A Closer Look

AMD's cooler uses a large Vapo-Chamber baseplate to soak up heat generated by the GPU core. The cooler also cools memory chips and voltage regulation circuitry. Hot air is blown out of the case.


The card requires a 6-pin and 8-pin PCI-Express power connector. This configuration is good for up to 300 W of power draw.


AMD is using their dual-BIOS feature to provide two different BIOSes for the R9 290X. Putting the switch into its left position will activate the "Quiet" BIOS that runs the same clocks, but limits maximum fan speed to 2000 RPM. Setting the switch to the right activates the "Uber" BIOS running the same clocks without RPM limitations, which typically result in about 3000 RPM.


This is the first time I see the International Rectifier IR 3567B controller on a graphics card. It is functionally very similar to the CHiL controllers we've seen on previous generation cards and provides software voltage control and extensive monitoring via I2C. Being a new device, though, it might take a bit of time until it is fully supported in overclocking software.


The GDDR5 memory chips are made by SK Hynix and carry the model number H5GQ2H24AFR-R0C. They are specified to run at 1500 MHz (6000 MHz GDDR5 effective).


AMD's Hawaii graphics processor uses the GCN shader architecture. It is produced on a 28 nm process at TSMC Taiwan, with 4.31 billion transistors on a 438 mm² die.