In-Game

The biggest portion of our performance testing is to run the R9 290X Matrix through a whole selection of games to see what you can expect for performance in game. Synthetic benchmarks are nice for comparing between cards, but in game FPS is where it is at. So how well did the 290X Matrix perform? Well I ran it through 10 different games covering a few different genres. Nine of those games were tests at both 1080p and 1440p with the straggler being F1 2013 that has been replaced but I’ve kept it around for a while until we get more testing on F1 2014.  So how did it do? Well of the 10 games tested at 1080p all 10 of them had an average FPS of 60 FPS or over. Most are WELL above that with a few running at over twice that. When testing at 1440p the 290X Matrix was pushed harder. Only three out of the nine games tested had an average FPS of over 60 although Grid was damn close at 59.69. The other 6 all fell into the Over 30 and under 60 FPS area so they were all more than playable but not perfect. In other words the R9 290X Matrix could handle anything I threw at it at 1080p and at 1440p it held its own.

So where does that put us compared to everything else? Well generally, that puts us above everything except the GTX 980. There were a few standout tests. In Hitman at 1440p for example it pulled out in front. Grid Autosport really had me scratching my head as well. The 290X actually performed slower than the R9 280. After retesting all of the cards multiple times along with trying a whole list of other things to figure it out I was left with having to contact Asus and AMD. I didn’t hear anything back from AMD but Asus replied back with the answer I suspected. They think there is a good chance that there is a driver issue with the 290x in GRID. I will keep an eye on it and will update this when we find out what the issue is.