FPS changes R9 290

[banaccount]

Hello, I recently upgraded my gpu to a used Gigabyte R9 290 WF3 with warranty and I'm trying to determine if everything is alright with it.
So after following temps in bf4 & unigine heaven it all looks fine, in heaven it reached 80C & in bf4 it went up to 78C which from what I saw is normal.
The GPU is at stock clocks & after monitoring it in MSI afterburner I saw that it reaches it's clocks during load (reaches 1040mhz on the core & 1250mhz on the memory) so that's fine too.
I'm currently running driver 13.12 since I read it's the most stable & I'm just wondering if the massive fps changes are normal (I believe so but I'm just looking to confirm it) so I'm playing BF4 on ultra settings with AA off (everything is maxed and AA is off) I only tried Zavod311 so far and the fps went up to 156 and down to 53 (those are the maximum & minimum numbers) usually it stays between 75-90. It seems normal to me since BF4 isn't the best optimized game out there.
Also, It scored 1706 with 67.5 average fps in unigine heaven 4.0 on extreme preset, I didn't find the exact same test for this specific model but it seems normal compared to a reference card score I saw, can anyone confirm?

System:
i5 4670
arctic cooling freezer 7 pro rev 2
gigabyte ga-h87m-hd3
corsair xms3 8gb 1600mhz cl11
seasonic s12ii-620w
gigabyre r9 290 wf3 oc
corsair carbide 200r (added one exhaust & one intake to the case)
samsung 840 evo 120gb
western digital caviar blue 1tb 7200 rpm

 

[The Builder]

It's quite normal since the area and number of people present will tax your GPU differently. It's not the same running into an empty warehouse than running in gun blazing with another 10 players shooting at each other while dodging tanks if you know what I mean.

 

[CrispyChips]

Multiplayer games arent the best testbeds for instabilities/performance inconsistency as the environment is subject to rapid and unmitigated change.

Those are pretty normal frame rates for ultra settings on BF4 though.

 

[banaccount]

Multiplayer games arent the best testbeds for instabilities/performance inconsistency as the environment is subject to rapid and unmitigated change.

Those are pretty normal frame rates for ultra settings on BF4 though.

I agree. In test range the fps did seem quite normal, on ultra preset It was mostly ranging from 110-130, sometimes more, sometime a bit less.
3dmark 11 scored 15510 on graphics which seems to be totally normal since a reference r9 290 scores 14570 (according to futuremark) & like i've said heaven 4.0 on extreme preset scored over 1700 & avg fps of 67.5 .

What's bothering me is that sometimes when I play (and I'm talking about the exact same servers with the exact same number of people in the same maps) I can get a really bad fps drops to the mid 40's, then I'd close the game, after an hour i'll run it again and all of the sudden the fps seems to be what you'd expect out of a r9 290 without dropping below 65-70 at all. Also, I looked at the gpu usage (in %'s), it spikes like hell in msiafterburner (ranges from 50% to 99%) but I've read that's just an amd drivers issue since the memory & core clocks stay consist at 1040mhz on core & 1250mhz on memory without dropping while playing bf4.
Btw I'm using 14.4 whql at the moment.
Max temp now after gaming for 50 minutes was 67c which is great for an r9 290.
Basically the card seems to be performing just fine, I assume it's just the game and i'll have to deal with it.