Liquid cooling solves the thermal challenges presented by AMD's Hawaii GPU much more elegantly than a big heat sink and loud fan. But the requisite parts also add cost. Does VisionTek's CryoVenom R9 290 deliver maximum performance at a fair price?
Enthusiasts are the folks who appreciate the benefits of lower temperatures, and most of us also put high value on less noise, too. The fight between cooling performance and acoustic pollution became particularly acute in AMD’s Radeon R9 290 graphics cards. More so, even, when the company was forced to override its firmware-based fan ramp through a driver in order to deliver consistent clock rates.
Where we once saw performance variance as large as 15% from one board to the next, that “fix” still has us finding variations up to 5% caused by slight changes in room temperature.
Most of us would pay to avoid those issues, and the $400 Radeon R9 290 was supposed to be cheap enough to encourage value-minded adoption of high-end graphics hardware. But in our search for an answer to the 290’s reference cooling woes, many of us forget to ask the right question: how much would we be willing to spend on better performance and lower noise, while giving up our warranty coverage? Based on today's online prices, water block manufacturer EK thinks the answer is around $120 (add $30 for the back cover).
VisionTek does its math a little differently. On the product page of its CryoVenom R9 290, the company values your time building a water-cooled R9 290 at $100, as you also sacrifice its warranty. The marketing gets a little fuzzier as VisionTek calculates that a $120 cooler, a $30 back cover, and your $100 of time pushes the cost of a $400 Radeon R9 290 to $651.
Even if you disagree with those numbers, though, a do-it-yourself configuration with an original $400 card, the EK cooler, and the company's backplate would cost at least as much as the original $550 VisionTek CryoVenom R9 290.
Right now, some of you are probably thinking that a $550 liquid-cooled Radeon R9 290 would be one heck of a deal in a market loaded with $600 air-cooled cards, and you’d be right. Acknowledging the crazy market pricing for Hawaii-based Radeons, VisionTek admits it needs to charge more to cover cost increases on certain board components. As a result, the company recently bumped its CryoVenom up to $600 for new orders.
As of this writing, the CryoVenom R9 290 isn't available to order, though. So, there's no way for us to know if that $600 price tag is going to hold up over time. What we do know is that the cheapest R9 290s go for $550 on Newegg, so you'd still be getting $150 worth of liquid-cooling equipment and a one-year warranty at a substantial discount. But again, that's simply not something we can vouch for on a card you can't buy right now.
Our CryoVenom R9 290 arrived in the limited-edition wooden crate you saw on the previous page. VisionTek tells us that this could eventually become part of a collector's edition of the board with some additional accessories. However, you should expect the card you buy to show up in a cardboard box instead.
VisionTek uses the acrylic-covered version of EK’s FC R9-290X to show off its nickel-plated copper base. What you get is slightly pricier and more corrosion-resistant than its bare-copper sibling. This also gives VisionTek the perfect place for its logo.
EK’s aluminum back cover is also emblazoned with VisionTek branding.
We appreciate that EK does a good job building single-slot coolers. But the Radeon R9 290 itself still requires a dual-slot form factor to expose its second DVI output.
Our CryoVenom R9 290 arrived in the limited-edition wooden crate you saw on the previous page. VisionTek tells us that this could eventually become part of a collector's edition of the board with some additional accessories. However, you should expect the card you buy to show up in a cardboard box instead.VisionTek uses the acrylic-covered version of EK’s FC R9-290X to show off its nickel-plated copper base. What you get is slightly pricier and more corrosion-resistant than its bare-copper sibling. This also gives VisionTek the perfect place for its logo.
EK’s aluminum back cover is also emblazoned with VisionTek branding.
We appreciate that EK does a good job building single-slot coolers. But the Radeon R9 290 itself still requires a dual-slot form factor to expose its second DVI output.
Effective overclocking is one of the reasons you'd want the liquid-cooled CryoVenom R9 290. There are, of course, overclockable air-cooled cards as well; you simply have to crank their fans up in order to exploit their higher frequency ceilings. VisionTek's CryoVenom R9 290 carries over AMD's reference 947 MHz core clock rate with DDR3-5000 memory. It's up to us to figure out how far Hawaii can be pushed manually.
Effective overclocking is one of the reasons you'd want the liquid-cooled CryoVenom R9 290. There are, of course, overclockable air-cooled cards as well; you simply have to crank their fans up in order to exploit their higher frequency ceilings. VisionTek's CryoVenom R9 290 carries over AMD's reference 947 MHz core clock rate with DDR3-5000 memory. It's up to us to figure out how far Hawaii can be pushed manually.
