Sapphire R9 280X Vapor-X OC and R9 290 Vapor-X OC review

Rating: 9.5.

There is no doubt that AMD gamers have been spoilt for choice this year when shopping for a new graphics card. Sapphire have been at the forefront of the new GPU revolution, thanks in no small part to their remarkable, class leading Tri-X cooling system.

Over the last week, I have been testing the new Sapphire Vapor-X R9 280X and Sapphire Vapor-X R9 290. Both of these cards ship with hefty metal coolers, triple fan coolers and a ton of tasty, under the surface tweaks. Both cards are clocked higher than the reference AMD designs.

The Sapphire Vapor X R9 280X is a pure two slot solution and as shown in the image above the Sapphire R9 290 Vapor-X is slightly fatter. It isn't quite 2.5 slots thick, but it is close. Both cards ship with 4GB of fast GDDR5 memory and use the highest grade components throughout the design, especially in the power control circuitry.

The Sapphire R9 280X Vapor-X ships with a core clock speed of 1,100mhz and the GDDR5 memory is clocked at 1,500 mhz (6Gbps effective), connected via a 384 bit memory interface. The R9 280X has 32 ROP's, 128 Texture units and 2,048 unified shaders.

The Sapphire R9 290 Vapor-X ships with a core clock speed of 1,030mhz and the GDDR5 memory is clocked at 1,400mhz (5.6Gbps effective), connected by a 512 bit memory interface. The R9 290 has 64 ROPS, 160 texture units and 2,560 unified shaders.


Sapphire recently ditched their hot 3D rendered ladies, focusing now on futuristic robots. Silicon injected babes or man eating robots? We like both.

The bundle includes a quality HDMI cable, some literature, power converter cables and a software disc. We do always recommend you check AMD's website for the latest drivers.

Sapphire have built the R9 280X Vapor-X OC around an eye catching black PCB. The triple fan cooler is encased in a metal surround with lovely blue accenting along the middle, like a sports car stripe. The three 90mm fans use aerofoil blades to increase airflow while reducing noise. Each of these fans ship with two sets of dust repelling ball bearings.

Eagle eyed readers will notice that the hefty cooler actually overhangs the PCB at little, exposing thick heatpipes.

Some hardware is very dull to look at, but we consider a good graphics card the supermodel of the technology world – and the Sapphire card certainly is a looker. The ‘Vapor X' on the side of the cooler glows when the card is active.

The Sapphire R9 280X Vapor-X OC takes power from two eight pin power connectors, as shown above.

Not enough power? then the R9 280X is Crossfire capable, with two connectors available. There is a BIOS switch here to offer UEFI support.

A single link, and dual link DVI connector are present, alongside a full sized HDMI (1.4a) and DisplayPort (1.2) connector. Eyefinity is fully supported and no active adapter is required.

With the cooler removed, we can see the configuration a little better. The VaporX cards use the latest revision of a vapor chamber cooler. This chamber is mounted between the GPU and the base of the heatsink and cooler assembly.

The Tri-X cooler is mounted on top and incorporates multiple copper heatpipes to move heat through the 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.






A slightly different futuristic robot image on the Sapphire R9 290 Vapor-X OC box, but it is very effective artwork.

The bundle includes a quality HDMI cable, some power converters, literature, and a software disc. It is always best snagging the latest drivers from AMD's website however.


The Sapphire R9 290 Vapor-X OC is a beast of a card, and is very heavy. Part of the weight it due to the metal backplate fitted to the PCB, shown above. Three 90mm fans are spaced across the full length of the PCB. We love the sporty blue accents.

The ‘Sapphire' badge on the side of the cooler, glows when the card is active.

The Sapphire R9 290 Vapor-X OC demands power from two eight pin power connectors.

There is a bios switch here which offers UEFI support. AMD's R9 290 offers bridgeless Crossfire support, meaning it doesn't need a physical connector between the cards.

