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XFX R9 290 Double Dissipation, A Closer Look
XFX’s exclusive Dual Fan Double Dissipation design sports two larger fans that run at lower RPM’s which means lower noise (by up to 13 dBA) and up to 7°C Cooler temps. Those of you who have read my GPU reviews might know that my first good GPU was an XFX 8800GT Alpha Dog (still in my collection) and every time I hold an XFX GPU in my hands I know I’m covered for performance, longevity, quality and fond memories. If you scrape around enthusiast site forums you’ll still find posts about heat sinking the old 8800 GT Alpha Dog. The fact it’s still running on a daily basis should tell you something about XFX’s commitment to quality and longevity.
Like we mentioned earlier for connectors you get two DVI-D, a HDMI and a Display Port the only thing missing here is a 15 pin DSub (VGA) connector and if you connect this beast to a VGA monitor just drop your info in the forum and we’ll come by and relieve you of your XFX R9 290 DD based on VGA abuse of this game killing beast. XFX even did a cutout of their name in the I/O plate showing their pride in the product they build so well.
Out of machine pictures don’t do the XFX R9 290 DD justice as the XFX logo lights up drawing the eye to its jet black and silver profile. We are very pleased with the large dual fans and the 35 dBA noise level. The sometimes whiny stock fans found on AMD GPU’s can get ta little nerve-wracking when cranked up but this design by XFX is barely audible even on an open test bench chassis.
It’s been a while since Xfire bridges were required on AMD enthusiast cards but we just can’t get used to not seeing an XFire bridge connector. We like the bridge-less design it avoids another dust intrusion area and it’s one less component to worry about. It just makes sense to let CCC and the PCI-E slot handle XFire and it would be our guess that doing so improves the scaling of AMD multi-GPU technology.
Looking at the top you find the 6 and 8 pin PCI-E power connectors and get a glimpse of the dual heat sink design. As slick as the card looks we have to admit having a pair of DD’s on the test bed would excite the hardest core reviewer.
So far all we find to gripe about on the XFX R9 290 DD is the black cowling partially obscures the Dual BIOS switch. Yes you heard us right the XFX R9 290 DD has two BIOS so if one gets corrupted you can switch to the second and you are p and running again. Given a little research you can keep a copy of the BIOS using GPU-Z and re-flash the corrupted BIOS back to its original form but you might want to check with XFX and see if doing so affects your warranty.
The backside of the card has no back plate or Memory IC’s but it does have the serial number sticker. There’s little else that stands out on the back of the card so let’s get a move on to benchmarking and overclocking.
