Gaming Performance

Diving into our performance benchmarks, we’ll be running light on the commentary here due to the fact that there’s really not much to say about the gaming performance of the 290 Tri-X OC. Sapphire’s 6% core overclock and 4% memory overclock translates into a real world performance difference of 3% on average. This makes the 290 Tri-X OC a bit faster than a reference 290, but it doesn’t otherwise change the relative rankings of various cards. At most this slightly extends the lead over the GTX 780 to 9% and wipes out the 290X quiet mode’s marginal lead over the 290.

In the end the difference is slight enough that the bulk of the interest in this card should rightfully be on the card’s cooler, and ultimately whether that cooler justifies the $50 premium.

Metro: Last Light - 2560x1440 - High Quality

On a quick note looking at Rome, as one of the games the 290X throttles in the most, this is also the game where the Sapphire 290 Tri-X OC takes the largest lead over the 290X. The 6% performance lead here reflects on the fact

 

290 Tri-X OC Thermal Management & The Test Power, Temperature, & Noise
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  • teiva - Thursday, January 2, 2014 - link

    The prices in Australia haven't fluctuated and stayed pretty well the same since their introduction.
  • Mopar63 - Thursday, January 2, 2014 - link

    Brent20 this shows a lack of understand of how things work. AMD is not catering to miners. The particular way the mining software works just happens to work better on AMD's GPU design than on NVidia. This was not done with miners in mind it was the design they chose BEFORE anyone knew miners existed.

    If they put anything in the "block" miners that would just be wrong. AMD sells APUs, they do not care who buys them, only that some one buys them, NVidia does this the same way. Blocking a potential user is bad business and in this case may hurt the GPU in other areas of performance.
  • FookDuSushi - Monday, January 6, 2014 - link

    If they already have a ready one's why don't they release it to the public yet??
  • capawesome9870 - Saturday, January 11, 2014 - link

    do you have any 4k tests? similar to the Low-Medium on the original R9 290 and 290x reviews.
  • boozzer - Wednesday, January 22, 2014 - link

    will there is a 290x version? this seems to be the cooler to get. please, please do a 290x tri x oc review + oc review!!!!!!!!!!! please.
  • Muckster - Friday, February 28, 2014 - link

    How would this card compare to the MSI GTX 780 ti in terms of noise and temp? Techpowerup has an article on the GTX but I can't seem to find an apples to apples comparison. As with the Sapphire to the stock R9 290, the MSI improved significantly on the noise level of the stock GTX 789 ti.
    http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/GTX_780_Ti_...
  • kiddo - Monday, March 3, 2014 - link

    is this good ? cause my bro bought it for me, I`m 5yr :3
  • P39Airacobra - Tuesday, January 13, 2015 - link

    over 500watts? That must be a error! The dam thing has a 275watt TDP, So at the most it should only go a litte past 400 watts maybe but that's it!
  • driessen9 - Friday, March 6, 2015 - link

    what program did you use for the overclocking?

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