Asus R9 290X and R9 290 DirectCU II graphics cards launched in India

Asus has announced the launch of the R9 290X DirectCU II and R9 290 DirectCU II graphics cards. These cards use Asus' own copper heatsink and fan design, rather than AMD's reference design which came on its earlier Radeon R9 series cards. The cards are priced at Rs. 52,000 and Rs. 42,000 respectively.

The AMD Radeon R9 290X and R9 290 GPUs were introduced in November 2013, but cards based on the reference design were criticized  for heating up and requiring the use of loud fans to cool them. The new Asus cards promise to eliminate this problem thanks to the cooler, quieter DirectCU II cooler which, according to the company, make both the R9 290X and R9 290 run up to 20 percent cooler and up to three times quieter than reference designs.

Asus' trademark cooler design has been seen before on other graphics cards. It uses 10mm copper cooling pipes which are placed in direct contact with a card's GPU so heat is dissipated quickly and efficiently. With this version, Asus is introducing a new fan, dubbed "CoolTech", which uses a hybrid blade and bearing design that combines the strengths of radial blowers and traditional blades to improve airflow and thus reduce noise.

Other tweaks Asus has made to the reference design include the use of eight-phase voltage regulation circuitry to reduces power noise by 30 percent and improve energy efficiency by 15 percent, and GPU Tweak, a software tool that allows quick changes to settings including RAM speeds, fan speeds and power consumption thresholds. Users can thus push the performance of their cards in a safe environment without fear of damaging any components.

The R9 290X has a core speed of 1050MHz, while the R9 290 is clocked at 1000MHz. Both cards come with 4GB of GDDR5 video memory.

The complete specifications are as follows:

R9290X-DC2OC-4GD5
AMD Radeon R9 290X
PCI Express 3.0
4096MB GDDR5 memory
1050MHz core speed
5400MHz (1350MHz GDDR5) memory clock
2 x Dual-link DVI-D output
1 x HDMI output
1 x DisplayPort output

R9290-DC2OC-4GD5
AMD Radeon R9 290
PCI Express 3.0
4096MB GDDR5 memory
1000MHz core speed
5040MHz (1260MHz GDDR5) memory clock
2 x Dual-link DVI-D output
1 x HDMI output
1 x DisplayPort output