The card itself is heavy, bulky and feels like it has been made from granite, and worth the money you have just invested. The colour scheme is ok, it suits the backplate though the blue looks a little darker on the backside. The three fan layout and the substantial heatsink dominate the topside with little room for anything else.
Two DVI, and single HDMI port and Display port is what you get. You get four display support with this card, though make sure you have the cables, only an HDMI cable is supplied. We think the back plate is very cool and with mini heatsinks showing through, the card will look amazing in a standard chassis.
One interesting design feature that Sapphire is incorporating on the Vapor-X series cards is Intelligent Fan Control (IFC).
At the back of the card there is an on/off switch allowing the user to switch to IFC if desired. This is a similar feature to the GTX970 cooling seen on the MSI GTX 970 GAMING Twin Frozr V, but with the added option of a switch. This will allow the user to select either a quiet mode 2D mode with one fan spinning until gaming commenced, or just three fans on at all points. The card uses two 4 pin power connectors, and Sapphire recommend a 700W PSU to power the R9 290X Vapor-X Tri-X.
We left the protective plastic on for the photo shoot, the top of the card is covered apart from the fans themselves. Overall, very nice, full of features, looks good and packed with cooling capability.
Next, testing.
Sapphire Radeon R9 290X Vapor-X Tri-X Graphics Card Review
Package and Bundle - 8.7
Performance - 8
Price - 9
Consumer Experience - 8.5
8.6
If you don't want to spend money on the new R9 390X and you are upgrading, this will also be a fantastic card, but we cannot help feel as though we are left a little disappointed with this card. Why? We didn't really see the card utilized apart from the synthetic tests and we also feel the drivers are still a little behind the hardware, both down to AMD, not Sapphire.