A single link, and dual link DVI connector are present, alongside a full sized HDMI (1.4a) and DisplayPort (1.2) connector. Eyefinity is fully supported and no active adapter is required.

In the middle of the card, on the back is an ‘on/off' switch. Sapphire has added a new feature to this card which Sapphire are calling ‘Intelligent Fan Control (IFC)'. With this feature enabled only one of the three fans (center) will spin with lower loads. When the GPU temperature rises then all three fans will kick in. In theory this should reduce noise emissions under most situations.

Gamers and overclockers can turn this off, so the three fans spin all the time.

This is a very impressive looking cooler. The R9 290 Vapor-X card uses Digital Power Control and a new Aero6 VRM section to deliver 6 phase power with high power Direct-FET technology to the GPU, memory and control circuitry.

The power design on this card uses Sapphire Black Diamond chokes – featuring a black ferrite cooler for better efficiency. Sapphire are using high grade electrolyte capacitors throughout the design.

If you have been paying attention you may have seen the white strip running along the top of the card, close to the two 8 pin power connectors. Sapphire's engineering team have left one of the copper layers exposed. An additional heatsink mounted direct to the copper layer means that heat can be absorbed into the PCB from the GPU, then transferred out. Sapphire claim a reduction in overall temperature by ‘several degrees'.

The Tri-X cooler is mounted on top, utilising a monster 10mm heatpipe, with two 8mm pipes and two 6mm pipes spreading across the full length of the PCB.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 AMD Catalyst 14.4 Beta driver and the Nvidia Forceware 335.23 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:

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 / 1250 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 Sapphire R9 290 Vapor-X OC scores very well in this older Direct X 10 benchmark, almost identical actually to the more expensive Sapphire R9 290X TriX OC.
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 Sapphire R9 290 Vapor-X OC is an exceptional performer, actually outperforming the reference clocked Nvidia GTX Titan Black in this Direct X 11 benchmark.

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 latest version of 3DMark shows that the Sapphire R9 290 Vapor-X OC is rating almost at the same level as the more expensive R9 290X TriX OC.
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.

We can see there is no discernible differences between the Sapphire R9 290X TriX OC and the Sapphire R9 290 Vapor-X OC at either resolution.
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.

Both Vapor-X cards manage to maintain good frame rates at both 1080p and 1600p resolutions.
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).

The Sapphire R9 290 Vapor-X OC performs at a similar level to the Nvidia GTX Titan Black, averaging 75 frames per second. Mantle rendering is a little better than Direct X rendering with both cards at this resolution and 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 1600p, both with Direct X rendering (Nvidia and AMD) and Mantle rendering (AMD only).

Mantle rendering performs a little better with the Sapphire R9 290 Vapor-X OC, holding a slightly higher minimum frame rate in some sections of the environment. Strangely at 1600p with Mantle rendering, we kept getting some hitching on the R9 280X Vapor-X OC, which dropped the minimum frame rate a little. We couldn't quite work out why, but it was repeatable. Direct X rendering was smoother.
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).

At Ultra HD 4K resolution, Direct X rendering is slightly smoother than Mantle rendering, which clearly AMD still have to work on for this title. As we mentioned in our AMD R9 295X2 review, Mantle rendering has also yet to get Crossfire support.
Total War ROME 2 is the eighth stand alone game in the Total War series, it is the successor to the successful Rome: Total War title. The Warscape Engine powers the visuals of the game and the new unit cameras will allow players to focus on individual soldiers on the battlefield, which in itself may contain thousands of combatants at a time. Creative Assembly has stated that they wish to bring out the more human side of war this way, with soldiers reacting with horror as their comrades get killed around them and officers inspiring their men with heroic speeches before siege towers hit the walls of the enemy city. This will be realised using facial animations for individual units, adding a feel of horror and realism to the battles.

We test at 1080p with the image quality settings maxed out – at the ‘Extreme’ preset.

