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Which R290 should I buy?

GrumpyRob

GrumpyRob

GrumpyRob

Associate
Joined
20 Apr 2014
Posts
10
Location
Nr Heathrow
Hello,

After a few weeks of indecision I think I have decide to upgrade my 7870 XT to a R290.

Before I place my order I have a few questions that hopefully you good people can help me with.

1. My budget is max of £350, which would be the best one to get with decent cooling (have read temps can be an issue)
2. Will a Corsair TX650 have enough grunt to power a R290 (again read conflicting info on this).
3. Will a single R290 be OK for gaming at 1440p

Thanks in advance
 
Last edited:
1. Sapphire Tri-x seems to be the favoured one here.
2. I run a 290x off a 760W, I think you would be fine but of course it depends on what power other components draw.
33. Yes, but for £350 you might be able to pick up a deal on a 290X and then it's a certainty.
 
I wouldn't have thought so, the Tri-X is considered the better cooler and you can always overclock it yourself to the same as the Gigabyte one, I don't think that would be any problem. Dragging a slider in Afterburner or your choice of software is cheaper than £30 :P
 
I have a 290 and just bought a 1440p monitor. I can tell you that so far I have had to drop Crysis 3 and Metro First Light from max settings to the one below and I can't really see a difference. Other games so far, inc GW2, Wildstar beta, Bioshock Infinite and others have all stayed at max settings.

Saying that I have never run AA higher than 4 and we all know that can be a GPU sluggerfier at higher settings.
 
I run the rig in my sig on a tx650, had the CPU clocked at 5ghz and gfx card at 1225/1500 for some benching too and it handled it fine. I have 1 pump, 6 fans, 2 ssd, 1 hdd and an optical drive too.
 
If you can push for a little extra I would definitely recommend you to go for the Sapphire R290 Vapor-X OC.

I've had the Gigabyte Windforce OC and the Powercolor PCS+ before and believe me this is by far the best custom R290 you can get, from a noise, cooling and OC perspective ;-)
 
Chewie said:
If you can push for a little extra I would definitely recommend you to go for the Sapphire R290 Vapor-X OC.

I've had the Gigabyte Windforce OC and the Powercolor PCS+ before and believe me this is by far the best custom R290 you can get, from a noise, cooling and OC perspective ;-)
Click to expand...

I'd agree with this. The Vapor-X looks awesome, and the feature where it only spins one fan in 2D mode is genius. It's what I would buy if I was looking for a 290 card today.
 
Msi R9 290 Gaming, I would recommend it but would appear there are none in stock at Ocuk. Anyway, great looking card (nice backplate), great cooling and quiet, been rock solid. Also bear in mind the 3yrs warranty and that Sapphire cards only have 2yrs warranty. That alone swung me to the Msi. :)
 
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