The launch of AMD’s R9 290X last week was interesting as it certainly stirred up the graphics card market and industry. Following the launch arguing between readers occurred in abundance across many review sites, not just our own. Where I stand in this debate is that AMD have really shot themselves in the foot by releasing such a high performance graphics card that then gets throttled by such a mediocre cooling solution. Then to make things worse they’ve chosen to shed no light on the launch of non-reference solutions – something all prospective R9 290X buyers are waiting for to make a fully informed decision. Yet despite the R9 290X being throttled by that stock cooler the general consensus from most reviewers was that the R9 290X is at least as good as the GTX 780, while some reviewers who were able to test in favourable temperature conditions received results that suggested the R9 290X was better than the GTX Titan. Our review fell into that latter category and our benchmarks showed the R9 290X as being quite some way ahead of the GTX Titan in most benchmarks.



Link: eTeknix