While regular benchmarking results would prove that AMD's R9 290X is much inferior compared to NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 980 and GTX Titan X GPUs in terms of performance, a string of DX12 enabled tests allows AMD's current flagship GPU solution to gain ridiculous levels of performance, allowing it to surpass the capabilities of GTX 980 and going on par with GTX Titan X. According to PCWorld, synthetic tests were carried out pitting R9 290X and GTX Titan X together. Given below are the system's hardware specifications used to carry out the benchmarks.
- CPU: Intel Core i7-4770K
- Mainboard: Asus Z87 Deluxe
- RAM: 16 GB of DDR3 clocked in at 1600 RAM
- Storage: 240 GB Corsair Neutron SSD
- GPUs tested: Gigabyte Radeon R9 290X and a GeForce GTX Titan X
According to the website, upon Microsoft's recommendation, resolution at which the tests were being carried was reduced to 1280 by 720 pixels, with the API drawcalls per second used as a metric to measure performance. The results have been posted below:
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan X: 740,000 with DX11 enabled and 13 million, 419 thousand with DX12 enabled
- AMD Radeon R9 290X: 935,000 with DX11 enabled 13 million and 474 thousand with DX12
According to PCPer, another test was carried out in which the GTX 980 and R9 290X squared off against one another. The only difference between the first test and following one was that this one uses frames per second as a metric of performance measurement.
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980: 15.67 FPS with DX12, 2.75 FPS with DX11
- R9 290X: 19.12 FPS with DX12, 20.88 FPS with Mantle
The results are thoroughly impressive because with Microsoft's new API, the R9 290X becomes far superior compared to GTX 980 and is able to hold its own against NVIDIA's current single GPU flagship solution, the GTX Titan X. However, synthetic benchmarks are not as accurate compared to real-world benchmarking applications when it comes to performance measurement. After Microsoft officially releases the Windows 10 platform with DirectX 12 running in it, then a clear verdict will be given when real-world benchmarking applications are run in order to dot down the performance differences between the three graphic adapters.
