Pros: This is a fantastic card. Super high frame rates, really a monster performer. AMD should rightly be very proud of this card.
It runs very hot, but its designed to. Even reference designs like this can run at lower than the max temps if you push some cool air into/onto the card.
Don't hesitate to buy this design if the price is right.
Performance wise, the R9 290x is 5 eggs, but all deductions are from the manufacturers selfish warranty choices.

Cons: Sapphire.
Worst, bar none, "support" of any manufacturer of this card.
I've bought a half dozen or so of these cards, and as a hobby system builder, I'm VERY familiar with all of the manufacturers warranty. Sapphire is the ONLY manufacturer that flatly refuses warranty coverage without "approved" original receipt. And, their warranty is only a single year. Buy ANY OTHER manufacturers card. Don't support these unsavory manufacturers.
Deduct all 3 eggs for the worst warranty coverage available of all manufacturers.

Overall Review: Read the purposely open ended warranty invalidation reasons. Even simply removing the heat sink voids their warranty, so replacing the stock cooler with a much better design will void Sapphires already terrible, short, 2 year warranty.
Avoid Sapphire for high heat, high failure risk cards like these.

Pros: Beautiful and stable for the first day.

Cons: Died after less than 48hrs of use without OC on PSU tested with lab grade equipment. Ran at 95. ATi tech support said this was normal and to keep using. System sparked out next day and damaged motherboard HD audio.

Overall Review: Jumped ship to nvidia/evga after 15 years of ATi/sapphire/palit loyalty. Stability is more important than max fps in a benchmark.

Pros: Great for gaming when works, does not require crossfire bridge.

Cons: Loud and runs VERY hot. Died after just a few months of normal usage and under water cooling blocks. I have 2 of these & both cards are sapphire. Sapphire support is horrble been email communicating with them back and forward for over 2 weeks with no result still awaiting rma, not phone number to call if you are in canada. XFX & Asus has never given me any problems like this, i am never buying another sapphire product.

Overall Review: over all 290x cards are amazing for gaming and mining scrypt coins or hashcat hash cracking. Sapphire though is not the one you want!

Pros: Pretty good fps on games at the highest settings. Runs games beautiful at 1920x1080 with a 144hz monitor 1ms refresh rate.
I'm about to order a second card and try out Crossfire.

Cons: Card runs at 74c with a little OC and fans at 75% through MSI afterburner playing TR. Fans are loud but I play with headphones so I don't really have a problem with it.

Overall Review: I actually ordered the Tri-X OC model of this card and was sent this card instead. Newegg offered the RMA and had no problem accepting a refund, but I kept the card because the Tri-X OC was out of stock and I didn't feel like waiting.
Not to mention the box it came in was totally destroyed (due to FedEX somewhere down the line). I don't live in the best area of Washington DC, but I dont know what happened. The box was also missing my Intel CPU, which I'm currently in the middle of sorting out between Newegg and Fedex.

Pros: Card has been great, most of the negative reviews are from loud fan/overheating but i have this card water cooled so no problems there. EK block fits it great. Plan on getting another if the prices ever come back down to earth.

Cons: N/A

Pros: Great Bang for the buck ( It was $500 with BF4 around Cyber Monday, but the market has changed now)
Runs games well very.
Great for mining litecoins too.
Reference Design

Cons: Unbelievably Loud if you set to uber mode and use the stock cooling solution. IMO Fan settings should be higher out of the box on normal setting anyways, but that's an easy change in the driver settings.

Mine came with elpida memory instead of hynix.
Reference Design

Overall Review: This card was great bang for the buck when it first came out. Hopefully prices will return to normal. I do not have coil whine as others do.

Reference design is a huge plus if you are going to watercool or use a modified bios for mining.

If you have no intention to do either of those things then a non-reference cooler will cool better and quieter.

After reading initial reviews, I knew the card would be loud. Reference cards are the easiest to water-cool and I knew I would be getting a block for it before I considered purchasing.

Still playing with mining settings but the card is now Silent and averages 980Khs even though it only has elpida memory. BF4 was running great with beta mantle drivers for me.

Pros: fast
can play anything

Cons: price
heat
noise

Pros: Good looking shell

Cons: This card won't last "stock" nearly as long as it should. Modifications must be made to the card to preserve the life expectancy. Airflow is extremely restrictive through the back grill of the card near the DVI and HDMI ports. Your card will be getting much hotter than it should be.