Both Sapphire Vapor-X cards maintain perfectly playable frame rates at 1080p, holding well above 30 frames per second at all times.
Total War ROME 2 is the eighth stand alone game in the Total War series, it is the successor to the successful Rome: Total War title. The Warscape Engine powers the visuals of the game and the new unit cameras will allow players to focus on individual soldiers on the battlefield, which in itself may contain thousands of combatants at a time. Creative Assembly has stated that they wish to bring out the more human side of war this way, with soldiers reacting with horror as their comrades get killed around them and officers inspiring their men with heroic speeches before siege towers hit the walls of the enemy city. This will be realised using facial animations for individual units, adding a feel of horror and realism to the battles.

We test at 1600p with the image quality settings maxed out – at the ‘Extreme’ preset.

Rome 2 has no SLi profile which explains the low Titan Black results, however AMD do always fare well with this particular Direct X 11 engine. That said, the extreme image quality profile at 1600p is really only perfectly playable on the AMD R9 295X2.
Total War ROME 2 is the eighth stand alone game in the Total War series, it is the successor to the successful Rome: Total War title. The Warscape Engine powers the visuals of the game and the new unit cameras will allow players to focus on individual soldiers on the battlefield, which in itself may contain thousands of combatants at a time.

Creative Assembly has stated that they wish to bring out the more human side of war this way, with soldiers reacting with horror as their comrades get killed around them and officers inspiring their men with heroic speeches before siege towers hit the walls of the enemy city. This will be realised using facial animations for individual units, adding a feel of horror and realism to the battles.

We test at Ultra HD 4K resolutions with the ULTRA preset.

The AMD R9 295X X2 really does completely dominate this game at Ultra HD 4K – a really intense test of any graphics solution. The Sapphire R9 290 Vapor-X OC scores well, almost perfectly matched with the more expensive Sapphire R9 290X TriX OC. The R9 280X runs out of bandwidth at Ultra HD 4K, struggling to maintain playable frame rates at these high image quality settings.
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.

Tomb Raider places a heavy focus on shader power, which explains the slight average frame rate advantage held by the 290X when directly compared to the 290.
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.

Smooth performance from all the AMD hardware at 1600p, averaging well above 30 frames per second 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 advantages of the dual GPU AMD R9 295X2 are clearly seen at Ultra HD 4K resolutions. The Sapphire R9 290 Vapor-X OC holds a frame rate of 25+ most of the time, dropping only once to 23 frames per second in a mountainous area of the environment. The Sapphire R9 280X Vapor-X OC however struggles to maintain smooth frame rates at the same settings.
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.

A demanding benchmark, but performance from the 290 Vapor-X OC is very impressive, holding almost in line with the more expensive overclocked R9 290X.
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 Sapphire R9 290 Vapor-X matches the R9 290X model at this resolution.
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.

This game is too demanding at Ultra HD 4K for single card. The AMD R9 295X2 and Nvidia Titan Black in SLi are the best options if you want a smooth gaming experience.
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.

The Sapphire R9 290 Vapor-X OC delivers similar performance to the Nvidia GTX Titan Black when both drivers are configured to the maximum image quality settings. The Sapphire R9 280X Vapor-X OC manages to maintain frame rates in excess of 25 at all times.
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.

Both Sapphire R9 290 and R9 280X Vapor-X maintain smooth frame rates with this game at 1600p. The R9 290 Vapor-X OC delivers a noticeably smoother experience throughout.
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 to the ‘HIGH' preset we can get smooth frames from both Sapphire R9 290 and R9 280X Vapor-X cards.
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.

Sapphire prove just how good their cooler designs are – taking the top positions in the graph, along with the excellent Jetstream cooler on the GTX780 Ti. The cards are 32c cooler than AMD's reference design under load !

The VRM's seem to be running very cool too, around 60-62c when gaming, and between 67-68c under synthetic Furmark load.
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

Both cards rated identically on our meter which is limited to an accurate minimum noise reading of 28dBa. Under load, they are both clearly audible although not intrusive, especially when installed in a chassis with several case fans active.

