14 DAY TRIAL // The Radeon R9 290 graphics card is not supposed to come out for another day, but that didn't stop PowerColor from officially launching the thing earlier, although the company did hold off on confirming the most important details of them all.
And by “the most important detail of them all” we, of course, mean the price. Last we heard, it was supposed to be of $450 / €450, but that's still an unofficial sum.
Then again, this is an overclocked version of the video adapter, so even if that is the base price, the PowerColor card will be a bit more expensive.
The PowerColor R9 290 OC runs the Hawaii graphics processing unit at 975 MHz, instead of the stock 948 MHz.
That's the only difference though. The memory capacity is still of 4 GB, the clock of said memory is of 1250 MHz (5 GHz effective), and the interface is of 512 bits.
The number of GCN SPs (Graphics CoreNext stream processors) has been confirmed at 2,560 as well.
Between these hardware capabilities, the DirectX 11.2 support, the 4K ultra-resolution gaming propensity (3840 x 2160 pixels) and the TrueAudio technology, the card should easily run any games at max settings, even on multi-display EyeFinity monitor setups (dual-DVI, DisplayPort and HDMI available).
For those unaware, AMD TrueAudio is the first instance where a GPU has a programmable audio pipeline, enhancing sounds on PCs.
That leaves the Mantle API (application programming interface), and this, too, is not just a minor asset in an otherwise “common” graphics card.
Mantle is an alternative to DirectX, allowing games compatible with it to run much more smoothly and at better image quality than on NVIDIA cards, or Non-Hawaii AMD cards.
So far, only EA's/DICE's Battlefield 4 can be played on Mantle (the programmers have to design the game for the API), but AMD hopes to score more game development deals from now on.
Finally, the AMD PowerTune technology can intelligently assess the GPU's real-time power draw, helping in overclocking.