Sapphire trixx r9 290 oc series#

As a result itвЂ™s able to maintain higher clockspeeds and hence higher power consumption levels than the reference 290.

Meanwhile for FurMark, the reference 290 would throttle here based on both thermal and power limitations, whereas the Sapphire 290 is only limited by power. What this means is that custom coolers will not be able to do anything about the 290вЂ™s lesser weakness, which is its power consumption relative to the GTX 780. This being despite the lower temperatures of the GPU, which would normally offer at least some savings due to reduced leakage. Under our gaming workload the reference 290 was already able to hit its maximum boost clock, so with the 290 Tri-X OC operating at a similar voltage and only a slightly higher clockspeed, weвЂ™re not seeing a meaningful increase in power consumption. There is a difference in fans due to the different coolers, but based on what weвЂ™ve seen in the past we donвЂ™t believe the fans are responsible for this.ДЄs for load power consumption, we have two different scenarios going on. This isnвЂ™t a fluke in our results and we donвЂ™t have a solid explanation for this at this time, but for some reason weвЂ™re able to idle at a lower degree of power consumption with SapphireвЂ™s card than we are our reference card. Since most of our reference cards are blowers this will give us a better baseline for open air coolers, especially since some of these open air cooled Tahiti cards have proven to be rather impressive.Д¬uriously, the power consumption of the 290 Tri-X OC is notably lower than the reference 290. Company of Heroes 2 is of course the sole outlier here for the reference 290, but the 290 Tri-X OC had no problem sustaining 1GHz even though itвЂ™s based on an AMD reference board.ДЇinally, for our power/temperature/noise testing, along with our standard data weвЂ™re also going to throw in our results from the various open air cooled Tahiti cards weвЂ™ve tested in the past two months.

Sapphire trixx r9 290 oc series#

The 290 series is not seriously power limited except in the case of FurMark, so being able to sustain the GPUвЂ™s maximum boost clocks is solely a function of cooling, an easy task for the Tri-X cooler to accomplish. Moving on to average clockspeeds, to no great surprise the 290 Tri-X OC has absolutely no problem hitting and sustaining 1GHz across all of our games. Sapphire is doing some degree of binning here to identify boards capable of hitting their higher factory overclocks, but it doesnвЂ™t look like theyвЂ™re picking chips for low power usage, or alternatively making any voltage adjustments to help hit those clockspeeds. Looking briefly at voltages, our 290 Tri-X OC is indistinguishable from our reference 290. Radeon R9 290 Series Voltages (VDDC/GPU-Z)

Simply put, if Sapphire can match the 280X ToxicвЂ™s cooling performance on the 290 Tri-X OC, then they will have solved the reference 290вЂ™s biggest drawback. In the case of Sapphire and their Tri-X cooler, weвЂ™ve already seen that it has proven to be a very capable cooling solution for the heavily overclocked 280X Toxic, so this bodes well for Hawaii based cards. With the reference 290 the high performance of the card came at the cost of significant noise, so the arrival of customized cards presents board partners with a chance to offer better, quieter cooling solutions than what the reference 290 was capable of. As always, last but not least is our look at power, temperature, and noise.