Sapphire Radeon R9 290X Tri-X OC Review

Performance Analysis

Compared to the stock R9 290X, the Sapphire card is 1 or 2fps faster at every resolution in Battlefield 4 – precisely what you'd expect with the 4 percent overclock. It doesn't overtake any cards that the R9 290X isn't already ahead of, but in this game it is strong against the GTX 780 Ti and GTX Titan Black, which are barely ahead at the lower resolutions and actually fall behind at 4K.

In BioShock Infinite we again see a 1 or 2fps over the R9 290X, but in this game Nvidia is stronger, as Sapphire's card is only on par with the GTX 780, which is £70 less. It does manage to overtake this card at 4K, but equally it loses out to it when the game is played across three screens.


Of each of the games, Crysis 3 is the most sensitive to clock speed increases and we thus see slightly larger gains than elsewhere for Sapphire's overclocked card when comparing it to a stock speed R9 290X, although still nothing too exciting. Nevertheless, Sapphire's card quickly closes the gap on the GTX 780 Ti, and then overtakes it to become top of the league at the two highest resolutions, surpassing even the GTX Titan Black, albeit only slightly.

In our final game, Skyrim, the card averages over 60fps in Eyefinity mode and at 4K with maximum detail, and only loses to Nvidia's most expensive cards.

In Unigine Valley, the card jumps up by 139 points over the R9 290X, which is 6 percent. This isn't huge, but it's decent considering it's only 4 percent quicker on both the memory and the core, which tells us that it's reaching its maximum clock speeds more often than the reference sample does. With its score of 2,517 here, it has a very slight margin on the GTX 780, but the GTX 780 Ti is 17 percent faster.


Power consumption is as expected. The R9 290-series cards are the only ones to raise our system power consumption above 400W, and Sapphire's card peaks at 403W. Thermal performance is excellent, however, as the card runs 20°C cooler than the stock model, which is on par with the DirectCU II cooler we saw from Asus on the R9 290. The cooler may be big, but it's undeniably effective, and at stock speeds we could barely hear it as the fans peaked at just 42 percent in our stress test, where the clock speed was a constant 1,040MHz.

We see solid improvements all round when overclocking. In Battlefield 4 and Crysis 3, it improves by 10 and 13 percent respectively, surpassing GTX Titan Black in both cases. The 13 percent increase in Unigine Valley still isn't enough to overtake the GTX 780 Ti, but Nvidia typically has an advantage in this benchmark. The cooler was able to keep the overclocked GPU steady at 1,180MHz and the temperature only increased by 5°C. That said, the fans did have to work quite a bit harder, as speeds increased to 53 percent, where they were definitely more audible, though still not loud. Power consumption increases dramatically too – by almost 100W, in fact – proving again that Hawaii is not a very efficient overclocker.

Conclusion

On the positive side, this is an excellent card compared to the stock model. The £30 premium is well worth it for the reduced temperatures and noise, and the card proved to be a potent overclocker as well, though variance here is to be expected.


However, it's not as easy to recommend as custom cooled R9 290 cards, as it's not as effective when it comes to the all important price-performance ratio. The GTX 780, which is £70 cheaper in some places, gives this card a run for its money in a number of benchmarks, and is itself a great overclocker that comes with an effective cooler by default. It's also irritating how large Sapphire's card is – it's over 300mm long and exceeds two slots, so it may struggle to fit in a number of smaller form factor builds. Undeniably, the card is fast and equipped with excellent cooling hardware, so it would be a solid purchase if you're in the market for the R9 290X. However, there are better all rounders available when you factor in price and the wider graphics market.