AMD Radeon R9 290X & NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti Review

With the results seen on the previous page, we found that both AMD’s Radeon R9 290X and NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 780 Ti can handle most of today’s games @ 1440p with great detail just fine. With either card, and that resolution, you can basically expect to top-out a game’s graphics settings upon opening it, and you’ll probably get livable framerates.

But, at 2560×1440, we’re dealing with 3.68 megapixels. What happens if we widen the viewport, and then bump the resolution up to 6.22 megapixels? The goal of this page is to figure that out.

To re-state something said on the previous page: Our regular benchmark tests showed that the R9 290X and 780 Ti perform on an equal level, with NVIDIA getting the slight edge in most tests. That being the case, most of the Best Playable settings are going to be identical between both cards. Because we’re dealing with just two cards; one from AMD, and the other from NVIDIA, the results here are in alphabetical order like in the rest of our results.

	Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag
3×1 Monitor (5760×1080)	Minimum		Average
AMD Radeon R9 290X	44		56
Graphics Settings & Screenshot	Environment:	High	Shadow:	Normal
	Texture:	High	Reflection:	Normal
	Anti-aliasing:	FXAA	God Rays:	Low
	Ambient Occlusion:	Off	Volumetric Fog:	On
	Motion Blur	On
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti	48		59
Graphics Settings & Screenshot	Environment:	High	Shadow:	Normal
	Texture:	High	Reflection:	Normal
	Anti-aliasing:	FXAA	God Rays:	Low
	Ambient Occlusion:	Off	Volumetric Fog:	On
	Motion Blur	On

With this game at 1440p, I was able to stick with the same settings I use in normal benchmarking, but to achieve truly playable framerates at 5760×1080, some detail had to be sacrificed. On both cards, AO was cut, God Rays was decreased to Low, and the Environment detail was reduced from Very High to High. When all said and done, we get fairly close to our goal at 60 FPS; in order to actually hit 60 FPS, detail levels that are nice to have would have to be decreased, and given how well these framerates felt, it would not be worth it.

	Battlefield 4
3×1 Monitor (5760×1080)	Minimum		Average
AMD Radeon R9 290X	49		61
Graphics Settings & Screenshot	Texture Quality:	High	Texture Filtering:	High
	Lighting:	High	Effects:	High
	Post Processing:	High	Mesh:	High
	Terrain:	High	Terrain Decoration:	High
	Anti-aliasing Deferred:	Off	Anti-aliasing Post:	Medium
	Ambient Occlusion:	SSAO
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti	43		55
Graphics Settings & Screenshot	Texture Quality:	High	Texture Filtering:	High
	Lighting:	High	Effects:	High
	Post Processing:	High	Mesh:	High
	Terrain:	High	Terrain Decoration:	High
	Anti-aliasing Deferred:	Off	Anti-aliasing Post:	Medium
	Ambient Occlusion:	HBAO

These results are a bit interesting, because it appears that AMD comes out ahead. In actuality, I retained HBAO on the NVIDIA card, something I was unable to do on the AMD card. That does sacrifice some frames, but like with AC IV, I didn’t actually feel the difference in real gameplay. If that magical 60 FPS must be hit, SSAO can be used. Note also that for these framerates, anti-aliasing had to be disabled.

	Crysis 3
3×1 Monitor (5760×1080)	Minimum		Average
AMD Radeon R9 290X	37		55
Graphics Settings & Screenshot	Anti-aliasing:	FXAA	Texture:	Medium
	Effects:	Medium	Object:	Medium
	Particles:	Medium	Post Processing:	Medium
	Shading:	Medium	Shadows:	Medium
	Water:	Medium	Anisotropic Filtering:	x16
	Motion Blur:	Medium	Lens Flares:	Yes
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti	42		57
Graphics Settings & Screenshot	Anti-aliasing:	FXAA	Texture:	Medium
	Effects:	Medium	Object:	Medium
	Particles:	Medium	Post Processing:	Medium
	Shading:	Medium	Shadows:	Medium
	Water:	Medium	Anisotropic Filtering:	x16
	Motion Blur:	Medium	Lens Flares:	Yes

It about makes me want to cry whenever I have to choose “Medium” as a detail level, but in Crysis 3, Medium actually looks how “High” would in many other games. It takes a quick look at either of the screenshots above to verify that. In the end, both cards handled the game very well at these detail levels. We didn’t quite get to the magical 60 FPS, but it’ll be hard to notice in real gameplay – especially with the use of motion blur.

