Sapphire reveal two 8GB R9 290X cards, the 290X Toxic and VapourX

[WYP]

Sapphire reveal two 8GB R9 290X cards, the 290X Toxic and VaporX

Two weeks ago we shown you the leaked 8GB R9 290X VaporX, Today at Cebit Sapphire have revealed not one but two different 8GB 290X cards.

Introducing the Sapphire R9 290X Toxic and R9 290X VaporX.

These limited edition cards are designed to outperform Nvidia's new Titan Black edition at ultra high resolutions. Clock speeds are yet to be confirmed but Sapphire say that these cards go through an extensive speed binning process so only the best cards can achieve Toxic or VaporX status.

Sapphire want the Toxic or VaporX cards to be the fastest R9 290X money can buy, so watch out MSI as you lightning is going to get some competition soon enough.

Both cards offer a similar, if not identical, 2.5 slot cooler using 3 92mm fans, the VaporX cooler with blue accents and the Toxic with an orange accent. Both cards also offer a large back plate with VaporX and Toxic branding respectively, a few pics are shown below.

The prices of both these cards are unconfirmed at present, but expect it to be high given the additional ram costs and the large binning process Sapphire are going through to bring these cards to market.

Will these premium cards from sapphire become the new kings of the hill? only time will tell.

Source - Videocardz

 

[SieB]

8GB of RAM, cherry picked cores and one of the best if not the best air cooler for a 290? Dayum, this gunna be interesting

Looking forward to seeing how these badboys perform.

 

[StaticFX]

..... speechless!

 

[barnsley]

I bet you that the firepro announcement will basically be the firepro version of this. Obviously with the terrible stock cooling.

These cards are amazing and I'd love one :wub:
Probably going to cost too much though.

 

[Jaytec359]

Soon the question will be:
'My gaming computer has 8gb'....'8gb of what? ram or vram?'

Just imagine two of these beasts in crossfire.
That 16GB of juicy vram running multiple 4k monitors on maximum texture settings.

 

[theDTP]

Couldn't help but notice 'vapor' was spelled "vapour" all over the place ^_^

 

[Mikilox]

Its Vapor-X not Vapour... Anyways, I think these cards will be expensive af just because mjners and the VRAM. I wish they made a cheap version. A version that has 2GB VRAM and atleast ghz of core clock

 

[TheLostOne]

Oh dear Would really x 1000 have the blue one..... but my wallet is full of emptiness

 

[WYP]

Couldn't help but notice 'vapor' was spelled "vapour" all over the place ^_^

Yeah, it's now changed to Vapor now, it dis funny how different countries spell words differently. Ugh, thank god nobody makes an Aluminium Edition LOL.

Its Vapor-X not Vapour... Anyways, I think these cards will be expensive af just because mjners and the VRAM. I wish they made a cheap version. A version that has 2GB VRAM and atleast ghz of core clock

I disagree, miners want good performance per dollar/watt, these cards will be horribly expensive and consume additional power, they would be terrible for mining in terms of paying for itself.

AMD would need to give the go ahead for a "cheap version" of the card to be released, AMD could make a cut down R9 290 with 3GB of ram at some point (R9 280XT??), ahh the Tahiti cards were great last gen.

 

[MadShadow]

Looks promising! I don't like the flashy cooler though...

 

[Excalabur50]

So the game changes again? Me LIKEEEE

 

[Kaapstad]

They are not going to outperform the Titan Black at ultra high resolutions.

The Hawaii chips are just not fast enough to compete with a full fat GK110.

To fully use that 8GB of vram as well, you are going to need 4 of these cards on waterblocks running resolutions beyond 4K.

 

[Edge]

Is the memory bandwidth equal to the normal 290x? I have doubts all that VRAM will be usable. If so though, these will wreck 4k.

Soon the question will be:
'My gaming computer has 8gb'....'8gb of what? ram or vram?'

Just imagine two of these beasts in crossfire.
That 16GB of juicy vram running multiple 4k monitors on maximum texture settings.

Crossfire cards share VRAM, you don't add them together.

 

[Kaapstad]

Is the memory bandwidth equal to the normal 290x? I have doubts all that VRAM will be usable. If so though, these will wreck 4k.

They can not change the 512 bit bus on the GPU and the other thing that could effect it is the VRAM clockspeed. Unfortunately all other things being equal 8gb overclocks worse than 4gb.

Having said that they could use some decent Samsung VRAM chips and run it at a good clockspeed.

 

[RamboOC]

Soon the question will be:
'My gaming computer has 8gb'....'8gb of what? ram or vram?'

Just imagine two of these beasts in crossfire.
That 16GB of juicy vram running multiple 4k monitors on maximum texture settings.

Wrong. If you crossfire the amout of total vram will still be 8gb

 

[SeekaX]

uhm. driving one 4K monitor will be hard with a 290x and one 4K Monitor doesn't pull 8GB VRAM. so you basically have to get more than one to make it worth your while.
also the backplate doesn't appeal to me, the cooler looks nice though.
well, full on epeen, look at my 8GB VRAM. it sure does take on the titan in that aspect.

 

[Vicey]

At this point they should just ship the card with a waterblock already on it. If you're spending all this money to get that class of card you're not going to air cool it surely.

 

[Timg555]

I definitely need a pair of the VaporX cards their color scheme would go great with my current build.

 

[Damien c]

Will be interesting to see what the reviews are like on this and actually how much of the Vram gets used.