As mentioned earlier in the review, the Sapphire R9 290 Vapor-X OC has a setting to disable the outer two fans when the card is in an idle state and temperatures fall within a specific threshold.

The three fans are almost silent when spinning slowly so it didn't really make a huge difference in the real world. Personally, I would recommend leaving the three fans active at all times.
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.

Both cards are clearly geared to demand a little more power – possibly to increase overclocking potential – more on this shortly however.
To overclock today we are using the latest version of Sapphire's TriXX software.

The Sapphire R9 290 Vapor-X OC responds well to overclocking, hitting an additional 17% manual increase with some voltage changes. This took the core speed from 1,030 mhz to 1,205 mhz. The Sapphire R9 280X Vapor-X OC was able to run stable with a 9% overclock to 1,198mhz.

This manual increase pushed the Sapphire R9 290 Vapor-X OC to a final score of 17,418 points. In real world terms this pushes it ahead of the overclocked Gigabyte GTX780 Ti Windforce OC!
Sapphire have released a slew of ground breaking graphics cards in the last 6 months. We were the first publication to review the Sapphire R9 280X Toxic OC Edition last October and we elucidated at the time how the Tri-X cooler had kicked all competition into the sidelines.

The new overclocked Sapphire R9 280X Vapor-X OC and Sapphire R9 290 Vapor-X take this a stage further by incorporating one of the best cooling systems we have ever reviewed. To get a handle on just how capable these coolers are – under load, they are a staggering 32c better than AMD's reference design. That really is an extraordinary result, no matter how you look at it.

Today we tested at a series of resolutions – 1080p, 1600p and Ultra HD 4K. The overclocked Sapphire R9 280X Vapor-X performs well at both 1080p and 1600p, but runs out of bandwidth at Ultra HD 4K. It would be possible to increase the frame rates by reducing the image quality significantly, but gamers do not want this anymore. To get acceptable game performance at Ultra HD 4k with the eye candy cranked, you really need at least an AMD R9 290/X or Nvidia GTX780 Ti.

The Sapphire R9 280X Vapor-X OC is a fantastic graphics card that will suit a very wide audience who game with a 1080p monitor. You can easily move all the image quality settings to maximum and maintain smooth frame rates over 30 at all times. Many games will run extremely well at 1600p, although you may need to reduce a few of the image quality settings with the latest Direct X 11 titles.

The Sapphire R9 290 Vapor-X OC is the star of the show today. We feel the R9 290 makes more sense than the more expensive R9 290X. With the amount of overclocking headroom available on this Sapphire card, it is straightforward enough to outperform the fastest overclocked GTX780 Ti solutions, nevermind a reference R9 290X.

This card really is a beautiful piece of engineering. Sapphire have included a BIOS button, alongside a fan control switch, which disables the outer two fans in specific lower load conditions. The Vapor-X cooler on this card is the best air cooler we have seen to date, and the added backplate not only improves the appearance, but ensures that PCB temperatures are reduced. Sapphire have adopted thick 10mm heatpipes, a Vapor-X cooling chamber and triple 90mm aerofoil blade fans to ensure the ultimate cooling performance.

Taking matters a stage further, they have extended the edge of the card, exposed one of the copper layers and added a heatsink for additional cooling. The heat from the PCB, GPU and other components on the board can be transferred to the heatsink and cooled by airflow from above. This is clearly no marketing speak either, because it is the coolest running R9 290 solution we have tested.

We are still waiting for confirmed pricing of the Sapphire R9 280X Vapor-X OC, however Overclockers UK are stocking the Sapphire R9 290 Vapor-X OC for £371.99 inc vat. It is the best R9 290 we have tested in our labs, without question.

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Pros:

• Vapor-X cooling is exceptional.
• fantastic build quality.
• over-engineered.
• look fantastic.

Cons:

• None.

Kitguru says: The Sapphire R9 290 Vapor-X OC and R9 280X Vapor-X OC are two of the finest AMD video cards ever made. No corners have been cut.

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