Finally we can tell about Radeon R9 290X performance. The top AMD graphics card is competing now with very powerful rivals: Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 and GeForce GTX 780 Ti.

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<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">When we first took a look at AMD&rsquo;s Radeon R9 290 back in November, what we found was a card that was on the whole a mixed bag. On the one hand the amount of performance offered for the price was unequaled. AMD decided they wanted to take on the $500 GeForce GTX 780 and win, and they did just that by delivering performance better than the GTX 780 for just $400. This made 290 a very potent card for gamers still looking for a value at the high-end.</span></span></p> <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">On the other hand AMD had to make significant sacrifices elsewhere to get there. AMD&rsquo;s reference cooler already struggled to keep the 290X without generating excessive noise, and for the 290 AMD needed to turn up the fan speed even further in order to ensure the 290&rsquo;s average performance was very close to its maximum performance. The end result was that while the reference 290 was fast it was also obnoxiously loud, especially in comparison to the high-end cards of the last few years. Ultimately this meant that for buyers concerned about noise the options available were either to take a performance reduction or pay quite a bit more for a GTX 780.</span></span></p> <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">With that said, we have known since that first day that the stories of the 290 and 290X weren&rsquo;t yet complete. While the reference cards set the bar for performance and (for better or worse) drive the overall perception of the series, the modern board partner system means that in time we can look forward to partners eventually releasing semi-custom and fully-custom cards, which use custom coolers and custom boards respectively. Customization allows the board partners to differentiate from each other by designing cards around different capabilities &ndash; be it size, cooling, or overclocking &ndash; in the process creating a wide spectrum of cards for a wide spectrum of use cases. Or with respect to the 290 in particular, customization offers partners a chance to go back and try to improve on the reference 290&rsquo;s weakness, its noisy cooler.</span></span></p> <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Ever since the 290 review there has been a lot of chatter and questions about when we&rsquo;d see the first customized cards show up, and the answer is that customized cards are finally here. There are already a handful of models on the shelves now with a number more to arrive over the next few weeks, and over the coming weeks we&rsquo;ll be taking a look at several of those models. The first such card we&rsquo;ll be looking at is Sapphire&rsquo;s first customized card, the Sapphire Radeon R9 290 Tri-X OC.</span></span></p> <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/7601/sapphire-radeon-r9-290-review-our-first-custom-cooled-290" target="_blank">Read more...</a></span></p>

We had tested one of the most interesting GeForce 760 graphics card from MSI. The card has exciting hardware and a very good performance which looks like a GeForce GTX 770.

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<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size: small;">The&nbsp;Radeon 200 series&nbsp;was a different kind of launch from AMD than anything we&rsquo;ve seen from them before. The slow development of the next generation of manufacturing processes from fab partner TSMC has required both AMD and NVIDIA to get a bit creative in how they want to roll out products, along with how they want to promote and position those products. Whereas in previous years we&rsquo;d seen one or both firms roll out a number of new GPUs, 2013 will be the year where we only see one new GPU from each, and those GPUs were at the high-end. This hasn&rsquo;t prevented AMD from bringing around new products or bringing down the price-to-performance ratio of their lineup, but it has required a different kind of launch than what they would do in previous years.</span></span></p> <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size: small;">For AMD, the new reality of doing another product cycle at 28nm has meant that AMD&rsquo;s product plans for the end of 2013 and 2014 have involved a lot of shifting of GPUs and prices. GCN is an architecture with long legs, and the GPUs cut from it being equally as long legged. So the company has set forth on a plan to introduce a new high-end GPU for the top of their market (the 290 series), while the mainstream and lower markets will receive new products based on existing GPUs. We&rsquo;ve already seen the first step of that process with the launch of the Radeon R9 280X, and now we&rsquo;re ready to take a look at the next step with the Radeon R9 270 series.</span></span></p> <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size: small;">The Radeon R9 270 series is composed of two products, the 270X and the 270, with the X indicating the higher performing part in AMD&rsquo;s new naming scheme. The 270X actually launched almost a month ago &ndash; a result of the 200 series launch blast its repurposed GPUs &ndash; while we&rsquo;re just now catching up to the 270 series today, with the launch of the lower tier R9 270. Both of these parts are based on AMD&rsquo;s venerable Pitcairn GPU, which post-shuffle is being moved from AMD&rsquo;s $200+ enthusiast cards to their sub-$200 mainstream cards. They are in essence the successors to the 7870 and 7850, the previous video card family that Pitcairn called home.</span></span></p> <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/7503/the-amd-radeon-r9-270x-270-review-feat-asus-his" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: small;">Read more...</span></a></p>

