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Report: Sapphire Building 8GB Radeon R9 290X 'Toxic' Card

By - Source: KitGuru | B 37 comments

It looks like Sapphire is working on a 'Toxic' R9 290X graphics card with double the GDDR5 memory.

Image Source: KitGuruImage Source: KitGuru

A report from KitGuru tells us that Sapphire is building a new and improved R9 290X graphics card – one with a rather impressive spec sheet. The card will be known as the R9 290X Toxic Edition.

The card seems to be based off of the original Tri-X R9 290X graphics card, though they do carry a number of differences.

The biggest difference between this card and other R9 290X cards in general is the 8 GB of graphics memory, rather than the reference 4 GB solutions.Image Source: KitGuruImage Source: KitGuru

So far, there has been no information on what the card's clock speeds would be, but given that this is a 'Toxic' branded product, it's safe to assume that the factory overclock will be at least respectable, if not better.

Of course, there is also no word yet on pricing or availability. That said, it will be a limited edition card, meaning that prices are likely to be a little higher than usual.

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Top Comments
  • 17 Hide
    eklipz330 , March 14, 2014 9:25 PM
    MSRP - $600Actual Price - $1.7 million
  • 10 Hide
    alchemy69 , March 15, 2014 2:35 AM
    It's all about bragging rights. Little rich kids playing WoW @ 1080P "I need this card because I'm a hardcore gamer and I can pwn you newbs with only 4GB...and Twilight Sparkle IS awesome."
Other Comments
  • 17 Hide
    eklipz330 , March 14, 2014 9:25 PM
    MSRP - $600Actual Price - $1.7 million
  • Display all 37 comments.
  • 0 Hide
    knowom , March 14, 2014 9:33 PM
    8GB of memory is a just absurd. Perhaps for some kind of CAD rendering work you "might" and that's a pretty big "might" I should add be able to make use of it though that's probably even a stretch.I wish GPU memory could be put to good use as a fast storage ramdisk subsystem for a PC at least outside of Linux because I don't see any reason why it couldn't outside of the lack of software developed for that purpose.
  • 3 Hide
    JOSHSKORN , March 14, 2014 11:48 PM
    <yawn> Wake me up when the PC gaming industry needs that kind of GPU.
  • 7 Hide
    Jgriff , March 15, 2014 12:03 AM
    Stack mods on mods on mods @ 4k resolution. I could find ways to fil that 8. Lol
  • 2 Hide
    5tormy , March 15, 2014 12:15 AM
    that's a lot of vram
  • 4 Hide
    combine1237 , March 15, 2014 1:39 AM
    Quadfire in 4k?
  • 10 Hide
    alchemy69 , March 15, 2014 2:35 AM
    It's all about bragging rights. Little rich kids playing WoW @ 1080P "I need this card because I'm a hardcore gamer and I can pwn you newbs with only 4GB...and Twilight Sparkle IS awesome."
  • 2 Hide
    tolham , March 15, 2014 5:04 AM
    "toxic"? what does that mean, it heats up to 200* and smells like burnt rubber?
  • 1 Hide
    heero yuy , March 15, 2014 5:48 AM
    as whassname jgriff said this card is going to be good for gaming at HEUG resolutions and so while most people will not need that much ram people with lots of screens or screens with stupid resolutions will need that much ram
  • 8 Hide
    DrBackwater , March 15, 2014 6:20 AM
    I like twilight sparkle.
  • 1 Hide
    DrBackwater , March 15, 2014 6:21 AM
    Whats sapphires warranty like compared to asus.
  • 2 Hide
    Damon Palovaara , March 15, 2014 6:45 AM
    Quote:
    Quadfire in 4k?
    More like 3 x 4k
  • 0 Hide
    SirGCal , March 15, 2014 7:04 AM
    Even with one 1600 monitor, the right mods can bring current 6G cards to their knees in terms of memory on the card used. However those examples are extremely few right now. So there is a need for it, but a niche. Plus then modded other resolutions, 2-3 monitor setups, etc. More memory is not a bad thing in any regard accept cost.
  • 0 Hide
    davewah3 , March 15, 2014 7:10 AM
    SirGCal, what mods? I'm curious because at 1080 I've yet to see anything come close to 3GB.
  • 2 Hide
    SirGCal , March 15, 2014 7:32 AM
    Quote:
    SirGCal, what mods? I'm curious because at 1080 I've yet to see anything come close to 3GB.


    Skyrim modded to heck and back, sure it was pretty, but it also brought my friend's Titan's memory usage pushing 6G on that card. He runs a tons of mods though. Still played great obviously but tracking memory usage, it got fat fast. Those are massive textures, etc being loaded also pushing visuals and not performance.

    That's just one example that comes to mind.

    OMG, I just remembered... He's running 1600, not 1080 so that is roughly twice the pixel count. Sorry about that confusion on my part. (I'll fix the post.. ) I always forget that. (I want a 1440 as I prefer wider over taller, but $... And I do most of the testing accept that one). One gotcha is probably some of these mods aren't as optimized as they could be, wasting a ton of room that might not be necessary. Still they do get pretty but also require resources to execute especially when combined with others and others and... You can still load up the same extreme res texture packs though and give your system a grind. I've easily peaked out my 690 in testing (2G per).

    Still, if 3x or the newer 4K come to the mainstream (which are ALREADY available), then this becomes a far easier and more serious 'need' for those niche users real fast.
  • -1 Hide
    DrBackwater , March 15, 2014 7:34 AM
    Quote:
    Even with one 1080p monitor, the right mods can bring current 6G cards to their knees in terms of memory on the card used. However those examples are extremely few right now. So there is a need for it, but a niche. Plus then modded other resolutions, 2-3 monitor setups, etc. More memory is not a bad thing in any regard accept cost.


    Quote:
    SirGCal, what mods? I'm curious because at 1080 I've yet to see anything come close to 3GB.


    8K GAMING HERE WE COME, right up some code nvidea we need 8k enabled support, oh my bad lol. amd.

  • 1 Hide
    firefoxx04 , March 15, 2014 10:17 AM
    When will the consumer just accept when technology gets faster and bigger? When Quad Cores came out, everyone cried wolf. When DDR3 8GB + came out, everyone was like "we dont need that".Now we have 6-8 core machines running over 4ghz with 16-32GB of ram. This card is obviously for users who do crossfire. I have two 6850s in xfire but only 1GB of vram and it sucks. I max Skyrim with one card at 1080p but my vram is still full so the second card does nothing besides lower the gpu usage on my first card. I have more horsepower than I can practically use and would be better off with a new single card with 2gb or more vram.
  • 5 Hide
    icemunk , March 15, 2014 11:08 AM
    You guys sound the same as those old people who used to say "512kb is more ram than you'll ever need, why would someone need that much ram!" Think forward!
  • 1 Hide
    jasonelmore , March 15, 2014 11:31 AM
    Quote:
    SirGCal, what mods? I'm curious because at 1080 I've yet to see anything come close to 3GB.
    Titanfall uses 3GB @ 1080p on a GTX 780
  • 1 Hide
    Raheel Hasan , March 15, 2014 12:07 PM
    lol 8gb memory
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