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2015 has started with a whimper, more than a bang. AMD have yet to release new architecture so it falls on their partners to create enticing, competitive and effective solutions. Sapphire have been leading the way for some time now, and their latest 8GB card has been launched to supplement the more expensive Vapor X model. This new Tri-X card is equipped with 8GB of GDDR5, ships with a custom cooler and is overclocked. At £349.99 is also £70 cheaper than the Vapor X model (£419.99) – surely a more realistic asking price in today's market.
The Sapphire card is a looker, it incorporates a substantial triple fan cooling solution which many of you will have seen before – as early as December 2013 actually. This is a problem AMD partners are facing … they are adapting and tweaking technology launched more than 16 months ago. We do hope AMD can bring something new to the table in the coming months because I am getting a real feeling of Déjà vu in recent reviews.
Sapphire R9 290X Tri-X OC Specification:-
- GPU: Hawaii XT
- Stream Processors: 2816
- ROPS: 64
- Core Speed: 1020MHz
- Memory Speed: 5500Mhz
- Memory interface: 512-Bit
- Memory capacity: 8192MB GDDR5
- PCI-Express X16 lane required
- 600W or greater PSU required
- Power Connectors: 2x 8-pin required
- Display Outputs: 2x Dual Link DVI, 1x HDMI, 1x DisplayPort
- Warranty: 2yr
I’ll always be an Nvidia fan at heart, but goddamn, this is a nice card. Good clocks, Decently low heat, and that memory makes it a top contender for 4k. Definitely impressed with how far they’ve pushed a nearly 2 year old design.
hey.. it’s there a GTX780 on top of GTX970??….
hahahhaha 8GB lost to 3.5 GB.
No Eyefinity/Surround benchmark? Shame on you kitguru. Its one of the main purposes of such a card, and you are completely missing that point. I expected much better from a site like this.
Shame on you!
The low overclocked last gen R9 290X destroyed the extremely overclocked next gen GTX 970.
Definitely pointed towards refunds from GTX 970 disgruntled users. Its obvious the 970 is lacking in 4K and what is not visible in this benchmark is the stuttering after the 3.5gb vram threshold is exceeded.
For people building 4K gaming rigs for Star Citizen and other demanding games its quite an excellent choice if purchased in pairs. Until the R9 380X release of course.
Hahahaha nvidia could only be compared to a gen from 2 years ago.
Also this card does its job by far better than the 970. Try a 4k setup and you will notice the difference with demanding games.
Hmmm, no backplate? Got one with my 270X Trix. Seems like a pretty bad party foul.
do you have a 4K setup?
yup, you?
edit:
tested both cards with same games aswell (borrowed the 970 from a friend, can’t afford both of them :P)
I tested GTX 780, GTX 970, R9 290X crossfire, GTX 770, R9 280X Crossfire. Upto 1440p damn good Nvidia beating AMD smoothly above that on 4k little struggle with GTX 970 but 780ti and 980 are faster still on 4k. Still no single GPU is able to play games with max settings on 4K above 40 fps fluently.
Bought this card before Christmas.. Biggest waste of money…
The driver software is the biggest let down with this card.. Catalyst crashes the computer and the Tri-X software is faulty. Always kept rebooting the computer.
At first I thought it was my PSU but I bought a corsair 750 and it still kept happening. Changed to the Nvidia GTX 970. installed the hardware and drivers not one single problem. I was really disappointed as I have used AMD quite a bit in the past.
Catalyst omega fixed that problem in december. IF there is problem with omega installed then you have faulty HW. 970 has issues with memory that cause stuttering in certain games and will be problem for more future games and it is not fixable by driver update as reboot problem was!