Test Systems and Procedures
Before we delve into any testing we would like to take this opportunity to review our test system and thank those sponsors who kindly provided us with test equipment to make our work possible. We offer our thanks to:
Intel for supplying us with a Core i7 3960X processor, which we reviewed here.
Kingston for supplying us with a Hyper X 3K 240GB solid state drive, which we reviewed here.
XFX for supplying us with an R9 290X Double Dissipation 4GB graphics card, which we reviewed here, and a HD 7970 Double Dissipation 3GB graphics card.
Corsair for supplying us with a Hydro Series H100i liquid CPU cooler, which we reviewed here, and a Vengeance Pro 1866MHz 16GB memory kit, which we reviewed here.
Be Quiet for supplying us with a Straight Power E9 680W power supply unit, which we reviewed here.
ASUS for supplying us with a Rampage IV Extreme X79 motherboard, which we reviewed here.
Lian Li for supplying us with a PC-T60A test bench.
Noctua for supplying us with NT-H1 thermal compound.
Test System:
- Motherboard – Asus Rampage IV Extreme X79 LGA 2011 Motherboard
- Processor – Intel Core i7 3960X with Turbo disabled
- Graphics Card: XFX R9 290X Double Dissipation 4GB (with AMD Catalyst 14.7 RC1 and 13.11 Beta 6 drivers) and XFX HD 7970 Double Dissipation 3GB (with AMD Catalyst 14.7 RC1 and 11.12 RC11 drivers)
- RAM – 16GB (2 X 8GB) Corsair Vengeance Pro 9-10-9-27 1866MHz
- CPU Cooler – Corsair H100i with Quiet Fan Profile
- Power Supply – Be Quiet Straight Power E9 680W
- Main Storage Drive – Kingston HyperX 240GB SSD
- Chassis – Lian Li T60 Test Bench
- Displays – LG IPS234 23 inch 1080p display
- Operating System – Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit
Games and Software Used
- 3DMark
- Battlefield 4
- Bioshock Infinite
- Guru3D Display Driver Uninstaller (for uninstalling driver packages)
- Metro Last Light
- Sleeping Dogs
- Tomb Raider
Resolution(s) Used
- 1920 x 1080
send me the 290 my hd 7970 is failing me
stop mining BTC/LTC then
None of your tested games was released when 7970 launch drivers became available. At the same time, all of your tested games were released by the time 290X launch drivers were available (even BF4 was specifically targeted by those betas). In that sense your findings are flawed. 14.7 doesn’t bring much to the table for 290X not because it is GCN and a known architecture but mainly because the launch driver was already optimized for those titles that you tested. Try the same approach with Watch Dogs or something as fresh and the picture will be different.
That;s true – most games were released pre- 11.12 RC11 but that doesn’t make the results invalid IMO, they are still built from pre-existing established APIs. I think the point about the GCN architecture that you’ve mentioned is more relevant, I also mentioned that in the conclusion: there is minimal scope for major gains in GCN performance as the architecture is already well optimised with drivers. Thanks for your input, will consider.
This is definitly interesting. Too bad it’s only for high-end gpu’s. Try testing this on lower-end and it would be worse. Also, the problem with AMD drivers is consistency: for mobility there are long known bugs with black screens and no video aceleration. There is still some bugged mouse cursor around. They mostly fix something and break something.
(i’m not an AMD hater btw)
Agreed. AMD drivers have bug issues (but so do many Nvidia driver releases). In that regard this article was not exploring bugs and driver issues but pure in-game performance, but yes that’s also something to consider that we may explore.
I was sent here from AMD FaceBook http://www.facebook.com/AMDUK?brand_redir=1
Am willing to bet the low end have more performance than the high end. And its the exact opposite for Nvidia.
There is no GCN 2.0 yet. GCN 1.0 and GCN 1.1.
There is GCN 2, its the R9 290X (AMD have never mentioned GCN 1.1)
no there isn’t, GCN 2.0 has not even been announced yet. the 290X is GCN 1.1, it is very similar to HD7970 (GCN1.0).
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7457/the-radeon-r9-290x-review/2
How much longer until we can see Nvidia’s progress?
Still working on it, we’ve done the GTX 780 Ti testing and are currently sourcing a GTX 680 (we have one at HQ but trying to get it here for testing) for the equivalent testing.
http://www.eteknix.com/examining-nvidias-driver-progress-since-launch-drivers-gtx-780-ti-gtx-680/
I find this very interesting because i have a Gigabyte HD 7970 ghz edition gpu, which has slightly faster speeds than the XFX card. I have been thinking about upgrading my card to a 290x but i think now i will not. My card plays just about anything at max settings and i have had no problems since i bought it. Seeing the improvements from 7970 to 290x is nice but not enough for me to upgrade, yet.