At long last the wait is finally over. AMD’s newest line of graphics cards (GPU) have made their way into the hands of popular hardware manufacturers, one of them being VisionTek. VisionTek was one of the first companies to produce a factory clocked Radeon 7970 operating at four TeraFLOPs (TFLOPs). And today they plan on doing something similar with AMD’s newest graphics card the Radeon R9 290X.
Sets New Performance Standard
Because the VisionTek R9 290X utilizes AMD’s Graphics Core Next (GCN) Architecture, which unifies graphics processing and compute cores for higher utilization, this ultra-performance graphics card can deliver over 5 TFLOPS compute performance – a new standard in the graphics card industry – and over 300GB/s memory bandwidth to support 4K gaming with over 100 layers of effects.
Overclocking the Smart and Easy Way
By accessing the Boost State control within an easy-to-use card management GUI, the VisionTek R9 290X can be set to automatically run higher than the base core speed if it is operating below power, current, and temperature specification limits. The card also features two additional automatic performance boosting features. AMD PowerPlay Technology adjusts clock speeds in response to GPU load for energy use efficiency while AMD PowerTune Technology maximizes performance under load conditions by increasing the GPU engine clock to take advantage of unused Thermal Design Power (TDP) headroom.
See What You’ve Been Missing with 4K Resolution
The VisionTek R9 290X supports Ultra HD 4K (3840 x 2160) resolution, which is 4x the resolution of 1080p. Typically, configuring a graphics card for use with a high resolution monitor must be done manually. However, AMD’s Catalyst Graphics Drivers will perform automatic configuration on select popular monitors, such as the Panasonic Viera. Further simplifying the ability to use 4K displays is the card’s use of AMD Eyefinity technology which can span multiple monitors into one large panoramic display.
Hear What You’ve Been Missing with TrueAudio
With an onboard audio processing chip powering AMD’s TrueAudio technology, the VisionTek R9 290X can deliver accurate 3D surround sound within games and special audio effects like reverbs and room simulations while reducing CPU load. Now you can hear more real-time voices and situational sounds in-game with any and all audio hardware already owned.
Outperforms Competition in 4K Benchmarks While Costing $100 Less
In a recent performance benchmarking preview publically conducted by AMD, two leading graphics intensive games, BioShock Infinite and Tomb Raider, were both run on the same test machine at 4K (3840 x 2160) resolution settings on the Radeon R9 290X and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 cards. The only variable to the tests was that the R9 290X was run in “Quiet Mode” setting, the less aggressive of two performance profiles that are user selectable via a toggle switch on the card. Below are the results of the $649 street price GTX 780 versus the $549 MSRP R9 290X:
BioShock Infinite:
- R9 290X “Quiet Mode”: 44.25 FPS
- GeForce GTX 780: 37.67 FPS
Tomb Raider:
- R9 290X “Quiet Mode”: 40.2 FPS
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780: 34.5 FPS
These tests are further confirmed by independent performance benchmarking site Anandtech.com which found the R9 290X outperforms the GTX 780 in medium quality setting by 14%.
VisionTek Radeon R9 290X Specifications & Pricing
- Memory: 4GB 512bit GDDR5
- Memory Speed: 5.0Gb/s
- Base Clock Speed: up to 1.0GHz
- Stream Processors: 2816
- Compute Performance: 5.6 TFLOPS
- CrossFire Support: Up to four GPUs with no interconnect bridge required
- Outputs: 2 x Dual Link DVI, 1 x DisplayPort, 1 x HDMI
- Cooling: Single fan 2 slot
- Bus Type: PCIe 3.0
- 3DMark Fire Strike: greater than 8000
- OS Support: Windows 8.1, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista and Linux
- MSRP: $549.00
