Chinese website PCOnline has just posted a performance preview of the upcoming Radeon R9 290X.

Let me just start with an update on a launch date, according PCOnline more information will be released on October 24th, is this a final date? Hopefully.

UPDATE: This official R9 290X/BF4 document probably confirms that the launch date is set around October 24-25th.

The R9 290X is equipped with Hawaii GPU with 2816 Stream Processors, 176 TMUs and 64 ROPs. Card is running at 800/1000 MHz clocks for base and turbo mode respectively. The new AMD flagship is also equipped with 4GB GDDR5 memory across 512-bit interface, which is also a reason why memory is running only at 1250 MHz.

After looking at the charts you will notice that the performance of R9 290X is set between GTX TITAN and GTX 780, although the drivers used in this comparison are not officially supported (BETA).

AMD R9 290X looks like a good market replacement for GTX TITAN, especially considering the price.

Please note that this preview does not include 1600p performance, only 1080p (this could be a game changer for R9 290X’s 512-bit bus).



I’m quite surprised though by the Furmark part, where TDP higher than expected. Also the temperate chart doesn’t look very pleasing. Either way, reference cooling is not much different than HD 7970 GE’s, so I expect much better results on custom solutions.

Tests were performed on the following configuration: Intel i7 4770k with 8GB DDR3 @ 1600 MHz.

I did my best translating the titles and some additional information (like performance summary which has typos).

3Dmark 11

3Dmark Fire Strike

Tomb Raider

Metro Last Night

Crysis 3

Splinter Cell Blacklist

Call of Duty Black Ops II

Sleeping Dogs

Far Cry 3

Battlefield 3

Furmark power consumption

Furmark temperature

Product positioning

R9 290X 1600p performance

PConline posted only one slide with 1600 performance, hopefully they will deliver more.

AMD Radeon R9 290X 1080p performance summary

R9 290X vs R9 280X: +37%

R9 290X vs NVIDIA GTX780: +11%

R9 290X vs NVIDIA GTX TITAN: 1%