<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size: small;">When NVIDIA launched their first consumer GK110 card back in February with the&nbsp;GeForce GTX Titan, one of the interesting (if frustrating) aspects of the launch was that we knew we wouldn&rsquo;t be getting a &ldquo;complete&rdquo; GK110 card right away. GTX Titan was already chart-topping fast, easily clinching the crown for NVIDIA, but at the same time it was achieving those high marks with only 14 of GK110&rsquo;s 15 SMXes active. The 15<span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: 0; vertical-align: baseline; position: relative; top: -0.5em;">th</span>&nbsp;SMX, though representing just 7% of GK110&rsquo;s compute/geometry hardware, offered the promise of just a bit more performance out of GK110, and a promise that would have to wait to be fulfilled another day. For a number of reasons, NVIDIA would keep a little more performance in the tank in reserve for use in the future.</span></span></p> <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size: small;">Jumping forward 8 months to the past few weeks, and things have significantly changed in the high-end video card market. With the launch of AMD&rsquo;s new flagship video card, Radeon R9 290X, AMD has unveiled the means to once again compete with NVIDIA at the high end. And at the same time they have shown that they have the wherewithal to get into a fantastic, bloody price war for control of the high-end market. Right out of the gate 290X was fast enough to defeat GTX 780 and battle GTX Titan to a standstill, at a price hundreds of dollars cheaper than NVIDIA&rsquo;s flagship card. The outcome of this has been price drops all around, with GTX 780 shedding $150, GTX Titan being all but relegated to the professional side of &ldquo;prosumer,&rdquo; and an unexpectedly powerful&nbsp;Radeon R9 290&nbsp;practically starting the same process all over again just 2 weeks later.</span></span></p> <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size: small;">With that in mind, NVIDIA has long become accustomed to controlling the high-end market and the single-GPU performance crown. AMD and NVIDIA may go back and forth at times, but at the end of the day it&rsquo;s usually NVIDIA who comes out on top. So with AMD knocking at their door and eyeing what has been their crown, the time has come for NVIDIA to tap their reserve tank and to once again cement their hold. The time has come for GTX 780 Ti.</span></span></p> <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/7492/the-geforce-gtx-780-ti-review" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: small;">Read more...</span></a></p>

<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size: small;">When NVIDIA launched their first consumer GK110 card back in February with the&nbsp;GeForce GTX Titan, one of the interesting (if frustrating) aspects of the launch was that we knew we wouldn&rsquo;t be getting a &ldquo;complete&rdquo; GK110 card right away. GTX Titan was already chart-topping fast, easily clinching the crown for NVIDIA, but at the same time it was achieving those high marks with only 14 of GK110&rsquo;s 15 SMXes active. The 15<span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: 0; vertical-align: baseline; position: relative; top: -0.5em;">th</span>&nbsp;SMX, though representing just 7% of GK110&rsquo;s compute/geometry hardware, offered the promise of just a bit more performance out of GK110, and a promise that would have to wait to be fulfilled another day. For a number of reasons, NVIDIA would keep a little more performance in the tank in reserve for use in the future.</span></span></p> <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size: small;">Jumping forward 8 months to the past few weeks, and things have significantly changed in the high-end video card market. With the launch of AMD&rsquo;s new flagship video card, Radeon R9 290X, AMD has unveiled the means to once again compete with NVIDIA at the high end. And at the same time they have shown that they have the wherewithal to get into a fantastic, bloody price war for control of the high-end market. Right out of the gate 290X was fast enough to defeat GTX 780 and battle GTX Titan to a standstill, at a price hundreds of dollars cheaper than NVIDIA&rsquo;s flagship card. The outcome of this has been price drops all around, with GTX 780 shedding $150, GTX Titan being all but relegated to the professional side of &ldquo;prosumer,&rdquo; and an unexpectedly powerful&nbsp;Radeon R9 290&nbsp;practically starting the same process all over again just 2 weeks later.</span></span></p> <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size: small;">With that in mind, NVIDIA has long become accustomed to controlling the high-end market and the single-GPU performance crown. AMD and NVIDIA may go back and forth at times, but at the end of the day it&rsquo;s usually NVIDIA who comes out on top. So with AMD knocking at their door and eyeing what has been their crown, the time has come for NVIDIA to tap their reserve tank and to once again cement their hold. The time has come for GTX 780 Ti.</span></span></p> <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/7492/the-geforce-gtx-780-ti-review" target="_blank">Read more...</a></p>

