Sapphire Radeon R9 290 4GB in CrossFire Video Card Review

The Card

As we mentioned in the introduction, the Sapphire R9 290 4GB we're looking at today follows the reference design, and that of course means that we've got a card that looks nearly identical to the reference one we already looked at. Of course, Sapphire adds their own bit of flair to the card by showing us the model and brand. Apart from that though, there's not much to see, as the shroud covers the PCB almost in its entirety.

Quickly moving around the card, you can see that power comes in the form of a single 6-Pin PCIe Connector, and 8-Pin PCIe Connector. Staying at the top of the card, but closer to the front, you can see we've got a switch that gives us the ability to move between two BIOS. Unlike the R9 290X 4GB, this doesn't really do anything here. Companies may choose to make use of it later though, by offering two different overclocked modes. Of course, the big thing is that just like the R9 290X 4GB, we don't have any CrossFire connectors here.

Finishing off our look at the card, you can see connectivity comes in the form of two Dual-Link DVI-D connectors, along with a single HDMI and DisplayPort connector to round things off. You can see we've also got some vents to help push the hot air straight out of the back of the case.

Specifications

Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of the GPU-Z screenshot. As we've mentioned a few times though, the card is reference in every way, including the clocks. That means the core comes in at 947MHz. As for the 4GB of GDDR5, that carries with it a clock of 5000MHz QDR.

Normally, the main thing we want to check here is whether or not CrossFire is working, by using the screenshot to verify it. We'll be doing that the ol' fashion way today though, by just benchmarking the setup. So, let's take a quick look at our testbed setup, cover the cards that will be in our graphs today, and get into the fun stuff.