Temperatures
We're using Metro: Last Light for our thermal benchmarks. This should be a good representation of a high-end graphics workload. As a bonus, it's incredibly repeatable and easy to loop over and over through the built-in tool.
Swipe to scroll horizontally
| Model | Idle | Gaming, Open-Air Bench | VRM | Gaming, Closed Case |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sapphire Tri-X OC R9 290 | 32 °C | 72 °C | 78 °C | 60-71 °C |
| Gigabyte GV-R929OC-4GD R9 290X Windforce OC | 34 °C | 72 °C | 77 °C | 73-74 °C |
| Radeon R9 290 Reference + Arctic Accelero Extreme III | 30 °C | 68 °C | 90 °C | 72 °C |
| Radeon R9 290 Reference + NZXT Kraken G10 + X40 | 28 °C | 49 °C | 66 °C | 49 °C |
Swipe to scroll horizontally
| Model | Idle | Gaming, Open-Air Bench | VRM | Gaming, Closed Case |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Asus R9290X-DC2OC-4GD5 R9 290X DirectCU II OC | 34 °C | 76 °C | 92 °C | 84-85 °C |
| Sapphire Tri-X OC R9 290X | 35 °C | 73 °C | 85 °C | 70-72 °C |
| Gigabyte GV-R929XOC-4GD R9 290X Windforce OCPress Sample | 34 °C | 84 °C | 86 °C | 83 °C |
| Gigabyte GV-R929XOC-4GD R9 290X Windforce OCMass Production | 34 °C | 83 °C | 87 °C | 81 °C |
| HIS R9 290X IceQ X² Turbo | 35 °C | 78 °C | 70 °C | 81-82 °C |
| MSI R9 290X Gaming 4G | 34 °C | 76 °C | 73 °C | 75-76 °C |
Temperature Graphs
These graphs slow how the temperatures change over time, influenced by the heat sink, the fan, and the firmware's fan profile.
Asus' R9 290X DirectCU II OC has a bit of a problem; its cooler was actually designed for the larger GK110 GPU on its GeForce GTX 780 Ti board. 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.
Sapphire solves this with a group of three heat pipes that better fit AMD's GPU. The result is made clear in our testing.
Radeon R9 290 Temperatures
Radeon R9 290X Temperatures
TOPICS
