom R9 290 graphics cards hit the market – they are going to be EPIC! “

Thank you to AMD for providing this review sample.