A Closer Look
Sapphire’s R9 290 Tri-X measures in at a whopping 30 cm /11.8 inches long. About 3.5cm or 1.4 inches of that length are as a result of the extended cooler which overhangs the PCB. That Tri-X cooler uses three 80mm fans, three 8mm heat pipes and two 6mm heat pipes.
The PCB is black and does not have a backplate, Sapphire are possibly saving this for a Toxic version of the R9 290.
The card sticks to a dual slot design, this is in part why the length is so substantial for a single GPU graphics card.
An 8 pin and a 6 pin provide power to this beast of a graphics card.
Like all R9 290 graphics cards there is a dual BIOS switch which switches between two identical BIOSes.
The bottom of the graphics card is an open design to allow for additional ventilation.
At the end of the graphics card we can see the three 8mm heat pipes protruding through the heatsink.
The display output configuration is pretty standard for an R9-2XX series graphics card with dual DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort. Using an MST Hub for the DisplayPort output you can support up to six displays or AMD Eyefinity 6.
would love to own 1 or 2 of these cards would up me to the next level of gaming……!!!! Happy New year all
2 Years ? i got on mine 290x 3 years o.O
With your Unigine Heaven tests, did you use any anti-aliasing or tesselation?
The cart looks rigged.
how can a AMD R9-290 OC beat a R9-290 Tri-x OC Sapphires cards a pretty well known for their overclocking value.
but i’ll see it for myself once i get mine in the mail, i’m pretty sure i can squeez it up to 1200mhz core clock without artificing. and depending on the memory chips perhaps i get lucky and get Hynix and not Elpida then i am convinced i can get even more juice out of it probably under 1.3 volts.
This card looks very beastly for its price 😀
Looks like their OC results were definitely a little under par. Hardware Canucks managed to get much more impressive results. “By using TRIXX we were able to get the Sapphire R9 290 Tri-X OC we were able to hit 1251MHz on the core and 5666MHz on the GDDR5 with .085V of extra voltage. This vastly outstrips the levels attained by our reference samples and brings actual performance to some incredible levels.” http://www.neoseeker.com/resourcelink.html?rid=487511
Not rigged at all. Our R9 290 reference card reached a higher clock of 1100MHz i think. You’ll notice that the AMD R9 290 stock card only beats the Sapphire card with a fixed high fan speed to prevent thermal throttling. At default fan profiles it loses because of thermal throttling despite having a higher frequency. Overclocking on our sample was particularly poor, not rigged in any way just luck of the silicon lottery. Why would we “rig” it anyway? What do we have to gain by making a card look bad…
The Tri-X is not so stable when it comes to benchmarks. Here it scores around 70FPS on COD Ghosts.
http://youtu.be/Xy2NqJ3MeGY
You may not remember but please answer if you can / remember. You said the GPU measures 30 cm / 11.8 inches long but in many other reviews they say that the length is 305mm / 12″.
The thing is that my GPU gap is 303mm and if it measures what you say it’ll fit but if it doesn’t it wont.
If you don’t remember, when you review a graphic card do you usually measure it by yourself or do you say the manufacturer measures. I wish you can help me.
Merry Xmas and Happy New Year,
Pablo
305mm is the specified length by Sapphire’s specifications, just under 300mm is what I measured. The manufacturer spec includes the ‘lip’ of the PCI bracket which I don’t count because it’s irrelevant. By lip I mean the bit you screw into the PCI bracket cover.
I contacted Sapphire and they told me that the card itself is arround 11.5 inches in length from the beginig of the PCB to the end of the card, without the piece of metal, same as you have just told me.
Great review and awesome card btw.