Showing that both custom R9 290X and R9 290 graphics cards are just around the corner, Sapphire has announced its new Radeon R9 290X/290 Tri-X graphics card series which will feature Sapphire's new Tri-X triple fan cooler, factory overclock as well as dual BIOS option.

The new Sapphire R9 290X still packs 2816 stream processors but pushes the GPU clock at up to 1040MHz. It still packs 4GB of GDDR5 memory paired up with a 512-bit interface and working at 5.2GHz. The Sapphire R9 290 Tri-X on the other hand has 2560 stream processors and ends up with a GPU clock of up to 1000MHz and comes with the same amount of memory working at same 5.2GHz.

According to Sapphire, both new Tri-X series graphics cards are still based on AMD's reference design PCB, which is not necessarily a bad thing since these will most likely have a lower price compared to the rest of the custom R9 290X/290 graphics cards on the market. In order to cope with the factory-overclock as reference cooler did not do well, Sapphire has paired up the new R9 290X/290 Tri-X series with its own Sapphire Tri-X cooler, first saw on the R9 280X Toxic graphics cards. It features three fans with dust repelling bearings and aerofoil section blades to deliver highly efficient airflow at low noise levels and since there has been certain performance issues with R9 290 series and high temperatures, this one will surely do much better job.

The rest of the features are pretty much the same and Sapphire also decided implemented DUAL BIOS option on the Tri-X models in order to ensure that both of them deliver maximum performance in both UEFI and legacy BIOS modes.

According to Sapphire, both are in production now and should be available pretty soon. Retail products, according to Sapphire, will also include specially packaged models with a promotion for a free copy of the highly successful game, Battlefield 4.





Source: Sapphiretech.com.