AMD's reference Radeon R9 290 and 290X cooler earned our disdain once we figured out that it was causing the otherwise-impressive Hawaii GPU to operate at performance levels below the company's specification. Getting the graphics processor to deliver full performance required faster fan speeds, more noise, and ultimately higher power.
Starting back in December, partner boards with third-party coolers started showing up. No longer was it necessary to make your own modifications, like we did in Fixing The Radeon R9 290 With Arctic's Accelero Xtreme III, to maximize the performance of those once-$400 and -$550 cards. Speaking of, let's take a look at how the cards in today's update are priced now:
| Radeon R9 290 (Newegg) | |
|---|---|
| Sapphire Tri-X OC R9 290 | $650 |
| Gigabyte GV-R929OC-4GD R9 290 Windforce OC | Out of stock |
| Radeon R9 290X (Newegg) | |
|---|---|
| Asus R9290X-DC2OC-4GD5 R9 290X DirectCU II OC | $730 |
| Sapphire Tri-X OC R9 290X | Out of stock |
| Gigabyte GV-R929XOC-4GD R9 290X Windforce OC | $700 |
| HIS R9 290X IceQ X² Turbo | Not Available |
| MSI R9 290X Gaming 4G | $700 |
Our colleagues in Germany began working with the uniquely-tuned offerings, hoping to find that AMD's partners were extracting just as much performance as we were able to, without the hassle of adding your own aftermarket cooler. Do they, though? That's the question we want to answer today.
In Germany, this story has been taking shape one card at a time. But now that we have it translated into English, we have a more complete picture of the partner card market, including two Radeon R9 290 cards, five R9 290X cards, the reference board with our Arctic Accelero Extreme III modification, and another home-grown configuration with NZXT's Kraken G10 and X40 bracket.
All of the Radeon R9 290X cards are set to their Quiet Mode firmware setting, since the board partners do a suitable job of cooling Hawaii without sacrificing clock rates.
Radeon R9 290 Model Overview
| Sapphire Tri-X OC R9 290 | ![]() |
|---|---|
| Radeon R9 290 + Arctic Accelero Extreme III | ![]() |
| Radeon R9 290 + NZXT Kraken G10 + X40 | |
| Gigabyte R9 290 Windforce OC (Update) | ![]() |
Radeon R9 290X Model Overview
| Asus R9 290X DirectCU II OC | ![]() |
|---|---|
| Sapphire Tri-X OC R9 290X | ![]() |
| Gigabyte R9 290X Windforce OC | ![]() |
| HIS R9 290X IceQ X² Turbo (Update) | ![]() |
| MSI R9 290X Gaming 4G (Update) | ![]() |
- Cooling The Radeon R9 290 And 290X
- Technical Specifications
- Dimensions And Weight
- Gaming Power Consumption
- Gaming Performance
- Temperatures
- Noise And Fan Speed
- Video Comparison
- Sapphire Tri-X OC R9 290
- Gigabyte GV-R929OC-4GD R9 290 Windforce OC
- Radeon R9 290 + Arctic Accelero Extreme III
- Asus R9290X-DC2OC-4GD5 R9 290X DirectCU II OC
- HIS R9 290X IceQ X² Turbo
- Gigabyte GV-R929XOC-4GD R9 290X Windforce OC
- MSI R9 290X Gaming 4G
- Sapphire Tri-X OC R9 290X









I would like to know this more precisely please... I can't found any rage in my articles, only a chip with a very high temperature density and a lot of unusable coolers because the engineers were not able to build a matching cooler for this cards. This high density will be a global problem for all next-gen chips too. Without a vapor chamber this won't work.
Coupled with other recent reviews, Sapphire's Tri-X OC series looks to be great cards, especially when you make a custom fan curve to further reduce idle and load noise.
I can not wait to see the 20nm updates, especially if AMD gets around to pulling a Titan with their reference coolers!
I would like to know this more precisely please... I can't found any rage in my articles, only a chip with a very high temperature density and a lot of unusable coolers because the engineers were not able to build a matching cooler for this cards. This high density will be a global problem for all next-gen chips too. Without a vapor chamber this won't work.
Coupled with other recent reviews, Sapphire's Tri-X OC series looks to be great cards, especially when you make a custom fan curve to further reduce idle and load noise.
I can not wait to see the 20nm updates, especially if AMD gets around to pulling a Titan with their reference coolers!
It is nice that a company has paid attention and we have a solution that doesn't involve a series of carefully engineered zip ties...
A good PSU has a lot of primary caps inside to compensate this peaks without any problem. The question should better be: What's about the life-span of this caps under this conditions? This is one of the reasons to buy a PSU with good and not with so-called "bad" caps. If you buy cheap you buy twice...
But Nvidia is not much better. I've checked this in another article:
A good PSU has a lot of primary caps inside to compensate this peaks without any problem. The question should better be: What's about the life-span of this caps under this conditions?
But Nvidia is not much better. I've checked this in another article:
FormatC your avatar gave me cancer...
Ok, use 8x MSAA to prevent you before edge flares