Sapphire R9 290X Vapor-X OC Review

If you are in the market for a high end graphics solution then Sapphire surely have to be on your final shortlist. The company have been releasing award winning graphics cards consistently for the last year - featuring the best coolers that money can buy. Today we look at their very latest R9 290X Vapor-X OC featuring a custom designed three fan cooler and out of the box overclocked speeds. Is it worth the £500 asking price? Sapphire R9 290X Vapor-X OC Specification:- GPU: Hawaii XT Stream Processors: 2816 ROPS: 64 Core Speed: 1080MHz > Memory Speed: 5640Mhz Memory interface: 512-Bit Memory capacity: 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express X16 lane required 600W or greater PSU required Power Connectors: 8-pin + 6-pin required Display Outputs: 2x Dual Link DVI, 1x HDMI, 1x DisplayPort Warranty: 2yr The box artwork highlights a mean looking futuristic combat robot with 'Vapor-X' branding adorning his battle armor. Inside are a couple of power converter cables, alongside an HDMI cable and driver disc. This card qualifies for the 'Radeon Gold reward' entitling the owner to 3 free games. The Sapphire R9 290X Vapor-X OC is kitted out with a formidable cooling system - comprising three fans running the full length of the PCB. The three 90mm fans use Aerofoil section blades to enhance air flow and reduce noise. They use dust repelling ball bearings. The rear of the card is fitted with a backplate to enhance cooling performance. You will notice 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. It takes power from two 8 pin power connectors, as shown above. The card also features a Sapphire branded button which offers UEFI support. The AMD R9 290 and 290X both offer bridgeless Crossfire support - meaning there is no need to hunt out a Crossfire connector. 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. This is a very impressive looking cooler. The R9 290X Vapor-X card uses Digital Power Control and a new Aero10 VRM section to deliver 10 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. The Sapphire R9 290X Vapor-X OC is overclocked to 1,080mhz. It has 64 ROPS, 176 Texture units and 2,816 unifed shaders. The 4GB of SKHynix memory is connected via a 512 bit memory interface. The memory is overclocked to 1,410mhz (5.64Gbps effective). On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the 24.5MP Nikon D3X camera and 24-70mm ED lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source. You can right click and ‘save as’ to your computer to view later. Today we test with the latest AMD Catalyst 14.4 Beta driver and the Nvidia Forceware 335.23 driver. We are using one of our brand new test rigs supplied by PCSPECIALIST and built to our specifications. If you want to read more about this, or are interested in buying the same Kitguru Test Rig, check out our article with links on this page.We are featuring results today with an Apple 30 inch Cinema HD Display at 2560×1600 resolution and an Asus PQ321QE Ultra HD 4K screen running at 4K 3840 x 2160 resolution. Room ambient was held at 23c throughout testing. Comparison Graphics cards: Palit GTX780 JetStream 6GB (902 mhz core / 1502mhz memory) AMD R9 295X2 (1018mhz core / 1250mhz memory) Nvidia GTX Titan Black x2 (890 mhz core / 1,750 mhz memory) Gigabyte GTX780 Ti Windforce OC (1020mhz core / 1750 mhz memory) Palit GTX 780 Ti Jetstream OC (980 mhz core / 1,750 mhz memory) Sapphire R9 290X Tri-X (1010mhz core / 1250 mhz memory) Club3D R9 290X RoyalAce Superoverclock (1050mhz / 1350mhz memory) Sapphire R9 290 Vapor-X OC (1030mhz core / 1400 mhz memory) Sapphire R9 280X Vapor-X OC (1100 mhz core / 1500 mhz memory) Software: Windows 7 Enterprise 64 bit Unigine Heaven Benchmark Unigine Valley Benchmark 3DMark Vantage 3DMark 11 3DMark Fraps Professional Steam Client FurMark Games: Thief 2014 Total War: Rome 2 Tomb Raider Metro: Last Light GRID 2 Battlefield 4 All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform generally under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests games across five closely matched runs and then average out the results to get an accurate median figure. If we use scripted benchmarks, they are mentioned on the relevant page. Some game descriptions edited with courtesy from Wikipedia. Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7. This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings. The final score of 48,242 points places the Sapphire R9 290X Vapor-X OC as the fastest single GPU AMD card we have tested, to date. 3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads. The Sapphire R9 290X Vapor-X OC slots in behind the Gigabyte GTX780 Ti Windforce OC, scoring 16,407 points in the graphics section of the test. 3DMark is an essential tool used by millions of gamers, hundreds of hardware review sites and many of the world’s leading manufacturers to measure PC gaming performance. Futuremark say “Use it to test your PC’s limits and measure the impact of overclocking and tweaking your system. Search our massive results database and see how your PC compares or just admire the graphics and wonder why all PC games don’t look this good. To get more out of your PC, put 3DMark in your PC.” The Sapphire R9 290X Vapor-X OC is the highest performing single GPU AMD card we have tested so far, scoring 11,886 points - slotting in just behind the Palit GTX 780 Ti Jetstream OC. Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand. Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk. Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable: Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems Multicore CPU support Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles) Powerful C++ API Comprehensive performance profiling system Flexible XML-based data structures We use the settings shown above at 1920×1080 and 2560×1600. Performance falls in line with what we would expect from a highly overclocked R9 290X, just in behind the reference clocked GTX Titan Black. Valley Benchmark is a new GPU stress-testing tool from the developers of the very popular and highly acclaimed Heaven Benchmark. The forest-covered valley surrounded by vast mountains amazes with its scale from a bird’s-eye view and is extremely detailed down to every leaf and flower petal. This non-synthetic benchmark powered by the state-of-the art UNIGINE Engine showcases a comprehensive set of cutting-edge graphics technologies with a dynamic environment and fully interactive modes available to the end user. We test with the settings above both at 1920×1080 and 2560×1600. This benchmark runs better on Nvidia hardware as the results show. Still good results at both settings. In Thief 2014 Players control Garrett, a master thief, as he intends to steal from the rich. Similar to previous games in the series, players must use stealth in order to overcome challenges, while violence is left as a minimally effective last resort. We test at Ultra HD 4k with the HIGH preset, both with Direct X rendering (Nvidia and AMD) and Mantle rendering (AMD only). Single card solutions struggle to maintain perfectly smooth frame rates at these settings, at Ultra HD 4K. Mantle rendering with single card delivers slightly smoother performance. Tomb Raider received much acclaim from critics, who praised the graphics, the gameplay and Camilla Luddington’s performance as Lara with many critics agreeing that the game is a solid and much needed reboot of the franchise. Much criticism went to the addition of the multiplayer which many felt was unnecessary. Tomb Raider went on to sell one million copies in forty-eight hours of its release, and has sold 3.4 million copies worldwide so far. We use the ULTIMATE profile, as shown above. We want the best image quality possible. Super smooth performance, averaging close to 90 frames per second. Tomb Raider received much acclaim from critics, who praised the graphics, the gameplay and Camilla Luddington’s performance as Lara with many critics agreeing that the game is a solid and much needed reboot of the franchise. Much criticism went to the addition of the multiplayer which many felt was unnecessary. Tomb Raider went on to sell one million copies in forty-eight hours of its release, and has sold 3.4 million copies worldwide so far. We use the ULTIMATE profile at 2560×1600, as shown above. No problems handling this engine at 1600p, maintaining solid 40+ frame rates throughout. Tomb Raider received much acclaim from critics, who praised the graphics, the gameplay and Camilla Luddington’s performance as Lara with many critics agreeing that the game is a solid and much needed reboot of the franchise. Much criticism went to the addition of the multiplayer which many felt was unnecessary. Tomb Raider went on to sell one million copies in forty-eight hours of its release, and has sold 3.4 million copies worldwide so far. We switched over to the ASUS Ultra HD 4K monitor and set to the ULTIMATE profile for maximum image quality. It takes a powerful graphics card to maintain smooth frame rates at 4K with the settings on Maximum. The Sapphire R9 290X Vapor-X OC scores very highly, dropping to 25 frames per second a couple of times during our test run. This is the best performance you will get from a single GPU AMD solution at these settings. Metro: Last Light takes place one year after the events of Metro 2033, proceeding from the ending where Artyom chose to call down the missile strike on the Dark Ones. The Rangers have since occupied the D6 military facility, with Artyom having become an official member of the group. Khan, the nomad mystic, arrives at D6 to inform Artyom and the Rangers that a single Dark One survived the missile strike. 4A Games’ proprietary 4A Engine is capable of rendering breathtaking vistas, such as those showing the ruined remnants of Moscow, as well as immersive indoor areas that play with light and shadow, creating hauntingly beautiful scenes akin to those from modern-day photos of Pripyat’s abandoned factories and schools. We tested this particular game with the extremely demanding built in benchmark. Settings detailed above. Direct X 11 mode, Quality is set at Very High, 16 AF, normal Motion blur, Tessellation Normal, Advanced PhysX disabled and SSAA disabled. The Sapphire R9 290X Vapor-X OC averages 82 frames per second at these settings. Metro: Last Light takes place one year after the events of Metro 2033, proceeding from the ending where Artyom chose to call down the missile strike on the Dark Ones. The Rangers have since occupied the D6 military facility, with Artyom having become an official member of the group. Khan, the nomad mystic, arrives at D6 to inform Artyom and the Rangers that a single Dark One survived the missile strike. 