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

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.
grid2_avx 2014-03-18 12-16-54-67grid2_avx 2014-04-02 12-48-28-42
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.
image0014

grid 2 ultra hd 4k
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.

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18 comments

  1. You say at the bottom of the introduction page: “The Sapphire R9 290 Vapor-X ships with a core clock speed of 1,030mhz and the GDDR4 memory is clocked at 1,400mhz (5.6Gbps effective), connected by a 512 bit memory interface.”

    Is the “GDDR4” memory type a typo?

    No votes yet.
  2. Yes, its GDDR5 – fixed. thanks!

    Rating: 5.0/5. From 1 vote.
  3. for god sake, I just bought a triX yesterday – I have the worst timing ever. 🙁

    No votes yet.
  4. I like the blue appearance. the cooler is spectular – never seen a company expose copper like that to cool the PCB. very clever.

    No votes yet.
  5. the price seems quite good considering, I thought it would be around £400 inc vat.

    No votes yet.
  6. Preordered the 290 Vapor-X thanks !

    No votes yet.
  7. The looks of the Vapor-X cooling is stunning! The 290 will definately be in my new build. Does anyone know the lenght of the 290 Vapor-X card?

    No votes yet.
  8. Hi Ralf, I just measured it – the cooler overhangs the PCB a little, so its around 300mm – long card.

    No votes yet.
  9. When is it coming out?

    No votes yet.
  10. Is that card faster than gtx 780?

    Rating: 5.0/5. From 1 vote.
  11. Zardon tell me pls how much additional voltage mV was added for the overclocking of r9 290 vapor-x to 1205 in this review?

    Rating: 5.0/5. From 1 vote.
  12. How did you set up your fans in you cas so you could keep the card the coolest possible? I’m thinking of buying one but I’m not sure what’s the best way to set my fans for it.

    No votes yet.
  13. Could you give the full dimensions (lengthxwidthxheight)? Mini ITX builds can be a pain fitting everything!

    No votes yet.
  14. Hey Zardon, I just got my R9 290 Vapor X and there’s this black goo between the backplate and the PCB, do you know what it is? Also can you make an overclocking guide for this GPU?

    No votes yet.
  15. If you’ll show SLI up in the list there, have the decency to show Crossfire results too. And where’s 770 in the lists ? 280x is not competing with the lot in the list there. Price or performance wise.

    No votes yet.
  16. Its nothing to do with ‘decency’. Believe it or not sometimes we don’t get access to all the cards we want to test and include them all every time we post a graphics card review.

    No votes yet.
  17. I’m actually surprised by the 1920×1080 results just ran my Powercolor PCS+OC R9 290 through the same test Ultra preset AA 4x and Tesselation off my results were as follows (were any of your settings different?):
    Min:33.5 FPS
    Avg:81.2 FPS
    Max:143.5 FPS
    Max Temp(Via GPU-Z) 71C

    No votes yet.
  18. I am definitely
    enjoying your website. You definitely have some great insight and great
    stories.
    Vaporultra.com

    No votes yet.