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With the price of Ultra HD 4K screens dropping this year there has never been a better time to upgrade your system. Today we look at the latest high end graphics card from Club3D – the R9 290X RoyalAce. This card ships with a custom cooler design and a healthy out of the box overclock. Today we will find out just how well it performs.
The ‘matt' finish of the cooler is very eye catching – we will look at the card in more detail on the next page.
The Hawaii GPU is built on the 28nm process. The core clock speed on the CLUB3D R9 290X RoyalAce is enhanced to 1,050mhz, the 4GB of GDDR5 memory is clocked at 1,350mhz (5.4Gbps effective) and is connected via a 512 bit memory interface. The R9 290X has 64 ROPs, 176 texture units and 2,816 unified shaders.
The CLUB3D R9 290X RoyalAce ships in a box based on a ‘playing card' theme (Club3D call it the ‘PokerSeries'). There is mention on the front of the box that the card is overclocked although specific details of clock speeds are not indicated.
Inside, the company include some literature on the product, a driver install disc and some stickers as well. We do recommend you ignore the drivers on the disc and get the latest direct from AMD's website.
The Club3D R9 290X RoyalAce card is undoubtedly attractive, featuring a matt black cooler which incorporates three fans along the full length of the PCB. The rear of the card features a backplate with the company branding clearly visible. We like how they have cut the ‘Club3D' card logo into the backplate. Four copper heatpipes are visible on one end of the cooling system.
The R9 290X RoyalAce is a long card, measuring 308mm. This will not fit into smaller chassis designs, so be sure to check available space before you part with the cash.
The card is Eyefinity capable, featuring two DVI connectors, alongside a full sized HDMI and DisplayPort connector.
The R9 290X RoyalAce takes power from an 8 pin and a 6 pin power connector, shown above.
The GDDR5 memory is directly cooled from the heatsink above. Club3D are using 4GB of SKHynix GDDR5 memory on this board
CLUB3D are using a heavy duty cooler, which is formed around two heatsinks. The copper base runs into six thick copper heatpipes, two of which are bent around into one of the heatsink areas. The other four heatpipes run into another rack of aluminum fins.On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the 24.5MP Nikon D3X camera and 24-70mm ED lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source. You can right click and ‘save as’ to your computer to view later.
Today we test with the latest Forceware 337.50 driver and Catalyst 14.4 driver.
We are using one of our brand new test rigs supplied by PCSPECIALIST and built to our specifications. If you want to read more about this, or are interested in buying the same Kitguru Test Rig, check out our article with links on this page.
We are featuring results today with an Apple 30 inch Cinema HD Display at 2560×1600 resolution and an Asus PQ321QE Ultra HD 4K screen running at 4K 3840 x 2160 resolution.
Room ambient was held at 23c throughout testing.
Comparison Graphics cards:
Palit GTX780 JetStream 6GB (902 mhz core / 1502mhz memory)
AMD R9 295X2 (1018mhz core / 1250mhz memory)
Nvidia GTX Titan Black x2 (890 mhz core / 1,750 mhz memory)
Gigabyte GTX780 Ti Windforce OC (1020mhz core / 1750 mhz memory)
Palit GTX 780 Ti Jetstream OC (980 mhz core / 1,750 mhz memory)
Sapphire R9 290X Tri-X (1010mhz core / 1250 mhz memory)
Sapphire R9 290 Vapor-X OC (1030mhz core / 1400 mhz memory)
Sapphire R9 280X Vapor-X OC (1100 mhz core / 1500 mhz memory)
Software:
Windows 7 Enterprise 64 bit
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
Unigine Valley Benchmark
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
3DMark
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark
Games:
Thief 2014
Total War: Rome 2
Tomb Raider
Metro: Last Light
GRID 2
Battlefield 4
All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform generally under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests games across five closely matched runs and then average out the results to get an accurate median figure. If we use scripted benchmarks, they are mentioned on the relevant page.
Some game descriptions edited with courtesy from Wikipedia.Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7. This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.
The Club3D R9 290X RoyalAce Superoverclock scores well in this older Direct X 10 benchmark, only around 1,200 points behind the Nvidia GTX Titan Black.
3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.
The Club3D R9 290X RoyalAce scores well, just behind the Palit GTX780 Ti Jetstream OC graphics card.
3DMark is an essential tool used by millions of gamers, hundreds of hardware review sites and many of the world’s leading manufacturers to measure PC gaming performance.
Futuremark say “Use it to test your PC’s limits and measure the impact of overclocking and tweaking your system. Search our massive results database and see how your PC compares or just admire the graphics and wonder why all PC games don’t look this good.