<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">With the launch of AMD&rsquo;s&nbsp;Radeon R9 290X&nbsp;less than 2 weeks ago, the video card marketplace has become very active very quickly. The 290X not only reasserted AMD&rsquo;s right to fight for the video card performance crown, but in doing so it has triggered an avalanche of pricing and positioning changes that have affected both NVIDIA and AMD.</span></span></p> <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">NVIDIA for their part cut the price of the GTX 780 and GTX 770 to $500 and $330 respectively, repositioning the cards and giving them their first official price cuts since their spring launches. Meanwhile AMD has also made some changes, and although 290X is unaffected for the moment, 290 was affected before it even launched, receiving an arguably significant specification adjustment. Consequently with GTX 780&rsquo;s price cut being NVIDIA&rsquo;s counter to 290X, 290 has gone from just being a lower tier Hawaii card to also being AMD&rsquo;s counter-counter, and in the process has become a somewhat different card than what it was going to be just one week ago.</span></span></p> <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">But before we get ahead of ourselves, let&rsquo;s start at the beginning. With the successful launch of the 290X behind them, and the equally successful launch of their new flagship GPU Hawaii, AMD is ready to make their next move. Launching today will be the Radeon R9 290, the obligatory lower-tier part for AMD&rsquo;s new flagship lineup. Making the usual tradeoffs for a lower-tier part, AMD is cutting down on both the number of functional units and the clockspeeds, the typical methods for die harvesting, in exchange for a lower price. Now officially AMD has not announced the Radeon R9 290 in advance, but with listings for it having already gone up&nbsp;</span></span><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/7457/the-radeon-r9-290x-review/20" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(204, 9, 47);"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">on the same day as the 290X</span></span></a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">, it&rsquo;s something that everyone has been expecting.</span></span></p> <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">As always we&rsquo;ll offer a full breakdown of performance and other attributes in the following pages, but before we even begin with that we want to point out that the 290 is going to be one of AMD&rsquo;s most controversial and/or hotly debated launches in at least a couple of years. The merits of 290X were already hotly debated in some gaming circles for its noise relative to its performance and competition, and unfortunately 290 is going to be significantly worse in that respect. We&rsquo;ll have a full rundown in the following pages, but in a nutshell AMD has thrown caution into the wind in the name of maximizing performance.</span></span></p> <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/7481/the-amd-radeon-r9-290-review" target="_blank">Read more...</a></p>

<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size: small;">To say it&rsquo;s been a busy month for AMD is probably something of an understatement. After hosting a public GPU showcase in Hawaii just under a month ago, the company has already launched the first 5 cards in the Radeon 200 series &ndash; the 280X, 270X, 260X, 250, and 240 &ndash; and AMD isn&rsquo;t done yet. Riding a wave of anticipation and saving the best for last, today AMD is finally launching the Big Kahuna: the Radeon R9 290X.</span></span></p> <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size: small;">The 290X is not only the fastest card in AMD&rsquo;s 200 series lineup, but the 290 series in particular also contains the only new GPU in AMD&rsquo;s latest generation of video cards. Dubbed Hawaii, with the 290 series AMD is looking to have their second wind between manufacturing node launches. By taking what they learned from Tahiti and building a refined GPU against a much more mature 28nm process &ndash; something that also opens the door to a less conservative design &ndash; AMD has been able to build a bigger, better Tahiti that continues down the path laid out by their Graphics Core Next architecture while bringing some new features to the family.</span></span></p> <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size: small;">Bigger and better isn&rsquo;t just a figure of speech, either. The GPU really is bigger, and the performance is unquestionably better. After vying with NVIDIA for the GPU performance crown for the better part of a year, AMD fell out of the running for it earlier this year after the release of NVIDIA&rsquo;s GK110 powered GTX Titan, and now AMD wants that crown back.</span></span></p> <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/7457/the-radeon-r9-290x-review" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: small;">Read more...</span></a></p>

<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">With&nbsp;AMD&rsquo;s Radeon R9 280X&nbsp;being based on the company&rsquo;s now venerable and battle-tested Tahiti GPU, AMD&rsquo;s partners have wasted no time in releasing fully customized products for AMD&rsquo;s new lineup. Whether it&rsquo;s reusing a tried and true design from the 7970 and 7970 GHz Edtion, or coming out with a new design entirely, everyone is doing something to make their card unique. In fact you won&rsquo;t even find a reference card for the 280X launch; everything is custom from day one.</span></span></p> <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Of course it&rsquo;s not just boards and coolers that can be adjusted. With nearly 2 years knowledge on the performance characteristics and yield curves of the Tahiti GPU, partners aren&rsquo;t wasting any time in releasing aggressively clocked designs in their first salvo. We&rsquo;ve already seen Asus make their first move with their&nbsp;R9 280X DirectCU II TOP, and they won&rsquo;t be alone. But of all the designs being released in the next week for the 280X, none that we&rsquo;re aware of are quite as aggressive as what Sapphire will be going for with their 280X Toxic.</span></span></p> <p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 13px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; vertical-align: baseline; color: rgb(68, 68, 68); -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);"><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/7406/the-sapphire-r9-280x-toxic-review" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: small;">Read more...</span></a></p>

<p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arimo, sans-serif; line-height: 18px; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: 1px; background-color: rgb(246, 246, 246);">After being announced back at AMD's 2014 GPU Product Showcase, today AMD is finally launching the Radeon 200 series. Today we&rsquo;ll be looking at the new series in detail.</span></span></span></p> <p><a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/7400/the-radeon-r9-280x-review-feat-asus-xfx" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: small;">Read more...</span></a></p>