Hi there
First of all to celebrate simply how good this card is, we are doing a special *ONE DAY ONLY* launch price. We have allocated 250pc to this special price of £319.99 Inc. VAT, once these 250 have sold the price the price will increase to £329.99 Inc. VAT or tomorrow at 9am, whichever comes sooner:-
Sapphire R9 290 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card @ £319.99 inc VAT
AMD Radeon R9 290 is a new graphics card powered by the latest AMD Radeon™ R9 290 graphics-processing unit (GPU). 4GB of super-fast GDDR5 memory for the best gaming experience at the highest resolutions including 4k and incorporates AMD Eyefinity and TrueAudio technologies to enable expansive multi-display setups and more accurate environmental sounds. R9 290 also includes support for both DirectX® 11.2 and AMD's new Mantle application programming interface (API) for great handling of even the most-demanding PC games.
Features:-
- DirectX 11.2 Support
- Open GL 4.2 Support
- Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio support
- Crossfire Support upto 4-way: Native software crossfire (No bridge required)
- Gaming @ 4k Resolutions (UltraHD)
- Synergy with next-gen game consoles (Mantle)
- Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture - optimized from previous generation products
Specification:-
- GPU: Hawaii Pro
- Stream Processors: 2560
- Core Speed: 947MHz
- Memory Speed: 5000Mhz
- Memory interface: 512-Bit
- Memory capacity: 4096MB GDDR5
- Cooling: 2-Slot Blower Fan
- PCI-Express X16 lane required
- 750W or greater PSU required
- Power Connectors: 8-pin + 6-pin required
- Display Outputs: 2x Dual Link DVI, 1x HDMI, 1x DisplayPort
- Warranty: 2yr
Was [£329.99] Inc. VAT
Only £319.99 inc VAT with FREE GAMES - 1000+ IN STOCK!!
ORDER NOW
My Review & Benchmarks - MAKE SURE YOU READ THIS!!
This review was conducted using AMD's latest 13.11 Beta 8 driver which offers some additional performance. The rig used was also a Haswell clocked at 5000MHz, compared to the previous rig which was 4800MHz. I also managed to clock the card further by flashing the Sapphire card with an Asus BIOS for voltage control, this allowed me upto 1185/6600 on the stock cooler. Changing to the MK26 cooler allowed me to increase core speed upto 1220Mhz, but unfortunately the memory overclocked decreased to 6400MHz, due to the MK26 not cooling the VRM's and memory as well as the stock cooling solution.
Water-cooling will be the solution to cool these bad boys if you intend on doing extreme overclocking, as a water-blocked card will see upto 1300MHz core and 6600-6800MHz on the memory, plus be about 30-40c cooler and silent.
This review is to merely show you what an R290 Pro can achieve in the right environment when properly cooled with the Asus BIOS to extra voltage.
To make it clear R290 Pro is not faster than R290X, it is only beating R290X due to the newer drivers and faster core clock along with slightly faster processor speed, when re-testing R290X we also found its performance improved in-line, making it still 6-10% faster than R290 Pro.
Download the Asus BIOS - HERE!
CHARTS - UNFAIR COMPARISON DUE TO DRIVER / RIG CHANGE
This is an unfair comparison against the R290X as the R290X results are two weeks old, using the launch drivers supplied on the CD out the box with cards and in a slightly slower clocked PC, Haswell at 4800MHz VS 5000Mhz, as we did not have the same PC available for testing. What these results show you is what R290 Pro is truly capable of and how it fairs against NVIDIA on their latest drivers, albeit again the R290 Pro has a slight advantage due to being in a faster machine. So please take notice of this!
Conclusion
In short for a little over £300, these things are an absolute steal. The card is identical to its bigger brother the R290X, the only differences being 2560 VS 2816 stream processors and the core speed downclocked to 947MHz from 1000Mhz. So about 6%-10% slower out the box but you save £100 / 30%
Please note an R290 Pro is not faster than an R290X, we did a quick re-test on R290X with the new drivers also at 1220/6600 and in Firestrike it scored over 6000 points in the Extreme preset, making it about 8% faster.
In short R290X is 6-10% faster than R290 Pro depending on the game / benchmark, but it is 30% more expensive, making the R290 Pro a bargain, especially when you consider the R290 Pro is beating overclocked GTX 780's and Titan by some margin.
Like R290X it still runs hot and can get loud, though it does run marginally cooler and marginally quiet, but not by much. An MK26 is ideal for anyone want to have a small/mild overclock on their card and enjoy silent running, but for maximum overclock attempts we recommend the stock cooler at 100% fan speed or water-cooling.
IN SHORT R290 PRO IS THE BEST VALUE FOR MONEY HIGH-END GAMING CARD ON THE MARKET!