To get more out of your PC, put 3DMark in your PC.”
The overclocked Club3D R9 290X RoyalAce scores exceptionally well in the latest Direct X 11 benchmark from Futuremark, around 100 points ahead of the reference clocked GTX Titan Black.
Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset.
A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.
Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.
Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:
- Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
- Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
- Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
- Multicore CPU support
- Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
- Powerful C++ API
- Comprehensive performance profiling system
- Flexible XML-based data structures
We use the settings shown above at 1920×1080 and 2560×1600.
Nvidia cards score better in these tessellation heavy benchmarks, however the Club3D R9 290X RoyalAce puts in an admirable showing at both resolutions.
Valley Benchmark is a new GPU stress-testing tool from the developers of the very popular and highly acclaimed Heaven Benchmark. The forest-covered valley surrounded by vast mountains amazes with its scale from a bird’s-eye view and is extremely detailed down to every leaf and flower petal. This non-synthetic benchmark powered by the state-of-the art UNIGINE Engine showcases a comprehensive set of cutting-edge graphics technologies with a dynamic environment and fully interactive modes available to the end user.
We test with the settings above both at 1920×1080 and 2560×1600.
Nvidia hardware claims all of the top positions in this particular benchmark.
In Thief 2014 Players control Garrett, a master thief, as he intends to steal from the rich. Similar to previous games in the series, players must use stealth in order to overcome challenges, while violence is left as a minimally effective last resort.
We test at 1080p, both with Direct X rendering (Nvidia and AMD) and Mantle rendering (AMD only).
Mantle performance is slightly better in single card configurations and the R9 290/X hardware scores well in this benchmark.
In Thief 2014 Players control Garrett, a master thief, as he intends to steal from the rich. Similar to previous games in the series, players must use stealth in order to overcome challenges, while violence is left as a minimally effective last resort.
We test at 1600p, both with Direct X rendering (Nvidia and AMD) and Mantle rendering (AMD only).
Playable performance at 1600p, even with very high image quality settings.
In Thief 2014 Players control Garrett, a master thief, as he intends to steal from the rich. Similar to previous games in the series, players must use stealth in order to overcome challenges, while violence is left as a minimally effective last resort.
We test at Ultra HD 4k with the HIGH preset, both with Direct X rendering (Nvidia and AMD) and Mantle rendering (AMD only).
A very demanding game at Ultra HD 4K resolution. A dual card setup is really the best way to enjoy this game if you want to game at 3,840×2,160.
Tomb Raider received much acclaim from critics, who praised the graphics, the gameplay and Camilla Luddington’s performance as Lara with many critics agreeing that the game is a solid and much needed reboot of the franchise. Much criticism went to the addition of the multiplayer which many felt was unnecessary. Tomb Raider went on to sell one million copies in forty-eight hours of its release, and has sold 3.4 million copies worldwide so far.
We use the ULTIMATE profile, as shown above. We want the best image quality possible.
Super smooth frame rates at 1080p although as we have regularly said, you really don't need a 290X to game at this resolution.
Tomb Raider received much acclaim from critics, who praised the graphics, the gameplay and Camilla Luddington’s performance as Lara with many critics agreeing that the game is a solid and much needed reboot of the franchise. Much criticism went to the addition of the multiplayer which many felt was unnecessary. Tomb Raider went on to sell one million copies in forty-eight hours of its release, and has sold 3.4 million copies worldwide so far.
We use the ULTIMATE profile at 2560×1600, as shown above.
Frame rates take a big performance hit when increasing the resolution from 1080p to 1600p, although the R290X can still handle the engine at the maximum image quality settings while maintaining 40+ frame rates at all times.
Tomb Raider received much acclaim from critics, who praised the graphics, the gameplay and Camilla Luddington’s performance as Lara with many critics agreeing that the game is a solid and much needed reboot of the franchise. Much criticism went to the addition of the multiplayer which many felt was unnecessary. Tomb Raider went on to sell one million copies in forty-eight hours of its release, and has sold 3.4 million copies worldwide so far.
We switched over to the ASUS Ultra HD 4K monitor and set to the ULTIMATE profile for maximum image quality.
The Club3D R9 290X RoyalAce SOC manages to average 30 frames per second at these demanding settings, although the frame rate drops below the sweet spot of 25 once during our test environment.
