- 4GB 512-Bit GDDR5
- Core Clock 1030MHz
- 2 x DVI-D 1 x HDMI 1 x DisplayPort
- 2816 Stream Processors
- PCI Express 3.0
Some Real Nice R9 290X Cards
01/27/2014
This review is from: PowerColor Radeon R9 290X 4GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 CrossFireX Support OC Video Card AXR9 290X 4GBD5-MDHG/OC
Pros:
Stock Overclock to 1030mhz starting
4gb GDDR5
512bit Bus for ONE GPU
Decent Price to Performance (Even at the price hikes)
BF4 Coupons
Great Performance and Scaling in CFX
Blows almost all hot air out of case
Decent Overclocking on Both Ram and GPU
Cons:
8 Game Coupon that came with them expired by the time they got to me
Stock cooler is a bit noisy, but no worse then some GPU's ive had in the past (Uber Mode mind you).
1 of my 3 has an issue with the bios in Uber Mode (Clocks itself to 1000mhz vs 1030mhz).
Overall Review:
The cooler on this card is adequate with the latest Catalyst on uber mode to cool One of these cards and maintain the 1030mhz Clock speed without throttling even after many strenuous benchmarks or BF4 sessions. I bought 3 of these because I run a 3 way Eyefinity monitor setup for gaming and the scaling/multi-GPU performance was better than 3 780ti Scaling in a multi-monitor setup (Scaling meaning CFX scaling over SLI scaling). I read through people testing these things and decided to go with 3 of the powercolor versions since they in my book are one of the top 3 AMD card companies now. They have exceeded my expectations as every game ive thrown at it except for Crysis 3 runs on Ultra at 5760x3240p (3 1080p surround monitors). BF4 runs very well on these cards multiplayer or single and gives me the performance I was looking for. I liquid cooled my cards and managed to overclock them with ease to 1125mhz GPU and 1350 on the ram without really much thought. Ill see later if they can go further, but for now the performance is top notch from these cards and there is no problems what so ever with temps (Mine never exceed in their overclocked states on water above 57C).
With the stock cooler, I tested each card with burn in's for over 2 hours each to make sure there were no issues and benchmarked them. They all stayed around 87C after the 2 hours session with the switch in the Uber mode setting allowing 55% fan speed. I never once got a drop in clocks like this except on one card. The third card only went up to 1gz on the Core clock in Uber mode (Though I manually bumped it to 1030ghz for the testing and it was perfectly stable). In quiet mode on the switch it did read 1030mhz so im unsure why this one is like that but its not big issue for me. When running in CFX (I only tested 2 cards together for this) with the fans I did get a temp with them sitting next to each of about 93C on Uber after 2 hours of testing. Bumping the fan speed to 60% dropped the temps instantly to 86C in CFX with the same testing.
My Rig:
CPU: FX 9590 at 5.0ghz (Not Turbo)
Ram: Gskill Trident X 1899 16gb 2x8gb (Cas Latency 8)
Motherboard: Crosshair V-Z
Case: Corsair Obsidian 800D
HDD/SSD: Samsung 840 Pro 512gb and Seagate Barracuda 1tb 7200RPM
GPU: 3x PowerColor R9 290X with EK Waterblocks @ 1125/1350.
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- William S.
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Verified Owner
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Owned For:
1 month to 1 year
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