	GRID 2
3×1 Monitor (5760×1080)	Minimum		Average
AMD Radeon R9 290X	54		60
Graphics Settings & Screenshot	Multisampling:	4x MSAA	Night Lighting:	High
	Shadows:	Ultra	Advanced Fog:	On
	Particles:	Ultra	Crowd:	Ultra
	Cloth:	High	Ambient Occlusion:	Ultra
	Soft Ambient Occlusion:	On	Ground Cover:	High
	Vehicle Details:	High	Trees:	Ultra
	Objects:	Ultra	Vehicle Reflections:	Ultra
	Water:	High	Post Process:	High
	Skidmarks:	On	Advanced Lighting:	On
	Global Illumination:	Off	Anisotropic Filtering:	Ultra
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti	57		63
Graphics Settings & Screenshot	Multisampling:	4x MSAA	Night Lighting:	High
	Shadows:	Ultra	Advanced Fog:	On
	Particles:	Ultra	Crowd:	Ultra
	Cloth:	High	Ambient Occlusion:	High
	Soft Ambient Occlusion:	On	Ground Cover:	High
	Vehicle Details:	High	Trees:	Ultra
	Objects:	Ultra	Vehicle Reflections:	Ultra
	Water:	High	Post Process:	High
	Skidmarks:	On	Advanced Lighting:	On
	Global Illumination:	Off	Anisotropic Filtering:	Ultra

Being that GRID 2 isn’t quite as graphically-impressive as other games in our suite, not much had to be tweaked here. The R9 290X in particular came out ahead, as only Global Illiumination had to be disabled. The 780 Ti, on the other hand, had to utilize that same change, along with a decrease of the Ambient Occlusion from Ultra to High. Modest changes overall.

	Sleeping Dogs
3×1 Monitor (5760×1080)	Minimum		Average
AMD Radeon R9 290X	59		73
Graphics Settings & Screenshot	Anti-aliasing:	Normal	High-res Textures:	On
	Shadow Resolution:	High	Shadow Filtering:	High
	Ambient Occlusion:	High	Motion Blur:	High
	World Density:	Extreme
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti	51		78
Graphics Settings & Screenshot	Anti-aliasing:	Normal	High-res Textures:	On
	Shadow Resolution:	High	Shadow Filtering:	High
	Ambient Occlusion:	High	Motion Blur:	High
	World Density:	Extreme

With Sleeping Dogs, there’s very little that can be tweaked graphically – at least, if we’re talking about settings that will dramatically affect framerate. The #1 cause of bogged-down gameplay here is with the anti-aliasing, and that reared its ugly head here. Honestly though, the drop from High to Normal AA is highly unlikely to even be noticed, thanks to the game’s bizarre AA implementation (even Extreme AA shows jaggies on many surfaces). If only an FXAA option were available.

	Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Blacklist
3×1 Monitor (5760×1080)	Minimum		Average
AMD Radeon R9 290X	50		65
Graphics Settings & Screenshot	Texture Detail:	Ultra	Shadow:	Ultra
	Parallax:	On	Tessellation:	On
	Texture Filtering:	16x	Ambient Occlusion:	Field AO
	Anti-aliasing:	FXAA
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti	53		71
Graphics Settings & Screenshot	Texture Detail:	Ultra	Shadow:	Ultra
	Parallax:	On	Tessellation:	On
	Texture Filtering:	16x	Ambient Occlusion:	Field AO
	Anti-aliasing:	FXAA

For Blacklist, both cards had to drop HBAO. Admittedly, this doesn’t make what I’d call a drastic difference to the aesthetic (though it’s obvious when compared back-to-back), and when sub-60 FPS framerates are the reality, it’s certainly not worth keeping.