ASUS Radeon R9-290 DirectCU II OC review

Posted by: Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 01/17/2014 08:41 AM [ 22 comment(s) ]

We review the ASUS Radeon R9 290 DirectCU II OC edition. Ever since AMD released their Hawaii based GPUs they have been popular. The reference cards might run hot, but the custom cooled editions from the board partners are becoming very popular. The card tested today comes from ASUS and is armed with the latest revision of the DirectCU II cooler and will get that Hawaii chip chilled down. The DirectCU II card will be equipped with a fully custom PCB design featuring the Digi+ VRM with Super Alloy Power technology and high quality C-Caps and MOSFETs. The card is powered through 8-Pin + 6-Pin power configuration and obviously runs at factory overclocked specifications. The card clocks in at 1000 MHz and is clocked to 5040 MHz (effective) on the GDDR5 memory.

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miffywiffy
Senior Member

Posts: 558

Posted on: 01/17/2014 09:09 AM

Might have to look into these cards, AMDs ****ty drivers always put me off though and I dunno if I could live without Shadowplay.

Ven0m
Senior Member

Posts: 1786

Posted on: 01/17/2014 09:25 AM

Well, the price that I could check isn't really 365€, but rather around 430€, which is quite substantial.

Regarding bad drivers, issues may happen both with NV and AMD.
Recently I've been testing 280X CFX and they worked kinda okeyish. There were no greater issues except for 2 games - stuttering in Diablo 3 was unbearable, and I had some graphics artifacts in BF4, varying between drivers and BF4 versions. The game was unplayable with vsync on do to excessive stuttering and total card desynchronization, but with vsync off it was very smooth.

ShadowPlay - while it's a nice feature, similar effect can be achieved with MSI Afterburner using virtually any card. Unwinder has done a remarkable job, and game recording works well, it's easy, and puts very little stress on your rig.

Ryu5uzaku
Senior Member