Card Layout and Photos

The overall look and design of the R9 290 Tri-X from Sapphire is very similar to the R9 280X Toxic. You have a black and orange design that really catches your eye. Unlike previous models, the middle fan matches the other two fans rather than being the runt of the family. That mean Sapphire did step up the cooling slightly when going from the 280X to the 290. Each of the three fans is a 9 blade design and their glossy black finish goes perfectly with the black trim on the top and bottom of the card. 

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The Tri-X cooler on the R9 290 Tri-X is similar to the previous models in its cooling design. You have a triple fan design (this time with three fans of the same size) that blows air down over heatsinks. This is different from how a reference cooler would cool, reference designs blow across the card, not down at the PCB. This does have the side effect of warmed air venting from the top and bottom of the 290 Tri-X, like any other aftermarket cooled video card. If you look from the underside you can see the heatpipes that pull the heat off of the GPU itself and distribute the air across the heatsinks for the best cooling. Also up on the top edge you have a Sapphire logo like on the other cards, but this time around it isn’t backlit. It’s interesting that the model up from the 280X is missing features that both it and the 270X had.

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Sapphire didn’t change things up for power from the reference design this time around. We have the same 8-pin + 6-pin combo that the 280X had as well as the reference 290. This should still be more than enough to push things. On the top edge of the PCB, over on the left side you also have a small switch to be able to switch from the standard BIOS to the UEFI BIOS should your PC support it. Interestingly enough the 290 Tri-X, like the 290X, does not have a Crossfire bridge connection at all. This is because with their new cards AMD went with a new design that takes advantage of the additional bandwidth that PCIExpress 3.0 provides and lowers latency in triple and quad crossfire configurations where data used to have to transfer across multiple busses.

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Sapphire went with the standard dual DVI, full sized HDMI, and full sized DisplayPort combo on the end of the 290 Tri-X. This is a great combination that seems to cover almost every possible option except VGA. Normally you can still run a DVI to VGA adapter but in this case you don’t have that option because you don’t have analog pass-through on either of the DVI ports. Sapphire did pack in as many cooling vents as possible around the four connections although most of the air that the Tri-X cooling is pushing will still have to vent in other directions.

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One area where Sapphire did seem to skimp on compared to their Toxic cards was around on the back of the card. Both of the Toxic cards I recently tested had very sharp backplates that both show off the card name and also protect the card itself. It’s interesting that Sapphire opted to not do the same on the R9 290 Tri-X when it shares an otherwise similar design. You do still have a black PCB though. You can also see how the Tri-X cooler does still hang over the PCB on the end as well.

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garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #33684 15 Jan 2014 18:07


Why not get over hump day with a look at the R9 290 Tri-X from Sapphire!

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