Review: Asus Radeon R9 290X DirectCU II OC

Conclusion

Asus's DirectCU II OC, priced at £475 and positioned as the pinnacle of R9 290X technology, combines a well-regarded cooler with core and memory overclocks along with the guarantees of a well-known brand.

AMD's launch of the Radeon R9 290X hasn't been as smooth as the chip company would have hoped. Launched to much fanfare in October 2013, the range-topping card was able to stand toe-to-toe with the rival GeForce solutions of the time and attempted to spank the GTX Titan with a far more attractive £425 launch price.

It seemed too good to be true, and for a time, perhaps it was. AMD's launch was hampered by a lacklustre reference cooler and third-party solutions were woefully slow in arriving. Only now, some three months after launch, are partner cards beginning to appear en masse, though many of those still remain on pre-order.

This limited supply had in recent weeks pushed the cost of an R9 290X up to GTX 780 Ti levels, but with more cards trickling through to retail, pricing is starting to settle and AMD's finest is finally fulfilling its promise in the £400-£450 market with factory-overclocked and custom-cooled SKUs.

Always hoping to go one better, Asus's DirectCU II OC, priced at £475 and positioned as the pinnacle of R9 290X technology, combines a well-regarded cooler with core and memory overclocks along with the guarantees of a well-known brand.

Build quality is indeed top-notch, but AMD's most competitive 28nm GPU continues to be a hot chip to handle, and even the award-winning DirectCU II struggles to keep both cool and quiet under load. As impressive as the performance is, we feel £475 is just a touch too close to GeForce GTX 780 Ti territory to warrant an out-and-out recommendation.

The Good

Factory overclocked on core and memory
Fastest sub-£500 card we've tested
Customisable heatsink cover
Built like a rock

The Bad

Plays second-fiddle to GTX 780 Ti
Runs quiet or cool, not both
No free games

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Asus Radeon R9 290X DirectCU II OC

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The Asus Radeon R9 290X DirectCU II OC graphics card is available to order from Scan Computers*.

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At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.

*UK-based HEXUS community members are eligible for free delivery and priority customer service through the SCAN.care@HEXUS forum.

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The Asus cooler really seems to be rather meh. Basically all the other after-market coolers are better than this one but it remains one of the most expensive…

Despite the price bump to the 780Ti, it's the obvious choice if you're in this area of the market - the noise, temp, power consumption and second-rung performance really hamper this. I hope that AMD can work on a revised version of the 290X that can fulfill its potential to really rival the green cards. Just shows what an awesome card the 780Ti is though.

In terms of price/performance ratio and the 1440p benchmarks, this card is good value for money but in terms of power consumption, temperature and noise Asus 290X is not that good. I'd rather pick the Sapphire's 290X and they did a great work on that card and perfect for 1440p and 4K if you want that.

318W vs 360W (780Ti vs this 290X) is not that huge a difference.

But what is more interesting is the big differences different reviewers get:
Asus 290X vs AMD 290X reference vs 780Ti reference
Hexus: 360W vs 277W vs 318W
TechPowerUP 251W vs 271W vs 269W*
Computerbase 421W vs 423W vs 407W
*(note TPU measure card consumption only not the whole system)
Note that each cards wins once!

I guess that's to be expect since a) each reviewer uses a different methodology and b) not all cards are the same as ASIC quality makes a different to voltages and power consumption as GPU-z explains:

Plus the temp the card runs at should make a difference too (higher temp = more leakage) but to really see that would involve taking the exact same card with a constant load (FurMark or Unigine Valley) and setting the fan to constant speed while using a lot of deskfans to get the temp down like that legendary article which Idoncare made on the AT forums a few years ago:
Effect of Temperature on Power-Consumption with the i7-2600K
(there was also a 3770K follow-up)

Any volunteers?

Nice card. But disappointed by the cooler.