Update:
Alright all, I believe I've got this here Radeon figured out & optimized as good as it's gonna get & maintain optimum FPS in most circumstances on my box set up as close as I could to the Nvidia GTX 780Ti ref card that I have for comparison.
I used MSI Afterburner 4.1.0 utility to graph vid card performance on both cards as this utility is designed to do that so the exact same items were controlled\graphed on both cards for comparison....even used the exact same fan profile settings on both cards (Cat 14.9 drivers brought this to bear).....
1st comparison:
Both cards were ran in stock out-of-the-box configuration (ie, no OC'ing). Ran both w/ AH on default driver settings w/ AH video settings set: Disable V-synch box unchecked (enables in-game coded v-synch levels to tell GPU to apply) & AA slider set to Most (enables in-game coded AA & other associated coded alpha graphics levels & sets these settings to the max coded levels to tell GPU to render) for 1st comparison.
The AH in-game graphics beta settings were set as follows in Graphics Detail:
Object Detail slider set full left to Detail (highest detail rendering), Ground Detail Distance slider set full left to 4 mi (farthest ground object detail rendering from POV), Gamma slider was set to 1.0 (sets brightness level of graphics viewing). All boxes were checked except the following 2 boxes....Disable Weapons Effects & Disable Vehicle Effects. In the Advanced tab all boxes were checked & EM enabled & set at 3/4 full updates & Graphics Texture Size set at 4096 (max).
When set up in this fashion both cards performed in AHII flawlessly, both pegged the game at 59-60 FPS consistently, both cards were
not fully utilized (AMD PowerTune & Nvidia GPU Boost 2.0 did not boost the GPU's to full clocks....290X ran at 839Hz-936Hz (max boost clocks 1050Hz), 780Ti ran at 705Hz-837Hz (max boost clocks 1020Hz)), both cards GPU temps ran between 62*C-65*C, neither card's fan speeds went nowhere near full...both ran around 75%-80% & were pretty quiet. GPU usage % was at about the same avg of 57%-65% but the 780Ti graph line was much, much smoother w/ tighter variation vs the 290X graph line which had much more variation but this didn't affect any aspect of the 290X's performance. The graphics quality was superb coming from both cards looking absolutely beautiful w/ a very slight edge going to the 290X for sharpness & the gameplay was very smooth & responsive.
As configured above either card is more than enough to run AHII at near to full max graphics settings w/o issue in any way. I was pleasantly surprised to see that neither card's GPU was fully utilized using AHII's coded graphics alpha settings regardless of game loading. This is a good indicator that when the new AHIII code rolls out these 2 cards should IMO handle the game w/ relatively little issue using the upcoming new AHIII coded graphics rendering calls........whatever they will be. I can be wrong here as it will entirely depend on Hitech & crew's goals as to what the max levels will be but I just can't see them wasting coding time & resources coding in levels that don't make good business sense....remember the 8196 texture size setting that they removed....just to say that no one's computer can run the game at max graphics settings.
The big advantage of price for this performance as configured above in AH definitely goes to the 290X in today's market....no way around this if the only game 1 plays is AHII AND what you're willing to spend for this kind of AHII performance is paramount to you.
I'll post the 2nd comparison later when both cards were ran using the vid card's driver to set the alpha graphics settings & the AHII video settings w/ AA slider set to None & Disable V-Synch box checked.
Gonna go fly around for a while...............
