There are quite a few custom Radeon R9 290 graphics cards available meanwhile and today we are going to have a look at the ASUS one, the Radeon R9 290 DirectCU II OC. The Radeon R9 290 version is no different from other high-end DirectCU II cards from the manufacturer, you don't change a formula that works. The R9 290 DirectCU II OC features a custom PCB with a beefed up power design and is chilled by the latest version of the DirectCU II cooler. Other than the obvious the card has a factory overclocking on both the core and memory as well as a BIOS DIP switch allowing users to choose between a silent or a performance operation.

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Presentation

The new ASUS Radeon R9 290 DirectCU II OC graphics card features a custom PCB design, which received a beefed up power design, the quite famous DirectCU II cooler as well as a decent factory overclock. At a first glance it looks like the new R9 290 DirectCU II OC shares the same cooler as the R9 290X and the GTX 780 Ti DirectCU II series while the PCB is similar to the one on the R9 290X DirectCU II series, which are definitely good starting points.



Since this is the DirectCU II OC version of the ASUS Radeon R9 290 series, the graphics card comes with a decent factory overclock. While the reference AMD Radeon R9 290 GPU is set to work at up to 947 MHz, the ASUS DirectCU II OC one works at 1'000 MHz. ASUS also decided to overclock the GDDR5 memory on its card from 1'000 MHz (4'000 MHz effective) to 1'260 MHz (5'040 MHz effective).

During our testing the ASUS Radeon R9 290 DirectCU II OC held 1'000 MHz most of the time while being under load. We have only experienced downclocking when running FurMark, where the GPU clock was going down to to 920 MHz with the temperature increase. We did not notice any throttling while gaming which is a very good point for the custom ASUS card compared to the reference cards which were throttling most of the time.

Specifications

	ASUS Radeon R9 290 DirectCU II OC	Radeon R9 290X	Radeon R9 280X
Chip	Hawaii Pro	Hawaii XT	Tahiti XT2/L
Process	28 nm	28 nm	28 nm
Transistors	6.20 billion	6.20 billion	4.31 billion
GPU clock	1'000 MHz	up to 1'000 MHz	1'000 MHz
Memory GDDR5	4'096 MB	4'096 MB	3'072 MB
Memory clock	1'260 (5'400) MHz	1'250 (5'000) MHz	1'500 (6'000) MHz
Memory interface	512 Bit	512 Bit	384 Bit
Memory bandwidth	322.6 GB/s	320.0 GB/s	288 GB/s
Shader Cores	2'560	2'816	2'048
TMUs	160	176	128
ROPs	64	64	32
PCB Type	Custom Design	Reference Design	Reference Design
Slots	2	2	2
Cooler	DirectCU II	AMD Reference	AMD Reference

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Page 1 - Presentation / Specifications	Page 11 - DIRT Showdown
Page 2 - The card	Page 12 - Far Cry 3
Page 3 - Photo Gallery / Delivery	Page 13 - Sleeping Dogs
Page 4 - Test Setup	Page 14 - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Page 5 - 3DMark Fire Strike	Page 15 - Metro: Last Light
Page 6 - Unigine Heaven 4.0	Page 16 - GTA V
Page 7 - BattleField 3	Page 17 - Power Consumption
Page 8 - Bioshock Infinite	Page 18 - Temperatures / Noise levels
Page 9 - Crysis 3	Page 19 - Performance/Price & Performance/Watt
Page 10 - Call of Duty Black Ops 2	Page 20 - Conclusion