Product Photos

The R290X has a power consumption in the range of 275 Watts, AMD actually not formally disclosed that information specifically but our measurements actually show these numbers under full gaming load. The board's overall power consumption from idle to load is excellent really, roughly 10 Watt in idle and when the monitor goes into sleep mode give or take 3 Watts. it is a nice looking card alright. 

At the rear side of the card we see a rather full but clean PCB, I have to give props to TUL/PowerColor here for this backplate. Next to MSI, PowerColor is now amongst the first that applied little gaps and holes on the back-plate allowing the VRM area and GPU to ventilate and not trap heat. The PCB is custom but sticks close to the AMD reference design btw.

 
You will need to hook the 290X card up to your power supply with one 6-pin and one 8-pin PCIe PEG connector. We recommend a 550~600W power supply to start with, with one card of course.

There's also a dual BIOS. On the reference cards for an uber and Quiet mode. The switches modes are as follows;

• “Quiet Mode” – Bios position one. Switch is in position closest to where you plug in your displays. This mode is designed to optimally suit a gamer that wants to keep a tight lid on acoustics. If you do not play with headphones, you do not have a high end gaming chassis, or your room’s ambient noise level is extremely low this may be the mode for you.
• “Uber Mode” – Bios position two. Switch is in position furthest away to where you plug in your displays

The Uber mode is designed to perform optimally under all performance and game testing. This includes crossfire. Performance wise Uber mode is a hint faster and also the default configuration for this card.