14 DAY TRIAL // Unlike AMD's other partners, Sapphire didn't want to let the week pass by with just the launch of the Radeon R5 230 graphics cards, so it released an R9 290 as well.
The new board is called Radeon R9 290 Vapor-X OC, meaning that it bears a custom cooler (Vapor-X) and is factory-overclocked as well.
The graphics processing unit of the AMD Radeon R9 290 normally reaches 947 MHz, but on the new card is goes all the way up to 1030 MHz.
The triple-fan Vapor-X cooling module ensures that the extra load doesn’t lead to overheating.
That said, the 4 GB of GDDR5 VRAM work at 1400 MHz (5.6 GHz effective), instead of 5 GHz.
The cooler wasn't all that Sapphire changed though, in order to cope with the heat. Besides, overclocking threatens stability too, so more measures were taken.
One of them was the Digital Power control and a new Aero6 VRM section (6-phase power with high power Direct-FET technology).
The other was Dual BIOS, although this one is more meant to ensure compatibility with legacy systems (no PCI Express 3.0 as it were). A simple button switches between BIOS chips.
The price of the new Sapphire Radeon R9 290 Vapor-X OC should be a bit above $400 / €400.