Sapphire Radeon R9 290 Review
Published by Hiwa Pouri on 20.08.14Page:
Conclusion
| General | + | - | |
| Since the Sapphire Radeon R9 290 is based on AMDs reference design, there is not too much to praise on this card. Apparently Sapphire is more then just capable of building reference cards appropriately, which is what's been done in this case. What you get here is a well manufactured reference Radeon R9 290. What's really something AMD has to improve on with the next generation of reference cards is the cooler. The model on this R9 290 is simply way to noisy. When it comes to raw performance the R9 290 is a very capable card that also features a sweet price. | - Performance | - Bundle - Noise levels | |
| Cooling / Noise Level | + | - | |
| Having a closer look at noise levels we see that, no matter which preset we were using the card is either noisy or even loud, while gaming. In idle we noticed 33.6 dBA, which is definitely silent, but not inaudible. Under load and the fan set to auto we measured 49.1 dBA, which is subjectively speaking loud. At 50 percent fan speed the card produces 48.7 dBA, at 70 percent it was 58.2 dBA and at 100 percent and 5'275 rpm we measured 64.9 dBA. This reference design is simply: loud. Check temperatures we see the card hitting 94°C which is an inch from throttling. | - Cooling performance
- Noise levels |
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| Performance | + | - | |
| The Radeon R9 290 is actually a quick card and
therefore performance is definitely good. If we start looking for the
direct competitor from NVIDIA we find the GeForce GTX 780, which is a
little bit quicker overall but quite a bit more expensive. At this point we also had a closer look at power consumption and we see what's actually usual with AMD R9 290/290X cards. In idle as well as under load power consumption is quite high. |
- Performance | - Power consumption | |
| Recommendation / Price | + | - | |
| The reference R9 290 offers good performance but unfortunately it comes bundled with a noisy cooler. These days the card sells for 349 Euro, which is a good price compared to the similarly performing GeForce GTX 780. | - Gaming | - Silent System | |
| We give the Sapphire Radeon R9 290 3.5 out of 5 stars. | |||
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