Sign in with
Sign up | Sign in

Power Consumption

Radeon R9 290X Review: AMD's Back In Ultra-High-End Gaming
By

Idle and Multi-Monitor Loads

The Radeon R9 290X’s power consumption at idle is surprisingly high. Even though AMD makes a point of highlighting its ZeroCore Power feature, which does drop the card to a miserly 5 to 6 W, you only enjoy the benefit of this when your monitor is in suspend mode. As soon as the desktop becomes active, power consumption jumps to 20 W with one monitor connected. Connect two and you’re looking at 57 W. Three monitors take you all the way up to 59 W. This means that the R9 290X consumes more power than two overclocked GeForce GTX 780s in SLI with more than one monitor attached.

Hardware Accelerated Video Output

During Blu-ray playback (or other accelerated video work), AMD's Radeon R9 290X consumes 70 W. This is bizarre, since the Radeon R7 240 does the same thing under 17 W. AMD clearly has some driver work to do still.

Onwards and Upwards: Gaming

After that negative attention, PowerTune kicks in to do the job it's supposed to do. The technology makes its adjustments so quickly that it's difficult to express average power consumption using one number. There's a lot of variation, and the reading changes based on several factors.

Because we can't be as objective as we'd want, we're providing a range instead. To achieve this, we left the power limit alone in CCC and lowered the board's target temperature to 70 degrees Celsius. The resulting cooling performance is about on par with what AMD’s partners offer on existing cards in the same thermal class, giving us a preview of what they might achieve with their own cooling solutions and R9 290X.

Power figures between 185 and 218 W are pretty darned good in the ultra-high-end segment. In light of these results, I think we can forgive the idle numbers we recorded earlier.

When Push Comes to Shove: The Peak Values

If you want to take the Radeon R9 290X to its limits, then you need to push it hard by increasing its power limit and dropping the target temperature. Under those conditions, it's possible to exceed 300 W. We even saw 335 W from the card, though that's probably not at all something you want to reproduce.

The 225 W we measured using a compute-heavy load and stock settings can be pushed as high as 295 W by giving the fan more room to spin up and targeting a lower thermal ceiling. Unfortunately, those conditions don't last. Once the Radeon R9 290X hits its target temperature, power consumption drops considerably. This explains the card’s relatively low performance in our GPGPU benchmarks.

Ask a Category Expert

Create a new thread in the UK Article comments forum about this subject

Example: Notebook, Android, SSD hard drive

Display all 17 comments.
This thread is closed for comments
  • 3 Hide
    markem , 24 October 2013 07:17
    The R9 290X just pawned the 780 and titan in performance and price.. Waiting for world records to get smashed soon.

    I will be buying 2X 290X with 2X water blocks
  • 0 Hide
    markem , 24 October 2013 07:24
    Only article not biased but fair.. Most articles either delayed to see what others were putting out, or used really low resolutions and settings.

    I cant believe Anandtech article still isn't up... They cant seem to make their minds up.. dodgy as hell
  • 0 Hide
    mauller07 , 24 October 2013 08:47
    You forgot that aureal provided first order audio reflections (reverb being sum of them from all sources) and audio occlusion which still surpasses current audio engines, current 3d surround only down samples 7.1 to stereo. Also they calculated all this taking into account the materials the reflections and occlusions were cast on.

    When they said the reverberations calculasions for the environment would take 15% of a CPU core, they meant for one sound where as the audio dsp can do it for hundreds with lower latency which is why even a current high end CPU cannot do what aureal did and now what amd is picking back up on.
  • 1 Hide
    technogiant , 24 October 2013 09:30
    So just how does this power tune work then?.....If I set a +20% power limit would that just increase vcore by 20%.....if so is that a static setting or a maximum setting....I guess that is variable as power tune varies clocks and voltage depending on temperature.

    But if it altering vcore how does that impact your overclock stability.....I'm interested as I've got an extreme cooling solution (complete submersion in -30c phase change liquid).
  • 6 Hide
    coozie7 , 24 October 2013 11:37
    " And our next request comes from Bob in his computer room. Hi Bob, what can we play for you?"
    "I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU PLAY, JUST PLAY IT LOUD, OK?"
    "Didn't you used to be in artillery, Bob?"
    "NO, JUST GOT A R9 290!"
    "OK, for you Bob, here's Paint It Black by the awesome Rolling Stones!"
  • 1 Hide
    bumnut53 , 24 October 2013 12:33
    Its an impressive card no doubt about it, but almost as loud as crossfire 7970's is too loud for me.
  • 2 Hide
    Kalzakov , 24 October 2013 13:14
    WTS Titan
  • 2 Hide
    LePhuronn , 24 October 2013 13:23
    Performance for the price is impressive, but as I feared AMD just haven't got the elegance correct - still too power hungry and loud. Also it seems that the Hawaii chip is pretty close to its limits to hit this performance level, whereas GTX 780 and Titan have room to manoeuvre.