First of all to celebrate simply how good this card is, we are doing a special *ONE DAY ONLY* launch price. We have allocated 250pc to this special price of £319.99 Inc. VAT, once these 250 have sold the price the price will increase to £329.99 Inc. VAT or tomorrow at 9am, whichever comes sooner:-
Sapphire R9 290 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card @ £319.99 inc VAT
AMD Radeon R9 290 is a new graphics card powered by the latest AMD Radeon™ R9 290 graphics-processing unit (GPU). 4GB of super-fast GDDR5 memory for the best gaming experience at the highest resolutions including 4k and incorporates AMD Eyefinity and TrueAudio technologies to enable expansive multi-display setups and more accurate environmental sounds. R9 290 also includes support for both DirectX® 11.2 and AMD's new Mantle application programming interface (API) for great handling of even the most-demanding PC games.
Features:-
- DirectX 11.2 Support
- Open GL 4.2 Support
- Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio support
- Crossfire Support upto 4-way: Native software crossfire (No bridge required)
- Gaming @ 4k Resolutions (UltraHD)
- Synergy with next-gen game consoles (Mantle)
- Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture - optimized from previous generation products
Specification:-
- GPU: Hawaii Pro
- Stream Processors: 2560
- Core Speed: 947MHz
- Memory Speed: 5000Mhz
- Memory interface: 512-Bit
- Memory capacity: 4096MB GDDR5
- Cooling: 2-Slot Blower Fan
- PCI-Express X16 lane required
- 750W or greater PSU required
- Power Connectors: 8-pin + 6-pin required
- Display Outputs: 2x Dual Link DVI, 1x HDMI, 1x DisplayPort
- Warranty: 2yr
Was [£329.99] Inc. VAT
Only £319.99 inc VAT with FREE GAMES - 1000+ IN STOCK!!
ORDER NOW
My Review & Benchmarks - MAKE SURE YOU READ THIS!!
This review was conducted using AMD's latest 13.11 Beta 8 driver which offers some additional performance. The rig used was also a Haswell clocked at 5000MHz, compared to the previous rig which was 4800MHz. I also managed to clock the card further by flashing the Sapphire card with an Asus BIOS for voltage control, this allowed me upto 1185/6600 on the stock cooler. Changing to the MK26 cooler allowed me to increase core speed upto 1220Mhz, but unfortunately the memory overclocked decreased to 6400MHz, due to the MK26 not cooling the VRM's and memory as well as the stock cooling solution.
Water-cooling will be the solution to cool these bad boys if you intend on doing extreme overclocking, as a water-blocked card will see upto 1300MHz core and 6600-6800MHz on the memory, plus be about 30-40c cooler and silent.
This review is to merely show you what an R290 Pro can achieve in the right environment when properly cooled with the Asus BIOS to extra voltage.
To make it clear R290 Pro is not faster than R290X, it is only beating R290X due to the newer drivers and faster core clock along with slightly faster processor speed, when re-testing R290X we also found its performance improved in-line, making it still 6-10% faster than R290 Pro.
Download the Asus BIOS - HERE!
CHARTS - UNFAIR COMPARISON DUE TO DRIVER / RIG CHANGE
This is an unfair comparison against the R290X as the R290X results are two weeks old, using the launch drivers supplied on the CD out the box with cards and in a slightly slower clocked PC, Haswell at 4800MHz VS 5000Mhz, as we did not have the same PC available for testing. What these results show you is what R290 Pro is truly capable of and how it fairs against NVIDIA on their latest drivers, albeit again the R290 Pro has a slight advantage due to being in a faster machine. So please take notice of this!
Conclusion
In short for a little over £300, these things are an absolute steal. The card is identical to its bigger brother the R290X, the only differences being 2560 VS 2816 stream processors and the core speed downclocked to 947MHz from 1000Mhz. So about 6%-10% slower out the box but you save £100 / 30%
Please note an R290 Pro is not faster than an R290X, we did a quick re-test on R290X with the new drivers also at 1220/6600 and in Firestrike it scored over 6000 points in the Extreme preset, making it about 8% faster.
In short R290X is 6-10% faster than R290 Pro depending on the game / benchmark, but it is 30% more expensive, making the R290 Pro a bargain, especially when you consider the R290 Pro is beating overclocked GTX 780's and Titan by some margin.
Like R290X it still runs hot and can get loud, though it does run marginally cooler and marginally quiet, but not by much. An MK26 is ideal for anyone want to have a small/mild overclock on their card and enjoy silent running, but for maximum overclock attempts we recommend the stock cooler at 100% fan speed or water-cooling.
IN SHORT R290 PRO IS THE BEST VALUE FOR MONEY HIGH-END GAMING CARD ON THE MARKET!
