Radeon R9 290x - not living up to the hype

Discussion in 'Videocards - AMD Radeon' started by tibitabo, Oct 31, 2013.

  1. tibitabo

    tibitabo Guest

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    Hi there,

    after having read a lot of raving reviews about AMD's new flagship card, the Radeon R9 290x, I went ahead and ordered the Gigabyte BF4 Edition.

    I've installed it in my rig, running an Intel i7-2600k@3.40GHz with 8 GB of RAM and the latest Catalyst Beta for Windows 8.1. My resolution is 1080p.

    Now, the performance I'm getting in most games pretty much sucks! :(

    For example in Battlefield 4 I'm getting an average of 40 FPS, with all settings cranked to Ultra. And even when I set everything to Low, there's hardly any noticable improvement.

    In Arham Origins it's almost the same, until I turn off MSAA.

    I've already checked the CPU, which remains around 50-60% during a game of BF4 and the same goes for the memory.

    So, what's the deal here?

    Does anybody else have this card? How's the performance for you? Is it the drivers or could it be a bottleneck somewhere?

    I mean, for me this is even worse than the BF4-beta, which I played on an GTX 660 TI... so it's a huge disappointment!

    Can somebody help? Thanks!
     
  2. DarthElvis

    DarthElvis Guest

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    Did you wipe all traces of your previous Nvidia drivers?

    BTW, don't even mention bottleneck. You have no bottleneck. Your 290x would be getting the same performance as your inferior Nvidia card, not worse.
     
  3. DesGaizu

    DesGaizu Ancient Guru

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    Get that thing océd man, 4ghz at minimum.
     
  4. eclap

    eclap Banned

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    Still, that 290x should run bf4 with ultra settings at 60fps no problem.
     

  5. ---TK---

    ---TK--- Guest

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    Overclock your cpu 4.5ghz and post back
     
  6. tibitabo

    tibitabo Guest

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    Thanks for the quick help, guys!

    No, I don't really think, I'm having a bottleneck with this setup, but I'm in desperate need for a solution, since I had high hopes, that this card would kick some serious ass. ;)

    I booted into safe mode and removed all the NVIDIA-stuff with the help of DriveSweeper and CCleaner. Then I installed the latest Catalyst Beta 8.

    Beyond that I just configured my in-game settings and that's it.

    BTW, the in-game performance test in BF4 always results in 'Bad - Try different graphics settings for better performance', although everything will be set to the highest values, when I select 'auto'.

    Damn, this sucks! Any further ideas? :(
     
  7. yasamoka

    yasamoka Ancient Guru

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    Again the bottleneck talk. Again.

    Quite a sensationalist title too.

    Try Beta 7 and Beta 6 drivers. Try using DDU for (old remnant) driver removal.

    Don't bother overclocking your CPU to solve this issue and have an added variable.
     
  8. CPC_RedDawn

    CPC_RedDawn Ancient Guru

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    Although I bet if he tested 3DMark Firestrike with his current settings and then overclocked his CPU to at least 4.2-4.5GHz, which should be extremely easy on that chip, his score would jump up pretty significantly and his game performance would also jump up in not just BF4 but in other games too. His GPU simply is not getting the juice it wants.

    OP, reduce your resolution in BF4 and in other games and set graphics to low and I bet you will get hardly any performance increase meaning your CPU is bottlenecking your card.
     
  9. tibitabo

    tibitabo Guest

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    Well, I'm not interested in keeping some obscure bottleneck-myth alive, so sorry, if I made that impression! I just don't know too much about the technical aspects, that's why I'm here, you know?! ;)

    Well, that's exactly the case!

    I have already googled how to overclock this processor, but I'd really love to avoid it, since it will be drawing more power and I'm currently using a 600W PSU only.

    Are there any other methods for testing if the CPU is the problem? I wouldn't have thought this could be the case, but okay... would 3D Mark help in figuring this out?

    Definitely going to test other driver versions.

    Thanks again!
     
    Last edited: Oct 31, 2013
  10. Babel-17

    Babel-17 Member Guru

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    What are the power settings that ensure no needless throttling? I'd check those and check the fan to make sure its working. And I'd make sure that I had the right drivers and make sure I'd cleaned out the old ones.

    Good luck!

    Edit: P.S. Make sure you have no videos/flash running in the background/in a browser. That lowers your clocks. Grab Afterburner and add the module to monitor gpu usage. Run a demo/game and quickly exit to desktop and check what was your clock speeds and gpu usage.
     
    Last edited: Oct 31, 2013

  11. tibitabo

    tibitabo Guest

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    Thank you, I'm already using Fraps for monitoring... what do you mean by power settings? Clock speed, etc. or are you talking about Windows' energy management?

    Thanks!
     
    Last edited: Oct 31, 2013
  12. ---TK---

    ---TK--- Guest

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    Sandy bridge does not use a lot of power. You would be fine overclocking that 2600k. Thats what the k model is for overclocking.
     
  13. eclap

    eclap Banned

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    what TK said, overclocking that cpu won't really draw that much more power. it's when you oc certain gpus when you see some crazy power draw. Anyway, what was your graphics score in 3dmark11 OP? if it's between 8-10k, then we can eliminate a bad gpu performance and your problem 100% lies with cpu and lack of ram.
     
  14. StealBalls

    StealBalls Guest

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    Seriously 3.4Ghz is not even in the ball park of enough for 64 player BF3, never mind BF4.

    SERIOUSLY - there is nothing to debate here.

    With my old 3570K I needed 4.5 to hold 60FPS, 4.4 was not quite enough and would get the occasional 58 overlooking certain busy places.

    4.5 - do it, it's piss easy and a sick waste of a 2600K

    That's not adding another variable yas - it's removing one.


    Seriously I don't over clock because it's fun, or I can, I over clock because many games need it.


    Seriously, no, check per core and I bet your maxing out ONE core - I can tell you right now, 2600K @ 3.4Ghz is NOT ENOUGH for BF4 - PERIOD!
     
    Last edited: Oct 31, 2013
  15. CPC_RedDawn

    CPC_RedDawn Ancient Guru

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    Seriously I don't over clock because it's fun, or I can, I over clock because many GPU's need it.

    There that is better ;)
     

  16. tibitabo

    tibitabo Guest

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    Alright, I've done some Firestrike benchmarks, using the current catalyst beta 8, while incrementally overclocking my CPU and I've achieved an increase from 7511 to 8292 in the overall score.

    The increase of the CPU clock - now running at 4,6 GHz - improved my Physx-score, while the graphics score of 11162 remained unchanged...

    I also switched to ubermode, which didn't result in any noticable difference.

    I will now test different drivers! :)

    Thanks guys!
     
  17. eclap

    eclap Banned

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    11162 is about right for a stock 290x in fire strike gpu score. post back with whatever you have issues with later.
     
  18. StealBalls

    StealBalls Guest

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    4.6? that's a cracking o/c! well done, hopefully sensible vcore!

    Them chips NORMALLY o/c GREAT! so u should be doing great for BF4.

    BF4 is CPU CRAAAAAAZY BABY!
     
  19. eclap

    eclap Banned

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    2600k + 290x in bf4 sounds pretty nice to me.
     
  20. Humanoid_1

    Humanoid_1 Guest

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    I suspect BF4 smoothness has detained our OP from this thread for a while ;)
     

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