Replacing the Reference Cooler with Arctic's Accelero Xtreme III
The Arctic Accelero Xtreme III, now in its third iteration, can keep pretty much anything cool. This is the type of heat sink and fan combination that kept the overclocked Fermi-based Sparkle GeForce GTX 480 from melting not just itself, but half the computer. It does fit the Radeon R9 290 with minor modifications and can thus serve us as an example of what AMD could have done with this card. We’ll publish the entire upgrade as a guide soon, since it was really, really worth it.
Overclocking Results
We’re using the same gaming loop as before, trying to pinpoint the card's maximum clock rate through a series of small increases. The Arctic Accelero Xtreme III can be controlled via PWM or run with a constant voltage and RPM. The OverDrive applet's new fan control changes the game, though. Maximum fan speed is now bound to the target temperature. It doesn’t make sense to set this target to the 50 or 60 °C that are possible with this cooler just to have it spin slightly faster. That kind of setup is essentially self-limiting due to its (too) good cooling performance. Even under a full load, it’s almost impossible to get the Arctic Accelero Xtreme III to spin at more than 20 to 25 percent by changing the driver settings. This isn’t enough to provide cooling to the voltage converters.
Consequently, we went with the direct connection and a fixed voltage. Even at 7 V, the upgraded Radeon R9 290 is barely louder at prolonged full load than the stock versions are at idle, and the GPU and VRMs stay cool to boot.
Let’s take a look at the benchmark results of the overclocked Radeon R9 290, which turn out to be a big surprise. There’s a 20 percent difference between the original card and the overclocked one. The updated last-minute driver reduces this difference to a still-massive almost-13 percent. Keep in mind that we’re not just talking about a frequency increase, but also more usable performance and less noise. The Arctic Accelero Xtreme III demonstrates nicely what can be achieved with AMD's Radeon R9 290.


Video Comparison between the Reference and Third-Party Cooler
The first two videos show the AMD Radeon R9 290 with the Arctic Accelero Xtreme III at 12 and 7 V, respectively. The third one shows the original stock version of the card.
Bottom Line
If anything deserves an award, it’s the Arctic Accelero Xtreme III third-party cooler that lets AMD's Hawaii-based boards realize their potential. This is how the card could, and should, perform. Why AMD persists with its sub-par cooling solution is really anyone’s guess, especially since these problems have been going on for years. Dumping the issue on its partners can’t really be the solution either, since a graphics card’s reputation is made, or lost, on launch day.
As long as the only reaction to this is a driver update with questionable benefits, the reference graphics cards will always be the cheap solution. This GPU deserves better. As we said before, we’ll post the upgrade guide as its own story, since none of AMD’s partners currently offer their own PCBs and cooling solutions.
- Digging Deeper Into Hawaii’s Behavior
- Sidebar: Variability Turns Into A Graphics Card Crapshoot
- Meet The Radeon R9 290
- Test Setup And Benchmarks
- Results: Arma III
- Results: Battlefield 4
- Results: BioShock Infinite
- Results: Crysis 3
- Results: Metro: Last Light
- Results: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
- Results: Tomb Raider
- Results (DirectX): AutoCAD 2013 And Inventor
- Results (OpenGL): LightWave And Maya 2013
- Results (OpenCL): GPGPU Benchmarks
- Gaming Power Consumption Details
- Detailed Gaming Efficiency Results
- Power Consumption Overview
- Noise And Video Comparison
- Do-It-Yourself Upgrade With Arctic's Accelero Xtreme III
- Radeon R9 290: Priced Right Where We’d Peg It



http://techreport.com/review/25602/amd-radeon-r9-290-graphics-card-reviewed/9
Chris, these results differ drastically from real world results from 290X owners at OCN... I understand that your observations are anecdotal and based on a very small sample size but do you mind looking into this matter further because putting such a statement in bold in the conclusion even though it contradicts real world experiences of owners just provides a false assumption to the uninformed reader...
The above claim has already escalated further than it should... A Swiss site actually has already rebutted by testing their own press sample with a retail model and concluded the following:
In the quiet mode, where the dynamic frequencies to work overtime, the situation becomes slightly turbid. A minor performance difference can be seen in some titles, and even if it is not about considerable variations, the trend is clear. In the end, it does an average variance tion of only a few percent, ie no extreme levels. The reason may include slightly less contact with the cooler, or simply easy changing ambient temperature.
http://techreport.com/review/25602/amd-radeon-r9-290-graphics-card-reviewed/9
Chris, these results differ drastically from real world results from 290X owners at OCN... I understand that your observations are anecdotal and based on a very small sample size but do you mind looking into this matter further because putting such a statement in bold in the conclusion even though it contradicts real world experiences of owners just provides a false assumption to the uninformed reader...
The above claim has already escalated further than it should... A Swiss site actually has already rebutted by testing their own press sample with a retail model and concluded the following:
In the quiet mode, where the dynamic frequencies to work overtime, the situation becomes slightly turbid. A minor performance difference can be seen in some titles, and even if it is not about considerable variations, the trend is clear. In the end, it does an average variance tion of only a few percent, ie no extreme levels. The reason may include slightly less contact with the cooler, or simply easy changing ambient temperature.
Now to wait for the non-reference cards at the end of the month!
It looks like a good card for the price as it even keeps up with the $100 more GTX780. This is good as NVidia may drop prices even more which means we could also see a price drop on the 290X and I wouldn't mind a new 290X Toxic for sub $500.
Best to wait a month or two before buying to see how this all goes down
Some people who need CUDA for work and GPU for gaming will still get 780s, but no one will get 290x for $150 premium just to get a couple more FPS over 290. AMD just shot themselves in the foot before hurting nvidia.
Nvidia made a very good job with the reference cooler(but you really pay for it)... do you think AMD could not have pulled of a "monster" cooler?? is it really hard to make a good cooler? no, it is expensive.
You could do this, you have youre sources
Strange thing and I know some of us were going through this. I was thinking getting a 280x on Black Friday/Cyber Monday but the price tag is leaving me with something to think about. I think I'm just going to save up the few pennies to get something I thought was out of my price range ($300-450) a month ago ($650+).