XFX R9 290 DD Double Dissipation Review

[section_title title=”Introduction”]Introduction

Brand: XFX
Model: R9 290 DD Double Dissipation
RRP: £259.99 @Overclockers UK (At time of review)

XFX are no stranger to the world of graphics cards and just like Club3D, they solely manufacturer cards for the red team (AMD).  It wasn’t always like that though as before 2009, XFX exclusively made cards for NVIDIA such as the old school 9500GT and even the powerhouse 8800GTX; those days are however over and if you were looking for an XFX card, then you would of course be limited in choice.

That being said, XFX themselves haven’t exactly had the greatest of press over the past couple of years with some end users complaining about “hotter than the sun” temperatures on their card, but things are seemingly back on track with their latest R9 range of graphics cards.  The main factor of course is the newly designed DD or double dissipation cooler which is now cooling their non-reference versions.  Today on the test bench surprisingly after talking about it is of course an XFX card but more specifically, their R9 290 DD Double Dissipation which features 4GB of GDDR5 and out of the box clocks of 947/1250MHz.  With AMD Mantle API support, DirectX 11.2 support via the Windows 8.1 operating system and support for the latest 4K gaming, it should hopefully be able to trade blows with its NVIDIA counterpart and rival; the GTX 780.

Without further ado let’s take a look at the card itself but it wouldn’t be a Play3r review without first taking a look at the specifications…

A little bit more information about the AMD R9 290 4GB graphics card:

AMD Radeon R9 290 is a new graphics card powered by the latest AMD Radeon™ R9 290 graphics-processing unit (GPU). 4GB of super-fast GDDR5 memory for the best gaming experience at the highest resolutions including 4k and incorporates AMD Eyefinity and TrueAudio technologies to enable expansive multi-display setups and more accurate environmental sounds. R9 290 also includes support for both DirectX® 11.2 and AMD’s new Mantle application programming interface (API) for great handling of even the most-demanding PC games.