Overclocking
Overclocking Sapphire’s R9 290 Tri-X graphics card was disappointing to say the least. Our reference design card managed 1110MHz on the core and 1550MHz on the memory but Sapphire’s variant managed a modest 1060MHz on the core (that’s 50MHz less) and a puny 1360MHz on the memory (190MHz less). However, performance was still better than the reference design at higher clocks because the Sapphire card is able to make it through the whole benchmark suite without ever throttling. The final overclock we achieved is 12% higher than the R9 290 reference stock clocks for the core and 9% higher for the memory (stock clocks are 947MHz core and 1250MHz memory). Sapphire’s overclocked R9 290 Tri-X proves a worthy rival for Nvidia’s more expensive GTX 780 offerings.
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.