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
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
119 Comments
View All Comments
Godigy - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - link
No, it follows the reference design, but Sapphire decided to put different chokes on. You'll see that Sapphire put on CEC R15 chokes, and the reference cards uses different chokes from the same brand.sparkuss - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - link
Looking at the picture they appear to be the same size though, don't they? Only a change in size or orientation should give a problem with water-blocks, I hope.ggathagan - Monday, December 30, 2013 - link
What's the point of buying a pricier GPU with a custom cooler if you intend on replacing the cooler with water blocks?sparkuss - Monday, December 30, 2013 - link
Basically because every time I think I'm ready to build my watercool rig, something happens and I don't follow through. But I still want to upgrade the GPU and I end up waiting too long before the reference cards are all gone. With this remaining reference I get all the benefit of the better cooling and can still hang on to it until I WC.shotgunx1x - Tuesday, December 24, 2013 - link
I know it should be soon, but any idea when we can expect these to be available?Shreddie - Tuesday, December 24, 2013 - link
Most likely Mid-Late January (that's the estimated DCII release date)Ryan Smith - Tuesday, December 24, 2013 - link
Sapphire says it should start hitting shelves at the end of this week.Mopar63 - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - link
They seem to already be out with some etailers in Europe.Will Robinson - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - link
Guess Blackened23 and Balla are just gonna ignore the beating the 780 gets in this review lololWhat was that about 780 overclocking again? :)
Mondozai - Wednesday, December 25, 2013 - link
The OC performance here is better than the review in Hexus.Also, you can get from mid-800s to mid-1200s in mhz on a custom-cooled GTX 780 with OC. The OC here is a lesser amount. I wonder what the performance would be on a maxed out-OC'd GTX 780 would be vs the OC that Ryan applied.