Sapphire R9 290 Tri-X 4GB Graphics Card Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

In the UK the Sapphire R9 290 Tri-X is currently retailing for £379.99 with a copy of Battlefield 4. Considering reference pricing is from about £324.99 we can see the best part of a 10% premium for the card over reference models and then extra on top to account for the copy of Battlefield 4. Non-Battlefield 4 variants will probably go for about £364.99 or less when the mining craze subsides and stock is replenished. U.S pricing for the Sapphire R9 290 Tri-X is $40-50 above reference, which is $440 at Amazon. All in all the pricing is competitive for what you get, but as always we stress the importance of making sure you shop around and buy at actual retail prices, there are a lot of retailers out there who are currently marking up AMD graphics card prices to try and cash-in on the crypto-currency mining extravaganza so please don’t fall victim to any of those.

Overview 

I think when I first tested the R9 290 graphics cards there was always a recognition that it ran significantly less hot than the R9 290X. This is due to the GPU die being slightly cut down and less dense than its bigger brother the R9 290X. Of course this means that the R9 290 is better for a number of reasons, mainly price, but also lower GPU core temperatures which allowed for higher overall clock speeds – this minimised the impact of the decline in GPU shaders versus the R9 290X. However, that’s not to take away from the magnificent job that Sapphire have done here. They’ve essentially taken a graphics card that normally runs at 95 degrees celsius, makes a tonne of noise and often throttles and turned it into a lean gaming machine. It typically hovers around 70 degrees under gaming load and under Furmark load never managed to break into the 80s. Add to that the fact that this card is super quiet and Sapphire really are onto a winner with probably the best AMD graphics card you can currently buy. What the brilliant cooling means is the card never throttles and is always running at 1000MHz boost clock speeds, if those clock speeds do drop it will be PowerTune acting to keep it within a power consumption limit which you can easily avert by increasing the power target in the Catalyst Control Panel. It’s also worth noting these excellent temperatures and acoustics are matched with a decent 53MHz core overclock and a 200MHz effective memory overclock. The result is that the overclock feels more than it is because the overclock is realised in the real world thanks to the Tri-X cooling solution whereas the reference design might be clocked similarly but the actual clock is often in the 850-900MHz region because of thermal throttling. The end result is a performance gain that reflects a 100-150MHz core clock boost.

The Sapphire R9 290 Tri-X really is a very special graphics card. It’s got the performance, it’s super quiet, it runs surprisingly cool for an AMD R9 290, it looks fantastic and it comes with a factory overclock. That said there are a few downsides to consider. Firstly, the overclocking (at least on our sample) was mediocre. Our reference board from AMD clocked much higher on the core and the memory. Yet as we mentioned thanks to the cooling solution the Sapphire Tri-X R9 290 performed better with lower clocks because it experienced no throttling. Another concern is the stingy 2 year warranty. For a high end graphics product like this I would have liked to see a 3 year warranty as a minimum. I also think for the price the inclusion of a backplate would have been a nice addition, though that may end up being reserved for a Toxic Edition Sapphire R9 290 should they decided to make one.

Pros

• Whisper quiet
• Runs surprisingly cool for an R9 290
• Never throttles
• Factory overclock
• Looks epic

Cons

• Mediocre overclocking on our sample
• Only a 2 year warranty
• No backplate

“Custom R9 290 graphics cards have taken their time in arriving but now they are here and Sapphire’s Tri-X edition proves it has been well worth the wait. Sapphire have done what seemed impossible only a few months ago in taming the obscenely hot and noisy R9 290 into a silent and cool running package while still offering a factory overclock and competitive pricing. If you’ve been hanging around for custom R9 290s then wait no longer. Sapphire’s R9 290 Tri-X really is the ultimate package and I cannot recommend it highly enough.“

Thank you to Sapphire for providing this review sample.