14 DAY TRIAL // NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 980 graphics adapter based on the Maxwell GPU may have managed to overcome the AMD Radeon R9 290X, but there is a way to render the latter faster. XFX is about to act on it.
XFX is one of the companies allowed to sell AMD-based graphics cards under its own brand. It's an NVIDIA partner as it were. An OEM (original equipment manufacturer).
Over the years, it has released many high-end video cards, a significant number of which were the best in their class, or in the top three.
The company aims to achieve something of the sort with the Radeon R9 290X, which is why it is already looking beyond the normal memory capacity.
XFX is preparing two 8 GB graphics cards
XFX already has the Radeon R9 290X Core Edition up for order, but that's a reference-clocked adapter with 4 GB GDDR5 VRAM, so it's not what we're interested in.
More important for today's topic is the Radeon R9 290X Double Dissipation, equipped with the Ghost2 cooler (dual-fan).
We'd talk a bit about the Radeon R9 290X Black Edition, if there was anything to talk about that is. Unfortunately, we only know, at this point, that XFX might reveal it in the future, nothing else. Beyond the 8 GB VRAM capacity of course.
The XFX Radeon R9 290X Double Dissipation is a bit less shrouded in mystery thanks to the image gallery that made it to the net.
The video board has seven copper heatpipes pulling the heat from the GPU into the elaborate heatsink, leaving it to a pair of 90mm fans to disperse it.
There's the XFactor 2.0 PCB design to consider as well: solid capacitors, ferrite core choke, and generally higher PCB components than usual. That the fans we mentioned before are dust-free (IP-5X-rated) is a nice bonus.
As for the specs, there's still a single Hawaii GPU with 2,816 Stream processors, 176 TMUs (texture mapping units), 64 ROPs (raster operating units), and a 512-bit interface.
Availability and pricing
As we implied previously, these details are not available, since XFX hasn't officially spoken on the matter yet. Still, we presume that shipments will begin in the coming days, maybe within the week.
XFX will probably release the Radeon R9 290X Black Edition later than the Double Dissipation. Perhaps in time for Christmas, but no sooner. It would leave prospective buyers with one less reason to be undecided at least.
