Overall and Final Verdict
I was really excited to check out XFXs newest design for their Double Dissipation cards. When I saw the design I was very impressed with its styling. They made a drastic change from last year’s models going from a flashy design to a clean black and chrome design. The black and chrome design reminds me a lot of a classy tuxedo for your PC. Sadly I would have really liked to see them stick with the metal fan shroud design like before. When it came to performance, the XFX R9 290 DD Edition performed extremely well in all of our in game and synthetic benchmarks. When it came to the noise, cooling, and power benchmarks I was extremely impressed with the R9 290 DD Edition’s noise performance where it out performed most of the cards that I have tested in the past year. In the cooling performance tests I had to ding the card for its cooling performance simply because the default temperature target from AMD was set to an extremely hot 95 degrees. I wouldn’t let it stop me from picking the card up, but I would highly recommend adjusting that setting before getting into game. So of the two R9 290s that I have tested to date what would I prefer to go with? Well it’s a hard call. The decision depends on if you would like something flashy like the Sapphire or clean like the XFX. I would also keep an eye on the pricing, as of the date of publishing this review AMD card prices are still running higher than their MSRPs, once we see them drop down a little back down to the MSRP of just under $440 the XFX R9 290 Double Dissipation Black Edition will be a great value for its performance.