    Put them both under water and crank to the maximum and then see what we have. Yes, the 290X is arguably the best card now at stock, but I'm inclined to believe the Titan is still the greatest card overall.
  • 1 Hide
    RobCrezz , 24 October 2013 17:23
    Great performance for the money. Hopefully Asus/MSI etc will do a better job of the cooling, and keep the noise down.
  • 0 Hide
    jkay6969 , 24 October 2013 18:40
    @All Titan Lovers, Yes Titan SHOULD be the Daddy, the one card to rule them all but it's not!?!? It seems to be very badly balanced, I believe it was released as the paper spec dream, like a top end Corvette, on paper it ticks all the boxes to be a supercar but first corner you're face first into a wall.

    When I saw the specs of the Titan I honestly thought it would change everything but it has just showed how arrogant nVidia is right now to think it's worth £850+ when even their own GTX 780 at £500ish beats it on occasion. nVidia you're not intel, not even close so stop acting like it or you WILL get burned!

    Kudos to AMD for fighting back with a high performance, low cost option. Who cares if it's loud, 3rd parties will take care of that, the important thing is nVidia drops their prices to match.

    Now AMD just needs to release a PCIe 3.0 motherboard to use this card with their CPU range. Why haven't you already AMD? WHY?
  • 2 Hide
    LePhuronn , 24 October 2013 21:05
    @jkay6969:

    It's not arrogance from Nvidia to produce the Titan, far from it. The Titan was always intended to be a technical exercise in the very best they could produce, much like the GTX 690 was. As a result, the Titan's price was intentionally inflated, again just like the 690.

    But Nvidia didn't see the Titan becoming so popular, hence it became a full production card.

    The kick comes from the GTX 780 being a cut-down Titan and hence near matching the performance. I should image the GTX 780 Ti will be the same as the Titan, just without 6GB RAM.

    The Titan raised the bar and gave AMD something to aim at. And with the 6GB RAM onboard, I still don't see the Titan's price coming down - you STILL need that much RAM to 4K game properly.
  • 0 Hide
    brianthesnail , 24 October 2013 21:41
    lets keep things simple ... the R9 290X is a exceptional card in these tough economic times ... ok the odd city banker can afford a GTX titan but for the majority of pc gamers £800 is what you will spend on a gaming pc and not a graphic card
    but AMD have saved the day again ... the R7 and R9 series now give the average gamer a chance to experience high resolution gaming without having to mortgage the house or sell the car !
    when the board partners start to release their own versions of the new AMD cards then you will see better cooling solutions and more competitive prices ....and that's good news for us everyday "cash strapped" gamers
    however the most interesting aspect of the R7 and R9 cards is the mantle support ... this may turn out to be a evolution in the way your graphic card operates .. and battlefield 4 will be the first game to support mantle ( around dec 2013 )
    excellent review !
  • 0 Hide
    CyberAngel , 24 October 2013 22:00
    Just wait and see - better cooling solutions will arrive
    together with new, improved drivers - there's great potential.
    But take a note: Nvidia is not sitting still...let the Battle of Titan's begin!!
  • 0 Hide
    AMKANMBA , 25 October 2013 11:46
    GTX titan 3GB GDDR5?
  • 0 Hide
    LePhuronn , 25 October 2013 20:43
    Quote:
    GTX titan 3GB GDDR5?


    Typo.

    Although sometimes my Titan only reports 4GB :??: 
  • 1 Hide
    9a3iqa , 29 October 2013 15:54
    Best GPU in the world right now, I will get one next month when the custom coolers from Sapphire, MSI and Gigabyte are released as that will make it cool + allow high overclockability.

    Can't wait!
  • 0 Hide
    cyrusbe , 11 November 2013 07:19
    I ordered the 290X and a arctic accelero hybrid. I think even better aircooler design will hold back the performance when the cards are installed in a case without superior airflow. I'm curious how its going to behave with the hybrid. As for the cost, reference Card with hybrid cooler will be in line with aftermarket cooler cards prices...