The gang at HardOCP does a good job with some in-depth testing on the R9.
Right before Christmas, at the end of 2013 in December, we got our hands on our first custom cooled and configured AMD Radeon R9 290X video card. The ASUS R9 290X DirectCU II OC video card provided us with the best gameplay experience to date.
We needed a video card that would quell the heat issues of the AMD Radeon R9 290X card’s anemic reference cooler design. We need a video card that would quell the noise issues of the AMD Radeon R9 290X. We needed a video card that would provide consistent performance at the advertised GPU clock speed. The ASUS R9 290X DirectCU II had been what we have all been waiting for, and it succeeded in all the areas gamers and enthusiasts needed it too.
Source: HardOCP