Thermals
The Asetek closed-loop liquid cooler does a fairly good job, though it's only equipped with a 120 mm radiator. A peak GPU temperature of 65 °C is admirable, particularly considering that we couldn't push a single Radeon R9 290X below 50 °C in our aftermarket cooling project.

Acoustics
We're using a calibrated studio-quality microphone for all sound level measurements. It's positioned at a 90° orientation 50 cm away from each graphics card. Results are collected after each card hits its peak operating temperature in our gaming benchmark.

Although 45 dB(A) is clearly audible, the Radeon R9 295X2 is significantly quieter than any competing setup, while the Radeon HD 6990 and R9 290X in CrossFire blow you right out of the room. AMD clearly put effort into improving the experience it conveys, and we appreciate that.

Sound Level Videos
Lastly, let's compare three generations of dual-GPU graphics cards from AMD in videos.
Radeon R9 295X2
Radeon HD 7990
Radeon HD 6990
- Not For The Faint Of Heart, AMD Says
- Power And Design Decisions
- Does Your System Have What It Takes?
- Test Hardware And Benchmarks
- Results: Arma 3
- Results: Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag
- Results: Battlefield 4
- Results: Grid 2
- Results: Metro: Last Light
- Results: Thief
- Results: Tomb Raider
- Power Consumption: Introducing Our Equipment
- Power Consumption: Idle
- Power Consumption: Gaming
- Power Consumption: General-Purpose Computing
- Power Consumption: Drawing Some Conclusions
- Temperatures And Noise
- Radeon R9 295X2: AMD Did A Lot Of Things Right
"Wheres Tom's Hardware seal of approval..."
This is addressed in the conclusion of the article:
"We have an estimated price and an estimated date for availability. The past several launches were peppered by misses on both fronts, and we’ve learned our lesson about recommending gear before you can buy it."
I would prefer a bit lower price, but this looks like a great card for the gamer that has everything!
Boss ship.
Vesuvius erupts !! ... nice job, Toms.
Conspicuous by their absence are power, temp and noise numbers from the Green Team -- which likely means they got smoked (in a really good way) across the board by dual Hawaii.
"Wheres Tom's Hardware seal of approval..."
This is addressed in the conclusion of the article:
"We have an estimated price and an estimated date for availability. The past several launches were peppered by misses on both fronts, and we’ve learned our lesson about recommending gear before you can buy it."