ATI Radeon r9 290x: very disappointing performance

Battlefield 4 General Discussion
1

So, after having read a lot of raving reviews about AMD’s new flagship card, the Radeon R9 290x, I went ahead and ordered the 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, what am I to say? The performance just sucks! :frowning:

On average I’m getting 40 FPS on a busy map, with all settings cranked to Ultra. And even when I set everything to Low, there’s hardly any noticable improvement.

I’ve already checked the CPU, which remains around 50-60% during the game. Same goes for the memory. I also noticed, that the in-game system performance test always reads ‘bad’, no matter which settings I use.

So, what’s the deal here?

Does anybody else have this card? Is it the drivers? How’s the performance for you? Do I have to tweak some hidden setting or something?

I mean, for me this is even worse than the beta, which I played on an GTX 660 TI… huge disappointment! Are all those Titan-killer reviews just exaggerating beyond belief?

Link to section: EDIT ## ISSUES SOLVEDEDIT ## ISSUES SOLVED

Finally the issues are solved!

After having reset my cpu clock to stock values and a fresh install of Windows 8 - downgrading from 8.1 - as well as Catalyst 13.11 Beta 7 - downgrading from Beta 8, the game is smooth as silk, running on ultra with 4x MSAA.

It’s plain awesoooome! :smiley:

Thanks everyone and sorry for the unjustified title!

2

PCIe 2.0 bottleneck, Some people don’t think its true… I’ve witnessed it… On a GTX780. Also could be the card itself. If you got a friend who can test it in their system. Try it. See how it goes…

3

A driver update or 2 might improve performance significantly in the future.

4

When I analyse the bus interface with GPU-Z it tells me, that the card currently uses PCI-e 3.0 x16 v2.0 although it could make use of PCI-e 3.0 x16 v3.0.

I’ve also checked my mainboard and discovered, that it offers v3.0.

So, how can I switch to this version? Might that be the problem here?

Thanks!

5

Well, one has to wonder, which drivers were used in those reviews then, but you might be right.

I’ve always preferred NVIDIA in the past, so hopefully AMD’s drivers are better than their reputation.

Thanks for your input!

6

290x here, I’m showing a similar message in my ‘Bus Interface’ field. It’s saying PCI-E 3.0 x16 @ x16 2.0. I’m not sure if maybe GPU-Z hasn’t been updated to handle these cards yet.

As for your performance issue, I’ve been testing with BF4 since the day before yesterday. My FPS usually hang around the 80’s, I’m playing on a 2500k @ 4.2Ghz w/8 GB of ram on Win7x64.

At first with the Beta7 drivers I would get this black screen freezing and I would have to hard boot my machine. After installing the Beta8 drivers yesterday I no longer had this problem.

What kind of 3dMarks are you getting? With 3dMark13 I’m getting a score of 9040 in Firestrike 1.1 which seems to be on-point with what the benchmark reviewers were seeing.

EDIT - After doing some quick research it looks like our processors (Sandybridge) do not support PCI-E 3.0, the controller on the CPU doesn’t support it. It is supported in the newer Ivybridge processors. That would explain the issues we were seeing.

7

What’s with the pink background here?

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Hey there, thanks for the explanation! I’m glad it’s working for you. I didn’t do any benchmarking on my own yet, but will do and report back later.

Some guy at 3D Guru recommended overclocking my CPU to above 4 Ghz, but I’m afraid my 600W PSU won’t be able to handle this. On the other hand, since this seems to be one of the main differences between our rigs, I might give it a try.

Thanks again!

9

Pink background? I’m on Alien Blue, so I don’t see this… thank god! :stuck_out_tongue:

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1208×547 58.5 KB

:smiley:

11

Holy mother of god!

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BTW, have you switched to Uber-BIOS?

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Haha, yes I have. Its really not that noticeable of a noise difference. I left it in uber mode after benchmarking. Its a pretty sweet card. I came from a 560Ti sli setup and was totally wow’ed after benchmarking on those then switching to the 290x. Granted I only play at 1080p but I play on 120hz monitors and this thing screams.

14

How did you get a LGA1155 with PCIe 3.0? I thought all boards that supported the 2600k where 2.0? (I could be wrong… I just don’t remember Sandy Bridge supporting 3.0.. I say this… Because I have a 2600k myself. Check CPUz to see what your motherboard is doing.

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The problem isn’t with the card itself, that much is certain.

16

Yes, and that’s already good to know! :slight_smile:

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Great! I hope I’ll get this sorted out soon! :slight_smile:

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I made a reddit account solely to reply to Synster182’s reply. He’s right. You cant enable pcie 3.0 on sandy bridge. Ivy Bridge is the only LGA 1155 that will allow it. So you will be forever stuck on 2.0 if you are on sandy bridge.

19

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…

The switch to ubermode didn’t result in any noticable difference.

I will now test different drivers! :slight_smile:

20

I totally forgot Ivy Bridge was on 1155… lol. I thought it was 1150.