While Sapphire's Tri-X R9 290 and R9 290X graphics cards certainly impressed us with their excellent cooler, that hasn't stopped Sapphire from trying even harder. Sapphire has now officially announced the R9 290 Vapor-X OC.
This graphics card features a cooler that appears to be similar to the Tri-X cooler we found on previous cards, but is actually a little different. The card in question here features the same basic Tri-X design, but the company has also slapped a vapor chamber into the GPU – hence the Vapor-X branding. This vapor chamber ensures that the heat from the GPU gets dissipated into the heat pipes even more effectively than before. The cooler also has LEDs now, which will glow blue when the card is running calmly with low temperatures, and will gradually gradient to red for when the card is running at more toasty temperatures.
Regarding clocks, the card is clocked in to run at speeds of up to 1030 MHz. Memory is clocked at an effective frequency of 5.6 GHz, but remains at the same standard 4 GB frame buffer size.
There has been no exact word on pricing yet, though vapor chambers aren't the cheapest things to make, so it's safe to assume that there will be a noticeable premium to pay for this card. Availability is expected soon, as the card is already shipping out to e-tailers and retailers.