Metro: Last Light takes place one year after the events of Metro 2033, proceeding from the ending where Artyom chose to call down the missile strike on the Dark Ones. The Rangers have since occupied the D6 military facility, with Artyom having become an official member of the group. Khan, the nomad mystic, arrives at D6 to inform Artyom and the Rangers that a single Dark One survived the missile strike. 4A Games’ proprietary 4A Engine is capable of rendering breathtaking vistas, such as those showing the ruined remnants of Moscow, as well as immersive indoor areas that play with light and shadow, creating hauntingly beautiful scenes akin to those from modern-day photos of Pripyat’s abandoned factories and schools.
We tested this particular game with the extremely demanding built in benchmark. Settings detailed above. Direct X 11 mode, Quality is set at Very High, 16 AF, normal Motion blur, Tessellation Normal, Advanced PhysX disabled and SSAA disabled.
The Club3D R9 290X RoyalAce scores well, averaging 80 frames per second.
Metro: Last Light takes place one year after the events of Metro 2033, proceeding from the ending where Artyom chose to call down the missile strike on the Dark Ones. The Rangers have since occupied the D6 military facility, with Artyom having become an official member of the group. Khan, the nomad mystic, arrives at D6 to inform Artyom and the Rangers that a single Dark One survived the missile strike. 4A Games’ proprietary 4A Engine is capable of rendering breathtaking vistas, such as those showing the ruined remnants of Moscow, as well as immersive indoor areas that play with light and shadow, creating hauntingly beautiful scenes akin to those from modern-day photos of Pripyat’s abandoned factories and schools.
We tested this particular game with the extremely demanding built in benchmark. Settings detailed above. Direct X 11 mode, Quality is set at Very High, 16 AF, normal Motion blur, Tessellation Normal, Advanced PhysX disabled and SSAA disabled.
Again, very good frame rates, averaging 50 frames per second across the test session.
Metro: Last Light takes place one year after the events of Metro 2033, proceeding from the ending where Artyom chose to call down the missile strike on the Dark Ones. The Rangers have since occupied the D6 military facility, with Artyom having become an official member of the group. Khan, the nomad mystic, arrives at D6 to inform Artyom and the Rangers that a single Dark One survived the missile strike.
4A Games’ proprietary 4A Engine is capable of rendering breathtaking vistas, such as those showing the ruined remnants of Moscow, as well as immersive indoor areas that play with light and shadow, creating hauntingly beautiful scenes akin to those from modern-day photos of Pripyat’s abandoned factories and schools.
We tested this particular game with the extremely demanding built in benchmark. Settings detailed above. Direct X 11 mode, Quality is set at High, 16 AF, normal Motion blur, Tessellation Normal, Advanced PhysX disabled and SSAA disabled.
A very demanding engine, especially at Ultra HD 4K. The R9 290X struggles to maintain playable frame rates at all times.
Grid 2 is the sequel to the racing video game Race Driver: Grid. It was developed and published by Codemasters. The game includes numerous real world locations such as Paris, numerous United States locations, and many more, and also includes motor vehicles spanning four decades. In addition, it includes a new handling system that developer Codemasters has dubbed ‘TrueFeel’, which aims to hit a sweet spot between realism and accessibility.
We test at the maximum image quality settings, which are different for both AMD and Nvidia cards. The Nvidia hardware is tested at 16xQCSAA and the AMD hardware is tested at 8f16x EQAA.
The results below therefore are NOT directly comparable. We wanted to show performance from both AMD and NVIDIA solutions in GRID 2 when maximising the image quality settings.
Playable frame rates at Ultra HD 4K, averaging 48 frames per second. The game really does look quite spectacular running at 3,840x 2,160 with 8F16X EQAA.
Battlefield 4 (also known as BF4) is a first-person shooter video game developed by EA Digital Illusions CE (DICE) and published by Electronic Arts. The game is a sequel to 2011′s Battlefield 3. Battlefield 4 is built on the new Frostbite 3 engine. The new Frostbite engine enables more realistic environments with higher resolution textures and particle effects. A new “networked water” system is also being introduced, allowing all players in the game to see the same wave at the same time.Tessellation has also been overhauled.
We test at 2560×1600 with the image quality settings on the ‘ULTRA’ preset. We test the AMD hardware with both Direct X and AMD’s Mantle rendering. Nvidia hardware is tested with Direct X rendering.
Perfectly playable at 1600p, averaging over 50 frames per second.
Battlefield 4 (also known as BF4) is a first-person shooter video game developed by EA Digital Illusions CE (DICE) and published by Electronic Arts. The game is a sequel to 2011′s Battlefield 3. Battlefield 4 is built on the new Frostbite 3 engine. The new Frostbite engine enables more realistic environments with higher resolution textures and particle effects. A new “networked water” system is also being introduced, allowing all players in the game to see the same wave at the same time.Tessellation has also been overhauled.