4A Games’ proprietary 4A Engine is capable of rendering breathtaking vistas, such as those showing the ruined remnants of Moscow, as well as immersive indoor areas that play with light and shadow, creating hauntingly beautiful scenes akin to those from modern-day photos of Pripyat’s abandoned factories and schools. We tested this particular game with the extremely demanding built in benchmark. Settings detailed above. Direct X 11 mode, Quality is set at Very High, 16 AF, normal Motion blur, Tessellation Normal, Advanced PhysX disabled and SSAA disabled. Excellent results, performing almost at the same level as a reference clocked Nvidia GTX Titan Black. Metro: Last Light takes place one year after the events of Metro 2033, proceeding from the ending where Artyom chose to call down the missile strike on the Dark Ones. The Rangers have since occupied the D6 military facility, with Artyom having become an official member of the group. Khan, the nomad mystic, arrives at D6 to inform Artyom and the Rangers that a single Dark One survived the missile strike. 4A Games’ proprietary 4A Engine is capable of rendering breathtaking vistas, such as those showing the ruined remnants of Moscow, as well as immersive indoor areas that play with light and shadow, creating hauntingly beautiful scenes akin to those from modern-day photos of Pripyat’s abandoned factories and schools. We tested this particular game with the extremely demanding built in benchmark. Settings detailed above. Direct X 11 mode, Quality is set at High, 16 AF, normal Motion blur, Tessellation Normal, Advanced PhysX disabled and SSAA disabled. A very tough game to power at Ultra HD 4K. It really needs a Crossfire or Sli configuration to smooth out the frame rates a little.Grid 2 is the sequel to the racing video game Race Driver: Grid. It was developed and published by Codemasters. The game includes numerous real world locations such as Paris, numerous United States locations, and many more, and also includes motor vehicles spanning four decades. In addition, it includes a new handling system that developer Codemasters has dubbed ‘TrueFeel’, which aims to hit a sweet spot between realism and accessibility. We test at the maximum image quality settings, which are different for both AMD and Nvidia cards. The Nvidia hardware is tested at 16xQCSAA and the AMD hardware is tested at 8f16x EQAA. The results below therefore are NOT directly comparable. We wanted to show performance from both AMD and NVIDIA solutions in GRID 2 when maximising the image quality settings. Playable frame rates at Ultra HD 4K, averaging 49 frames per second. This game really looks great with AMD hardware at 3,840 x 2,160 with the maximum image quality settings. Battlefield 4 (also known as BF4) is a first-person shooter video game developed by EA Digital Illusions CE (DICE) and published by Electronic Arts. The game is a sequel to 2011′s Battlefield 3. Battlefield 4 is built on the new Frostbite 3 engine. The new Frostbite engine enables more realistic environments with higher resolution textures and particle effects. A new “networked water” system is also being introduced, allowing all players in the game to see the same wave at the same time.Tessellation has also been overhauled. We test at 2560×1600 with the image quality settings on the ‘ULTRA’ preset. We test the AMD hardware with both Direct X and AMD’s Mantle rendering. Nvidia hardware is tested with Direct X rendering. This game runs very well at Ultra HD 4K on the Sapphire R9 290X Vapor-X OC, averaging between 53 and 55 frames per second. Battlefield 4 (also known as BF4) is a first-person shooter video game developed by EA Digital Illusions CE (DICE) and published by Electronic Arts. The game is a sequel to 2011′s Battlefield 3. Battlefield 4 is built on the new Frostbite 3 engine. The new Frostbite engine enables more realistic environments with higher resolution textures and particle effects. A new “networked water” system is also being introduced, allowing all players in the game to see the same wave at the same time.Tessellation has also been overhauled. We test at Ultra HD 4K with the HIGH Image preset. We drop the image quality settings a little at Ultra HD 4K, because the only card that can handle that level of IQ is the R9 295 X2. Frame rates from the Sapphire R9 290X Vapor-X OC are smooth, holding well above 40 at all times. The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 24c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this. Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by playing Crysis Warhead for 30 minutes and measuring the peak temperature. We also have included Furmark results, recording maximum temperatures throughout a 30 minute stress test. All fan settings were left on automatic. The Vapor-X is extremely impressive - holding gaming load temperatures around 64c in our specific environment. Sapphire always take the top positions in this test, so we can't say we are surprised. Sapphire have went to town with the cooling on the R9 290X Vapor-X OC PCB, as we detailed earlier in the review. This has a positive effect on VRM temperatures which peak at 60c and 63c after 10 minutes of Furmark stress testing. These temperatures are actually a few degrees lower when playing games, as Furmark places a 'worst case' scenario load on a graphics card. We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with almost completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run looped 3dMark tests. We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the closed chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation. Ambient noise in the room measures close to the limits of our sound meter at 28dBa. It isn’t a real world situation to be measuring with a case panel off only a few centimeters away from a video card. Our noise figures may therefore be lower than other publications who record at closer distances, or without a fully closed case muting the noise. Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635. KitGuru noise guide 10dBA - Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves 20-25dBA – Whisper 30dBA - High Quality Computer fan 40dBA - A Bubbling Brook, or a Refrigerator 50dBA - Normal Conversation 60dBA - Laughter 70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer 80dBA - City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal 90dBA - Motorcycle or Lawnmower 100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output 110dBA - Orchestra 120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine 130dBA – Threshold of Pain 140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range) 160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum Noise levels are very quiet when idle, and they rise to audible levels when gaming. The card isn't the quietest we have tested, although the fans are 'low pitched', so noise levels are never really annoying. To test power consumption today we are using a Keithley Integra unit and we measure power consumption from the VGA card inputs, not the system wide drain. We measure results while gaming in Crysis Warhead and the synthetic stress test Furmark and record both results. The power drain of the card is around 245 watts when gaming. To overclock today we use the latest version of Sapphire own software, TriXX. We increased the voltage further and pushed the card to 1,223mhz - a 13.2% manual increase on the core clock speed. The memory maxed out at around 1,550mhz - a 10% increase. The manual tweaked speeds translate into another 800 points in 3DMark 11 - pushing the final score from 16,407 points to 17,206 points. If you are in the market for the fastest possible AMD graphics card and can't afford the monster R9 295X2 then the Sapphire R9 290X Vapor-X OC deserves to be on your final shortlist. We review a wide range of graphics cards every month, but no company have claimed so many awards as Sapphire in our labs over the last year. The reason is simple - Sapphire don't cut any corners. The triple fan Vapor-X cooler is the best on the market in regards to pure cooling performance. Sapphire support the excellent cooling system by overhauling the PCB and VRM cooling. They expose a copper layer on the board close to the 8 pin PCI connectors, then fit a heatsink direct to the copper layer - meaning that heat can be absorbed into the PCB from the GPU, then transferred out. When you combine this with the adoption of mighty 10mm heatpipes, it is no wonder these cards are topping our thermal charts. 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 as well. Sapphire focus a lot of their research and development time into dropping board temperatures as much as possible. VRM temperatures on other R9 290X cards may hit 95c under Furmark load, but the VRMs on the Sapphire R9 290X Vapor-X OC hold steady at a staggering 60c-63c under the same conditions. This will help improve longevity and reliability of the board, especially if you are living in a humid, warm country. With the prices of Ultra HD 4K monitors dropping to around £500 in 2014, there has never been a better time to buy a R9 290/X or GTX780ti. While the cost of these video cards may prove prohibitive, if you want to get acceptable frame rates at 3,840x2,160 then it is recommended to aim for the fastest solution you can afford today. Sapphires' R9 290X is available in two flavours from Overclockers UK. The 4GB version we reviewed today is available for £499.99 inc vat. They have an exclusive offer however on a limited edition 8GB version, which is priced £100 more, at £599.99 inc vat. If it is proving difficult to raise the funds for either of these cards, then we recommend you take a look at the more affordable Sapphire R9 290 Vapor X OC Edition, which we reviewed back in April this year. Overclockers UK stock this card for £379.99 inc vat and after overclocking to 1,200mhz it performs better than many, more expensive R9 290X cards. Worth bearing in mind. Discuss on our Facebook page, over HERE. Pros: Class leading frame rate performance. Sapphires' cooler is the best on the market for AMD cards. 1,200mhz+ is possible with TriXX. perfect partner for that new 4K screen. Cons: Could be a little quieter. Kitguru says: The fastest R9 290X we have reviewed and one of the best you can buy today.