The Card

The Sapphire R9 290X Tri-X OC looks impressive with its three fans. I'm not sure why Sapphire picked an orange color theme. It looks quite alright, though, but reminds me a bit of Zotac. Please note how the heatsink extends a few centimeters beyond the PCB to accommodate the third fan. This makes the card as long as HD 7990, so it may not fit into smaller cases. Dimensions of the card are 31 x 12 cm.


Installation requires two slots in your system.


Display connectivity options include two DVI ports, one DisplayPort, and one HDMI port. You may use all outputs at the same time, so triple-monitor surround gaming is possible with one card.

The GPU also includes an HDMI sound device. It is HDMI 1.4a compatible, which includes HD audio and Blu-ray 3D movies support.


There are no visible CrossFire connectors on the card. With their R9 290 Series, AMD started transferring CrossFire data via the PCI-Express slot interface of the card. You may pair this card with any R9 290 and R9 290X card.


Pictured above are the front and back, showing the disassembled board. High-res versions are also available (front, back).