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Sapphire have released a slew of ground breaking graphics cards in the last 6 months. We were the first publication to review the Sapphire R9 280X Toxic OC Edition last October and we elucidated at the time how the Tri-X cooler had kicked all competition into the sidelines.
The new overclocked Sapphire R9 280X Vapor-X OC and Sapphire R9 290 Vapor-X take this a stage further by incorporating one of the best cooling systems we have ever reviewed. To get a handle on just how capable these coolers are – under load, they are a staggering 32c better than AMD's reference design. That really is an extraordinary result, no matter how you look at it.
Today we tested at a series of resolutions – 1080p, 1600p and Ultra HD 4K. The overclocked Sapphire R9 280X Vapor-X performs well at both 1080p and 1600p, but runs out of bandwidth at Ultra HD 4K. It would be possible to increase the frame rates by reducing the image quality significantly, but gamers do not want this anymore. To get acceptable game performance at Ultra HD 4k with the eye candy cranked, you really need at least an AMD R9 290/X or Nvidia GTX780 Ti.
The Sapphire R9 280X Vapor-X OC is a fantastic graphics card that will suit a very wide audience who game with a 1080p monitor. You can easily move all the image quality settings to maximum and maintain smooth frame rates over 30 at all times. Many games will run extremely well at 1600p, although you may need to reduce a few of the image quality settings with the latest Direct X 11 titles.
The Sapphire R9 290 Vapor-X OC is the star of the show today. We feel the R9 290 makes more sense than the more expensive R9 290X. With the amount of overclocking headroom available on this Sapphire card, it is straightforward enough to outperform the fastest overclocked GTX780 Ti solutions, nevermind a reference R9 290X.
This card really is a beautiful piece of engineering. Sapphire have included a BIOS button, alongside a fan control switch, which disables the outer two fans in specific lower load conditions. The Vapor-X cooler on this card is the best air cooler we have seen to date, and the added backplate not only improves the appearance, but ensures that PCB temperatures are reduced. Sapphire have adopted thick 10mm heatpipes, a Vapor-X cooling chamber and triple 90mm aerofoil blade fans to ensure the ultimate cooling performance.
Taking matters a stage further, they have extended the edge of the card, exposed one of the copper layers and added a heatsink for additional cooling. The heat from the PCB, GPU and other components on the board can be transferred to the heatsink and cooled by airflow from above. This is clearly no marketing speak either, because it is the coolest running R9 290 solution we have tested.
We are still waiting for confirmed pricing of the Sapphire R9 280X Vapor-X OC, however Overclockers UK are stocking the Sapphire R9 290 Vapor-X OC for £371.99 inc vat. It is the best R9 290 we have tested in our labs, without question.
Discuss on our Facebook page, over HERE.
Pros:
- Vapor-X cooling is exceptional.
- fantastic build quality.
- over-engineered.
- look fantastic.
Cons:
- None.
Kitguru says: The Sapphire R9 290 Vapor-X OC and R9 280X Vapor-X OC are two of the finest AMD video cards ever made. No corners have been cut.
You say at the bottom of the introduction page: “The Sapphire R9 290 Vapor-X ships with a core clock speed of 1,030mhz and the GDDR4 memory is clocked at 1,400mhz (5.6Gbps effective), connected by a 512 bit memory interface.”
Is the “GDDR4” memory type a typo?
Yes, its GDDR5 – fixed. thanks!
for god sake, I just bought a triX yesterday – I have the worst timing ever. 🙁
I like the blue appearance. the cooler is spectular – never seen a company expose copper like that to cool the PCB. very clever.
the price seems quite good considering, I thought it would be around £400 inc vat.
Preordered the 290 Vapor-X thanks !
The looks of the Vapor-X cooling is stunning! The 290 will definately be in my new build. Does anyone know the lenght of the 290 Vapor-X card?
Hi Ralf, I just measured it – the cooler overhangs the PCB a little, so its around 300mm – long card.
When is it coming out?
Is that card faster than gtx 780?
Zardon tell me pls how much additional voltage mV was added for the overclocking of r9 290 vapor-x to 1205 in this review?
How did you set up your fans in you cas so you could keep the card the coolest possible? I’m thinking of buying one but I’m not sure what’s the best way to set my fans for it.
Could you give the full dimensions (lengthxwidthxheight)? Mini ITX builds can be a pain fitting everything!
Hey Zardon, I just got my R9 290 Vapor X and there’s this black goo between the backplate and the PCB, do you know what it is? Also can you make an overclocking guide for this GPU?
If you’ll show SLI up in the list there, have the decency to show Crossfire results too. And where’s 770 in the lists ? 280x is not competing with the lot in the list there. Price or performance wise.
Its nothing to do with ‘decency’. Believe it or not sometimes we don’t get access to all the cards we want to test and include them all every time we post a graphics card review.
I’m actually surprised by the 1920×1080 results just ran my Powercolor PCS+OC R9 290 through the same test Ultra preset AA 4x and Tesselation off my results were as follows (were any of your settings different?):
Min:33.5 FPS
Avg:81.2 FPS
Max:143.5 FPS
Max Temp(Via GPU-Z) 71C
I am definitely
enjoying your website. You definitely have some great insight and great
stories.
Vaporultra.com