PowerColor R9 290X PCS+ 4 GB Review

Name: PowerColor R9 290X PCS+ 4 GB
Brand: PowerColor

W1zzard

on Mar 4th, 2014,

in Graphics Cards.

Manufacturer: PowerColor

(22 Comments) »

Introduction

AMD's Radeon R9 290X is built on the company's new Hawaii GPU, the first truly new high-end graphics chip from the company in a very long time (21 months). Using 6.8 billion transistors, the GPU is built on a 28 nanometer process at TSMC, Taiwan; it features 2816 shaders and 64 ROPs connected to 4 GB of memory using a 512-bit wide memory bus.

We are reviewing the PowerColor R9 290X PCS+ today. It comes with a powerful triple-slot, triple-fan cooler. It also includes a 50 MHz overclock on the GPU and a 100 MHz overclock on memory, which makes it the highest clocked custom design R9 290X you can buy at this time (together with the ASUS R9 290X DC2 that runs the same clocks).

Price-wise, PowerColor expects the card to cost around $700, which is inline with other custom cards on the market at this time.

Radeon R9 290X Market Segment Analysis
	HD 7970 GHz Ed.	GeForce GTX 680	GeForce GTX 780	Radeon R9 290	Radeon R9 290X	PowerColor R9 290X PCS+	Radeon HD 7990	GeForce GTX Titan	GeForce GTX 780 Ti	GeForce GTX 690
Shader Units	2048	1536	2304	2560	2816	2816	2x 2048	2688	2880	2x 1536
ROPs	32	32	48	64	64	64	2x 32	48	48	2x 32
Graphics Processor	Tahiti	GK104	GK110	Hawaii	Hawaii	Hawaii	2x Tahiti	GK110	GK110	2x GK104
Transistors	4310M	3500M	7100M	6200M	6200M	6200M	2x 4310M	7100M	7100M	2x 3500M
Memory Size	3072 MB	2048 MB	3072 MB	4096 MB	4096 MB	4096 MB	2x 3072 MB	6144 MB	3072 MB	2x 2048 MB
Memory Bus Width	384 bit	256 bit	384 bit	512 bit	512 bit	512 bit	2x 384 bit	384 bit	384 bit	2x 256 bit
Core Clock	1050 MHz	1006 MHz+	863 MHz+	947 MHz	1000 MHz	1050 MHz	1000 MHz	837 MHz+	876 MHz+	915 MHz+
Memory Clock	1500 MHz	1502 MHz	1502 MHz	1250 MHz	1250 MHz	1350 MHz	1500 MHz	1502 MHz	1750 MHz	1502 MHz
Price	$470	$400	$480	$500	$600	$700	$900	$1000	$680	$1000

Packaging

You will receive:

Graphics card
Driver CD + documentation
PCI-Express power cable

The Card

PowerColor decided to use an industrial cooler design, which does look at bit plasticky, though. They also included a metal backplate with their card. Dimensions of the card are 29.5 x 11.5 cm.

Installation requires three 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. Analog VGA output connectivity are not available, not even via an adapter.

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.