Partner Cards: Two Radeon R9 290s And Five 290Xs, Updated

Features
By Igor Wallossek
published

Cooling The Radeon R9 290 And 290X

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:

Swipe to scroll horizontally
Radeon R9 290 (Newegg)
Sapphire Tri-X OC R9 290$650
Gigabyte GV-R929OC-4GD R9 290 Windforce OCOut of stock
Swipe to scroll horizontally
Radeon R9 290X (Newegg)
Asus R9290X-DC2OC-4GD5 R9 290X DirectCU II OC$730
Sapphire Tri-X OC R9 290XOut of stock
Gigabyte GV-R929XOC-4GD R9 290X Windforce OC$700
HIS R9 290X IceQ X² TurboNot 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

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

Sapphire Tri-X OC R9 290X

Gigabyte R9 290X Windforce OC

HIS R9 290X IceQ X² Turbo(Update)

MSI R9 290X Gaming 4G(Update)

Igor Wallossek
66 Comments Comment from the forums
  • yannigr
    You can write as many articles as you want about 290/290X coolers. You can write as many excuses as you want. You can continue reminding us that there was/is a problem with Hawaii every 15 days for the whole 2014. That "victory dance" that "excitement" that you found(?) AMD cheating(?) back then, all that rage against AMD, can not be unwritten.
    Reply
  • FormatC
    all that rage against AMD
    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.
    Reply
  • outlw6669
    Good job on the review Tom's German team and great work from AMD's partners!

    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!
    Reply
  • rdc85
    It's here!! I'm been waiting for this review... going to read (twice) now..
    Reply
  • FormatC
    I will add in the next days more cards like Gigabyte's R9 290 (without X), the MSI R9 290X and something other (secret) :)
    Reply
  • rdc85
    I think this card is made/means to be WC -ed..... 290 in Kraken looks promising.. (trying imagine how good if in full water block, good radiator)
    Reply
  • roymustang
    The main problem with the 290 and 290X isn't the cooling, it's the fact that bitcoin and litecoin miners have driven the price of these cards up by $100-150; to the point where they are no longer a good deal at all.I was waiting for the custom cooled 290s to come out to upgrade my GTX 670 but now I may just wait for the next cards and maybe stick with nVidia.
    Reply
  • Phillip Wager
    i want so badly the 290 to go back to 400 bucks cuz that is like my hard limit on a video card ive been waiting but i don't think i can wait much longer and i guess i'll just get a 770. i'm even willing to put up with the reference coolers bah.
    Reply
  • hytecgowthaman
    Sapphire wins in this competition now !!!
    Reply
  • patrick47018
    "You can see this in the image below, where two of the heat pipes don't **tough** Hawaii at all, and two others make partial contact. " Spelling mistake, on topic I like the Sapphire Toxic's design and performance.
    Reply