PowerColor's R9 290X OC is basically the AMD R290X reference design with a BIOS that increases clocks by 30 MHz, and a sticker on the fan hub. While these changes are slim, they do not come at any price premium. We see a 1% performance improvement over the AMD reference design in uber mode. It would have been nice to see an overclock on memory, too, for some extra performance. Still, the card is faster than NVIDIA's GTX Titan which still costs $1000. If you look at our selection of games, you can see that depending on the game, either NVIDIA or AMD have the upper hand.
PowerColor's latest card does not improve on power consumption of the AMD reference design, which means non-gaming power consumption, like multi-monitor and Blu-ray, is still really bad. We do see a slight improvement during gaming, which is surprising. A higher-clocked card would normally consume more power, not less. My best guess is that production variances cause this difference, but PowerColor's card also runs 1°C cooler, which affects power consumption. Still, overall power consumption is kinda high.
With such high power consumption, it comes as no surprise that the card ends up being quite noisy too. For their reference design, AMD chose to add a second "quiet" BIOS, which reduces noise levels at the cost of lower performance, making the card's noise levels acceptable. PowerColor does not use this approach, so their card runs at the super noisy 50 dBA all the time while gaming. I am really hoping for a custom PowerColor design that can improve noise levels by using a better cooler.
The real highlight of AMD's R9 290X is certainly its price, which makes it the most affordable high-end graphics card on the market. PowerColor does not ask a price premium for their card, so the purchase should be a no-brainer. You get a guaranteed stable 30 MHz OC with warranty and without manual OC work for free. NVIDIA's $1000 GTX Titan is completely irrelevant now. NVIDIA recently reduced pricing on their GTX 780 to $500, which could make it an alternative if you want lower noise, but are also willing to accept reduced performance.

Update: PowerColor just informed me that their retail cards will have both a quiet and uber BIOS. Just like on the R9 290X reference design, the quiet BIOS is limited to 40% fan speed, resulting in lower noise at the cost of reduced performance. I tested noise levels of the quiet BIOS, and they are much improved indeed.