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A slightly different futuristic robot image on the Sapphire R9 290 Vapor-X OC box, but it is very effective artwork.
The bundle includes a quality HDMI cable, some power converters, literature, and a software disc. It is always best snagging the latest drivers from AMD's website however.
The Sapphire R9 290 Vapor-X OC is a beast of a card, and is very heavy. Part of the weight it due to the metal backplate fitted to the PCB, shown above. Three 90mm fans are spaced across the full length of the PCB. We love the sporty blue accents.
The ‘Sapphire' badge on the side of the cooler, glows when the card is active.
The Sapphire R9 290 Vapor-X OC demands power from two eight pin power connectors.
There is a bios switch here which offers UEFI support. AMD's R9 290 offers bridgeless Crossfire support, meaning it doesn't need a physical connector between the cards.
A single link, and dual link DVI connector are present, alongside a full sized HDMI (1.4a) and DisplayPort (1.2) connector. Eyefinity is fully supported and no active adapter is required.
In the middle of the card, on the back is an ‘on/off' switch. Sapphire has added a new feature to this card which Sapphire are calling ‘Intelligent Fan Control (IFC)'. With this feature enabled only one of the three fans (center) will spin with lower loads. When the GPU temperature rises then all three fans will kick in. In theory this should reduce noise emissions under most situations.
Gamers and overclockers can turn this off, so the three fans spin all the time.
This is a very impressive looking cooler. The R9 290 Vapor-X card uses Digital Power Control and a new Aero6 VRM section to deliver 6 phase power with high power Direct-FET technology to the GPU, memory and control circuitry.
The power design on this card uses Sapphire Black Diamond chokes – featuring a black ferrite cooler for better efficiency. Sapphire are using high grade electrolyte capacitors throughout the design.
If you have been paying attention you may have seen the white strip running along the top of the card, close to the two 8 pin power connectors. Sapphire's engineering team have left one of the copper layers exposed. An additional heatsink mounted direct to the copper layer means that heat can be absorbed into the PCB from the GPU, then transferred out. Sapphire claim a reduction in overall temperature by ‘several degrees'.
The Tri-X cooler is mounted on top, utilising a monster 10mm heatpipe, with two 8mm pipes and two 6mm pipes spreading across the full length of the PCB.
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