ASUS has now officially announced its new Radeon R9 290X DirectCU II series graphics cards which will feature two models, one with reference AMD clocks and one that will feature factory-overclocked settings. Based on ASUS' own custom design with 10-phase VRM, Samsung memory chips and custom DirectCU II cooler, the ASUS Radeon R9 290X DirectCU II is definitely an example of what a non-reference graphics card has to be.

As noted, ASUS will have two models in the R9 290X DirectCU II series, one that sticks to AMD reference clocks of up to 1000MHz GPU core and 5.0GHz memory as well as the factory-overclocked ASUS R9 290X DirectCU II OC model which works at up to 1050MHz for the GPU and 5.4GHz for memory.

Both graphics cards in the new R9 290X DirectCU II series will be based on a completely custom design with 10-phase VRM powered by 6+8-pin PCI-Express power connectors, 4GB of Samsung's GDDR5 memory chips paired up with a 512-bit memory interface as well as the well known DirectCU II cooler. The new ASUS DirectCU II cooler is pretty much the same one we saw on ASUS' GTX 780 Ti DirectCU II graphics card and features a large heatsink connected to the base via 8mm nickel-plated copper heatpipes. It also comes with two 92mm fans, one based on CoolTech technology with lateral/axial hybrid fan.

ASUS also decided to pair this one with a backplate and all black cooler shroud since the card will be bundled with red and gold stickers in order for it to match any ASUS motherboard on the market.

The expected price tag should start at around €499 but we are sure that there will be a slight premium for the R9 290X DirectCU II OC model.



Source: via Techpowerup.com.