ASUS R9 290X DirectCU II OC 4 GB Review

Name: ASUS R9 290X DirectCU II OC 4 GB
Brand: ASUS

W1zzard

on Jan 21st, 2014,

in Graphics Cards.

Manufacturer: ASUS

(67 Comments) »

Introduction

AMD's Radeon R9 290X is built on the company's new Hawaii GPU, the first truly new high-end graphics chip from the company in a very long time (21 months). Using 6.8 billion transistors, the GPU is built on a 28 nanometer process at TSMC, Taiwan. It features 2816 shaders and 64 ROPs, connected to 4 GB of memory using a 512-bit wide memory bus.

We are reviewing the ASUS R9 290X Direct CU II OC today. It comes with an overclock of 50 MHz on its GPU and 100 MHz on the memory and features ASUS's latest DCII heatsink, which promises to greatly improve noise and thermal performance over the reference design R9 290X.

ASUS quotes the price of their card at $599, which is just $20 higher than AMD's stock board.

Radeon R9 290X Market Segment Analysis
	HD 7970 GHz Ed.	GeForce GTX 680	GeForce GTX 780	Radeon R9 290	Radeon R9 290X	ASUS R9 290X DC II OC	Radeon HD 7990	GeForce GTX Titan	GeForce GTX 780 Ti	GeForce GTX 690
Shader Units	2048	1536	2304	2560	2816	2816	2x 2048	2688	2880	2x 1536
ROPs	32	32	48	64	64	64	2x 32	48	48	2x 32
Graphics Processor	Tahiti	GK104	GK110	Hawaii	Hawaii	Hawaii	2x Tahiti	GK110	GK110	2x GK104
Transistors	4310M	3500M	7100M	6200M	6200M	6200M	2x 4310M	7100M	7100M	2x 3500M
Memory Size	3072 MB	2048 MB	3072 MB	4096 MB	4096 MB	4096 MB	2x 3072 MB	6144 MB	3072 MB	2x 2048 MB
Memory Bus Width	384 bit	256 bit	384 bit	512 bit	512 bit	512 bit	2x 384 bit	384 bit	384 bit	2x 256 bit
Core Clock	1050 MHz	1006 MHz+	863 MHz+	947 MHz	1000 MHz	1050 MHz	1000 MHz	837 MHz+	876 MHz+	915 MHz+
Memory Clock	1500 MHz	1502 MHz	1502 MHz	1250 MHz	1250 MHz	1350 MHz	1500 MHz	1502 MHz	1750 MHz	1502 MHz
Price	$470	$400	$480	$500	$580	$599	$900	$1000	$680	$1000

Packaging

You will receive:

Graphics card
Driver CD + documentation
2x ASUS ROG color theme stickers
PCI-Express power cable

The Card

The ASUS R9 290X DC II OC comes in a singular color, black, but you can customize its look by using either the red or golden stickers included in the box. I personally like its clean black cooler, but the stickers basically give you three different color choices. Dimensions of the card are 29 x 15 cm.

Installation requires two slots in your system.

Display connectivity options include two DVI ports, one DisplayPort, and one HDMI port. You may use all outputs at the same time, so triple-monitor surround gaming is possible with one card.

The GPU also includes an HDMI sound device. It is HDMI 1.4a compatible, which includes HD audio and Blu-ray 3D movies support.

There are no visible CrossFire connectors on the card. With their R9 290 Series, AMD started transferring CrossFire data via the PCI-Express slot interface of the card. You may pair this card with any R9 290 and R9 290X.