Both of them have a higher GPU core frequency than the reference card

Oct 24, 2013 07:37 GMT  ·  By

VTX3D, like all other AMD partners, is not allowed to customize the Radeon R9 290X, at least not yet. That only goes for blatant physical changes though. Overclocking isn't prohibited, as we now see, and VTX3D has even colored the cooling shroud black.

There are two VTX3D Radeon R9 290X graphics cards on the market, called VTX3D R9 290X X-Edition.

That's right, both of them are called such, and there is only one real difference between them: one has Battlefield 4 bundled, while the other doesn't.

It's actually surprising that the game isn't a default component of all product bundles, seeing as how it is the trial run of the Mantle API.

But anyway, the main issue here is the overclocked graphics processing unit. AMD's reference Radeon R9 290X runs the GPU at 1 GHz, but VTX3D has it working at 1030 MHz.

It doesn't sound like much, but when you have to stick to the reference cooler, you don't really have much room to maneuver.

The 4 GB of GDDR5 VRAM memory is left alone though, at 1250 MHz (5 GHz effective).

One thing to note here is that AMD's new graphics card doesn't have any GPU clock boosting technology.

That means that the GPU frequency isn't going to be able to move from a base to a boost state when things get tough. Not that such a beast could ever be pushed hard by any games of today.

On the flip side, AMD did include a sort of reverse technology, in a sense. The card can presumably slow down the GPU, thus cutting back from that 250W TDP.

Even the custom overclocking is done differently now: AMD Overdrive (software) no longer asks you to set a clock, but to choose a percentage according to which a performance increment will be applied. Finally, the AMD ZeroCore technology can bring power draw to zero when in idle state.

The VTX3D VTX3D R9 290X X-Edition graphics cards should cost just a little bit more than $550 / €550.