We test at Ultra HD 4K with the HIGH Image preset.
By dropping the image quality settings a little to the ‘HIGH' preset, we can get smooth frame rates from the hardware.
The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 24c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this. Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by playing Crysis Warhead for 30 minutes and measuring the peak temperature. We also have included Furmark results, recording maximum temperatures throughout a 30 minute stress test. All fan settings were left on automatic.
The cooler performs very well – almost matching the Tri-X on the latest Sapphire cards.
The latest version of GPUz shows the VRM temperatures – 98c for VRM1 sensor, and 55c for VRM2 sensor.
We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with almost completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run looped 3dMark tests.
We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the closed chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation. Ambient noise in the room measures close to the limits of our sound meter at 28dBa. It isn’t a real world situation to be measuring with a case panel off only a few centimeters away from a video card. Our noise figures may therefore be lower than other publications who record at closer distances, or without a fully closed case muting the noise.
Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.
KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refrigerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum
The cooler on the RoyalAce card isn't the quietest we have tested, but the noise levels when gaming are not too intrusive – almost identical to output from the Palit JetStream solution on the GTX780Ti.
To test power consumption today we are using a Keithley Integra unit and we measure power consumption from the VGA card inputs, not the system wide drain. We measure results while gaming in Crysis Warhead and the synthetic stress test Furmark and record both results.
The power drain from the card is generally around 220 watts when playing a new DX11 game.
To overclock today we used the Catalyst Control Center
We managed to increase the core clock speed to 1,107mhz before minor artifacting would occur. This translated to a 5.4% overclock.
The overclock helps to boost the GPU score from 15,886 to 16,730 points. This pushes performance past the Palit GTX780 TI Jetstream OC. Excellent results.
The graphics market is very competitive in 2014, and it takes something really special for the discerning enthusiast user to stand up and take notice. Club3D may not be a name you immediately associate with a high end graphics card, but the R9 290X RoyalAce deserves some attention.
First impressions are positive, because while the box artwork may be rather bland, the card itself inside is exceptionally well made and eyecatching.
The matt black ‘Coolstream' cooler is extremely attractive and looks much nicer than many of the bright, glossy coolers we have looked at in recent months. The three fan implementation is well thought out and the inclusion of a custom backplate will prove popular with the audience who like to modify their system builds, and expose the hardware under LED lighting.
Under load this cooler isn't the quietest we have analysed, however in regards to cooling proficiency it does rate very closely against the class leading TriX cooler from Sapphire. That said, the VRM temperatures on the Sapphire TriX AMD cards are better due to the enhanced cooling the company implement onto the PCB itself. That said, the triple fan Club3D cooler is still one of the best we have tested in recent months.
Club3D supply their R9 290X RoyalAce in a positive state of overclock – running at 1,050mhz ‘out of the box'. We measured between 5 and 6 percent additional headroom on the core, when we overclocked with Catalyst Control Center. This might not sound like a huge amount, but this helped improve performance of the R9 290X so it would score slightly more than the default clocked Palit GTX780 Ti Jetstream.
If you are in the market for a new high end AMD graphics solution and want a card that looks fantastic when exposed under a windowed side panel and LED lighting, then the Club3D R9 290X RoyalAce deserves some serious consideration. It can't quite match the latest Sapphire Vapor-X solutions, but we do like the cooler design and the fancy custom PCB backplate design really does catch the eye.
You can buy from CCL in the UK for £434 inc vat
Discuss on our Facebook page, over HERE.
Pros:
- matt black triple fan cooler looks fantastic.
- massive airflow.
- runs cool at all times.
- can overclock to 1,100mhz+ core speeds.
Cons:
- Not the quietest card under load.
- limited availability in UK.
- 308mm long.
Kitguru says: A great looking high end solution equipped with a powerful ‘Coolstream' cooling system, hard to find, but worth looking out.
this is a great looking video card, I wish more makers would use backplates, its the part you look at when the card is installed and so many makers just leave it naked and ugly.
We cant get club3d here, or powercolor. so im limited in my choices.
I have had a Club3d card for years and they are very well made. They don’t get any exposure, so I was excited to see a review on one of my favourite review sites today. Bit out of my price bracket, but are they getting a UK deal with OCUK or something? no stock anywhere….
Is this a dual slot or triple slot gfx card?.
Shall I go for this beastly 290X or a 970GTX?.
I am looking for best bang for buck.
Thanks.