Sapphire Radeon R9 290 Tri-X OC Review: Our First Custom Cooled 290
by Ryan Smith on December 24, 2013 3:45 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- AMD
- Radeon
- Sapphire
- Radeon 200
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.
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
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psyside1 - Thursday, December 26, 2013 - link
So no update for VRM - temps?FookDuSushi - Monday, January 6, 2014 - link
You wish. Nvidia sucks too much dick to do that.tnypxl - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - link
No. It's a review.psyside1 - Friday, December 27, 2013 - link
So what if its review?yacoub35 - Thursday, December 26, 2013 - link
It will be even quieter when one or more of the fans dies within three months of ownership, if it's anything like the Sapphire cards I've owned.tteksystems - Friday, December 27, 2013 - link
All fans can be replaced with even better, quieter ones, as is the practice of almost every enthusiast. I would change all fans to something better or use a water cooler. Cooling does not have to be so complicated, or even sophisticated. Choosing better after-market fans and/or water cooling always solves the cooling issues and is well worth the investment.TheJian - Saturday, December 28, 2013 - link
Don't forget all of your solutions void the warranty. Most of us don't like that ;) Also if you're going to blow the warranty, why buy a more expensive card like this, just buy ref if warranty means nothing to you. The point of buying this over ref is YOU USE THESE FANS with warranty INTACT.One more point, none of this is needed with ANY 780TI card. Just OC to max and have a nice day. No fan mods etc needed. Warranty still good. Sell the 3 AAA games if you don't want them to make up most of the difference and be happy you got a better card that probably won't have a phase2 driver in its future ;)
K_Space - Sunday, December 29, 2013 - link
That's very much anecdotal evidence; I've got Sapphire Crossfire'd HD 5870 Vapor-X alive and kicking since release day sometime ~ 2009. (I still think it's one of the most under-rated cards from the red camp)Broadly speaking, Sapphire is very much a reputable company and their build quality is up there amongst AMD board partners. I'm sure this product will b no different.
kmmatney - Friday, January 3, 2014 - link
I have a 560 GTX-Ti Hawk card, with a Twin Frzr III cooler which sounds like an airplane while gaming. I tried to adjust the fan settings to be quieter, but the temps would easily go above 100C. On a whim, I removed the fan cover exposing the heat sink, and zip-tied a quiet 120 mm fan above it. Not only is the card near silent now, but the temps are a good 20 deg cooler. So if you have the space (it will become a tri-slot card) I think any card can have good, silent cooling with this technique.LordOfTheBoired - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - link
Our frothing desire for this video card increases!