ASUS Radeon R9-290X DirectCU II OC review - Product Photos

Product Photos - AMD R9-290X

With recommended gaming resolution up-to 3840 x 2160 the ASUS Radeon R9-290X DirectCU II OC has features like AMD TrueAudio Technology, and 4GB of memory. The card is factory overclocked towards 1050 Mhz but more importantly, it is a card that has a proper cooler, a cooler that the GPU deserves.

The heart of the ASUS Radeon R9-290X DirectCU II OC is beast with 6 Billion transistors on a 438 mm² Die and that 512-bit Memory bus with 4 GB 5.0 Gbps GDDR5 memory.

The Radeon R9-290X has 2816 Stream Processors and a clock Frequency up-to 1050 MHz for this ASUS model. A massive 4 GB of 512-bit memoryis fitted on there running at 5.4 Gbps. Anybody with a monitor resolution up-to 2560x1440 can play their games at extremely good quality settings, and with a small tweak or two, Ultra high definition gaming at that Big Whopper of a resolution called UHD - 3840 x 2160 pixels. ASUS ships the Radeon R9 290X DirectCU II OC with custom Red and Gold metallic stickers so you can decide which sticker to select from, alternatively you just leave the stickers removed giving it a black look.

The DirectCU II solution of the card is a dual slot cooler equipped with what ASUS calls cooltech fan technology, basically it helps to push an increased volume of air to the internal heatsink chamber with direct contact surface dissipating heat with the help of four 6mm and a single 8mm heatpipe. DirectCU II has two cooling fans, four nickel-plated heat pipes with at least two 10 mm pipes, and a PCB strengthening bracket as well as a backplate.

Here we can see the connectors, one full DP, one HDMI and two DVI connectors. So yes, Eyefinity works here perfectly fine as well. It might be a very interesting card to setup a cheap desktop multi-monitor setup this way. Not so much for gaming though. AMD allows you to opt for the multi-GPU road with Crossfire as an option. You can pair two in one PC and have them do a decent workout. As mentioned earlier, a Crossfire bridge is no longer needed. The data will be moved over the PCIE (preferably 3.0) bus.