ASUS R9290X DC2OC: Stellar flagship performance, but at what cost?

After a long wait, we finally got our hands on AMD’s flagship card - the R9 290X. We have already seen the performance of cards such as the R9 290 , R9 280X as well as R9 270X in the past. With the R9 290X we will have covered all the high-end AMD cards of the current generation. So without further ado, let us quickly take a look at the ASUS R9290X Direct CU II 4GD5.     Design and Build [caption id=“attachment_216632” align=“aligncenter” width=“768”]  ASUS R9290X DC2OC is the factory overclocked R9290X with core clock at 1050MHz and memory clock at 1350MHz[/caption] Considering this is a flagship AMD model from ASUS and a DirectCU II one at that, the design of the card is quite different from the stock R9 290X. ASUS has gone with an open design as opposed to one where the shroud covers the card and its circuit board. It has a black, metallic open shroud in the front which starts just above the aluminium heat sink. This leaves a distinct gap between the metallic shroud and the rear panel.     [caption id=“attachment_216635” align=“aligncenter” width=“768”]  Thanks to the open-design shroud, you can see the aluminum heatsink and heat pipes from the side[/caption]   One thing that’s missing is the red accents which are generally seen on the DC2 cards. ASUS has provided red and golden stickers in the box to let you choose the colour. This makes sense for those having yellow coloured ports on their motherboard and want a matching colour on the card. But we quite liked the plain black colour.     [caption id=“attachment_216637” align=“aligncenter” width=“768”]  The ASUS R9 290X is a massive card and will need quite a bit of space in your chassis[/caption]   There are two proprietary CoolTech fans placed above the aluminium heat sink. If you look at the fans a bit carefully, you’ll notice that they are different and that’s because they both serve a different purpose. The special CoolTech fan has a hybrid blade system for much better outward force. This should help keep the heatpipes relatively cool even during the most intense gaming sessions. There are four heat pipes coming out from the underside of the heat sink and a single one coming from the top. They help in driving away the heat from the GPU. The card has a sturdy back plate to protect the exposed PCB on the other side of the R9 290X. The backplate has hexagonal holes to further help in heat dissipation from components on the rear side.   Features The R9290X is based on the Hawaii XT GPU which is made on the 28nm process. It comes with 4GB GDDR5 RAM with a 512-bit memory interface. The stock core clock speed is 1000 MHz but the ASUS R9290X DC2OC-4GD5 is clocked to 1050MHz. It has 64 ROPs as compared to 32 seen on the R9 280X and R9 270X. It houses 2816 stream processors which is higher than 2048 seen on the R9 280X and 1280 seen on the R9 270X.     [caption id=“attachment_216634” align=“aligncenter” width=“768”]  The ASUS R9290X DC2OC comes with a 6-pin+8-pin power connector[/caption]   The ASUS R9 290X comes with a 6-pin plus 8-pin power connector. On the display side it has two DVI ports, an HDMI port and a DisplayPort.     [caption id=“attachment_216638” align=“aligncenter” width=“768”]  The ASUS R9290X employs a bridge-less Crossfire design[/caption] The ASUS R9290x supports DirectX 11.2, Mantle and OpenGL 4.3, has support for 4K resolution and also comes with AMD TrueAudio technology.   Test Setup Processor: Intel Core i7-4770K Motherboard: ASRock Z87M Extreme4 RAM: 2 x 4GB GSkill RipjawsX OS Drive: Plextor SSD, 256GB (boot drive) Additional Drive: Western Digital Velociraptor, 150GB (secondary) PSU: Cooler Master 800W Silent Pro Gold OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit Catalyst Driver version: 13.11 Beta Nvidia driver version: 331.82.     3DMark 11 3DMark is a computer benchmarking tool created and developed by Futuremark Corporation to determine the performance of a computer’s 3D graphic rendering and CPU workload processing capabilities. The latest version makes extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11, including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. We used the “Performance” preset for this benchmark.    Unigine Heaven 4.0 Unigine Heaven 4.0 is a DirectX 11 benchmark based on the Unigine engine which can be used to test the stability of a GPU under stressful conditions. It involves a run-through of an imaginary land involving floating islands, cobblestoned streets, smokey atmosphere, going through caves lit with burning fires, dragon statues and so on. You can adjust the tessellation, anti-aliasing filters, anisotropic filters etc. We run this test keeping the settings at Medium, no Anti-asliasing filter and Tessellation at Normal.     Please Note: Since we are introducing new gaming benchmarks and higher resolutions (2560×1440), some of the older cards reviewed are missing from the charts. We will update the scores of the older cards with new games and resolutions in the near future.     Battlefield 3 Battlefield 3 is a first-person shooter video game developed by EA Digital Illusions CE and is based on the new Frostbite 2 game engine. The game only supports DX10 and DX11, which enables enhanced in-game destruction with Destruction 3.0, creating more refined physics than its predecessor and quasi-realtime radiosity using Geometrics’ Enlighten technology. The game is a visual treat and a nightmare for graphics cards, which makes it perfect for our test. We used the “Ultra High” preset, Post AA – High, Blur – Full, Field of View – 90, Level – “Fear no Evil”.       Crysis 2 Crysis 2 is a first-person shooter video game developed by Crytek and is based on the new CryEngine 3. Just like the first iteration of the game, Crysis 2 continues to be one of the best-looking shooters to date. The settings used for this benchmark were “Ultra and High” preset in Adrenalin, DX11 and High-resolution texture patch.     Dirt 3 Dirt 3 is a rallying video game and the third in the Dirt series of the Colin McRae Rally series, developed and published by Codemasters. The game is extremely scalable and features DX11 tessellation effects. We used the built-in benchmark tool, along with “Ultra” quality preset.     Metro: Last Light Metro: Last Light is a first-person shooter video game that continues Metro’s legacy of being one of the most demanding games for the best of GPUs. The game has a lot of DX11 eye-candy, which really puts a strain on any GPU. All DX11 features were enabled for the benchmark and we used the built-in benchmark for this test.     Bioshock Infinite Bioshock Infinite developed by Irrational Games uses a modified version of the Unreal Engine. It’s a first-person shooter which takes place in a fictional floating city called Columbia. We ran the benchmark using the Adrenaline Benchmark tool and used the Ultra and Medium settings. In the Ultra settings you have FXAA On, Ultra texture detail, 16x AF, Ultra dynamic shadows and with the Medium settings you have FXAA On, High texture detail, 8x AF and High dynamic shadows.     Tomb Raider Tomb Raider is a third-person shooter which is a reboot of the famous series with Lara Croft as the protagonist. In this reboot, she is ship-wrecked on a mysterious island which presents its own set of challenges which Lara has to overcome. The game is based on a customised CrystalEngine. It also features the AMD TressFX technology which adds more realism to hair rendering and physics. We ran the benchmark using the in-built benchmark tool at the Ultimate and Ultra settings. On the Ultimate preset, you have TressFX activated, 16x AF, FXAA whereas the Ultra preset has Normal hair quality, 16x AF, FXAA.     Sleeping Dogs Sleeping Dogs is an open-world third-person action-adventure game developed by United Front games and Square Enix London Studios. Set in modern-day Hong Kong the game involves you playing as Wei Shan, an undercover cop, who infiltrates a local Triad gang. We ran the benchmark using the Adrenaline Benchmark tool and used the Ultra and Medium settings.     Temperatures We noted the temperature of all the participating cards at idle and load states. The fan speeds were kept on auto. We noted maximum load temperatures after running benchmarks such as FurMark at 1080p preset, 3D Mark 11, Battlefield 3 and Metro: Last Light and taking an average.    Power Consumption We used an energy monitoring device to measure the power consumed by the total rig with the graphics cards on them. The Cooler Master 800W PSU was plugged into the power meter which gave out the power consumed in Watts on the display. After powering on the system we let it stay unused for a good five minutes to get the idle power reading and then ran three instances of FurMark 1080p preset to get the maximum load power.      Verdict and Price in India ASUS R9290X DC2OC-4GD5 is a factory overclocked card and is the fastest single-GPU AMD card out there. It came out with flying colours in most of the gaming benchmarks. In places where the GTX 780Ti edged out, the margin wasn’t really great. Surprisingly the ASUS MARS 760 gave it some competition in certain games and performed faster than the ASUS R9290X in Tomb Raider. The R9290X sure runs hotter than the GTX Titan and GTX 780Ti. Also we noticed that the overall power consumption was the maximum with the ASUS R9290X (touching 420W with Furmark and around 370-380W with games) when compared with the GTX Titan, so you will need a good PSU if you plan to overclock the card. This AMD flagship card truly lives upto its name in the raw performance department.   Price wise, the ASUS R9290X DC2OC retails for around Rs 52,000 whereas the stock ASUS R9290X DC2 is priced at Rs 48,000. If you are deciding between these two cards and the NVIDIA GTX 780Ti which is priced at Rs 59,000, the ASUS DC2OC card offers better value for money. Performance wise, there isn’t much of a difference between the two, but the ASUS card does run hot and consumes more power. The R9 290X will easily run most games at 2560x1440 and its 4GB of RAM will ensure no bottlenecks with a multi-monitor setup as well. However, it’s really hard to ignore the fact that the R9 290, that’s 46 percent cheaper (on average) than the 290X, is only about 10 percent slower. It also consumes lesser power on load and gives good frame rates even at 2560 x 1440 resolution. For the type of games that are out there right now, a R9 290 will easily suffice for HD gaming and beyond and that’s the card we’d recommend instead of the R9 290X or even a GTX 780 Ti. Not to mention you’ll be saving a cool Rs 15,000, which you can spend on a CPU or PSU upgrade.