Graphics guru Chris Angelini strongly recommended an upgrade from AMD’s fleshed-out Catalyst 13.12 graphics drivers used in PowerColor LCS AXR9 290X: Water Makes Hawaii Comfortable to a beta version of Catalyst 14.1. A few benchmarks revealed why, as the new driver boosted the performance of the lower-model R9 290 beyond the previous 290X results.
| Test System Configuration | |
|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Core i7-4770K (Haswell): 3.5 to 3.9 GHz, 8 MB shared L3 cache, LGA 1150 Overclocked to 4.5 GHz, 1.25 V at 100 MHz BCLK |
| Motherboard | Asus Z87 Pro: Intel Z87 Express, UEFI 1707 (12/13/2013) |
| Reference Graphics | Sapphire R9 290 (100362SR): 947 MHz GPU, 4 GB GDDR5-5000 |
| RAM | Mushkin Redline Ridgeback 997121R 16 GB Dual-Channel Kit 2 x 8 GB XMP-2133 CAS 9-11-11-28, 1.65 V |
| Hard Drive | Samsung 840 Pro MZ-7PD256, 256 GB SSD |
| CPU Cooling | Thermalright MUX-120 w/Zalman ZM-STG1 Paste |
| Case | Nanoxia Deep Silence 1 |
| Sound | Integrated HD Audio |
| Network | Integrated Gigabit Networking |
| Power | Seasonic X760 SS-760KM: ATX12V v2.3, EPS12V, 80 PLUS Gold |
| System Software | |
| OS | Microsoft Windows 8 Professional RTM x64 |
| Graphics | AMD Catalyst 14.1 beta 1.6 |
Main system components are carried over from the LCS AXR9 290X review, except for the part that matters most: a retail-purchased Sapphire Radeon R9 290 (with reference cooling) replaces the air-cooled R9 290X in this comparison of VisionTek’s CryoVenom R9 290.
Because AMD’s driver attempts to keep fan speed under 60% and underclocks the GPU when its temperature climbs to 94° Celsius, air-cooled cards are highly impacted by ambient temperature. Unfortunately, it's still super cold here, and I'm unable to keep my lab above 19 °C, which means that the air-cooled card in this comparison will consistently perform better than it would in a more typical 21 to 24 °C gaming room.
| 3D Game Benchmarks | |
|---|---|
| Arma 3 | Version 1.08.113494, 30-Sec. Fraps "Infantry Showcase" Test Set 1: Standard Preset, No AA, Standard AF Test Set 2: Ultra Preset, 8x FSAA, Ultra AF |
| Battlefield 4 | Version 1.0.0.1, DirectX 11, 100-Sec. Fraps "Tashgar" Test Set 1: High Quality Preset, No AA, 4X AF, SSAO Test Set 2: Ultra Quality Preset, 4X MSAA, 16X AF, HBAO |
| Far Cry 3 | V. 1.05, DirectX 11, 50-sec. Fraps "Amanaki Outpost" Test Set 1: High Quality, No AA, Standard ATC., SSAO Test Set 2: Ultra Quality, 4x MSAA, Enhanced ATC, HDAO |
| F1 2012 | Steam version, in-game benchmark Test Set 1: High Quality Preset, No AA Test Set 2: Ultra Quality Preset, 8x AA |
| Metro: Last Light | Steam version, Built-In Benchmark, "Frontline" Scene Test Set 1: DX11, Med Quality, 4x AF, Low Blur, No SSAA, No Tesselation, No PhysX Test Set 2: DX11, High Quality, 16x AF, Normal Blur, SSAA, Tesselation Normal, No PhysX |
| Tomb Raider | Steam version, Built-In Benchmark Test Set 1: High Quality Preset (8x AF, FXAA), Motion Blur, Screen Effects Test Set 2: Ultimate Quality, (16x AF, FXAA), Tesselation, TressFX |
| Synthetic Benchmarks | |
| 3DMark Professional | Version 1.1, SystemInfo 4.17.0.0, Fire Strike Benchmark (Extreme Off/On) |
Benchmark charts look a little bare with only two data points on them. When I reviewed my last water-cooled card, I filled-out those graphs with four unique configurations, including the Quiet and Uber firmware switch settings. This made particular sense in that story because PowerColor's LCS AXR9 290X's Uber mode actually applies an overclock.
VisionTek's CryoVenom R9 290 doesn't offer that provision, and AMD recently narrowed the difference between air-cooled cards by overriding the Quiet mode's fan speed ceiling using its Catalyst driver. Extensive comparisons between the two BIOS settings suggest that there's really no performance difference between them, though Quiet mode does drop to lower power consumption at idle.
So, I decided to start today's review with overclocking, which lets me use the factory and overclocked settings to generate some additional benchmark results.
The air-cooled, retail-purchased Radeon R9 290 from Sapphire is the card to beat for VisionTek's liquid-cooled contender. Using MSI Afterburner, I set the maximum power limit (+50%) and MSI’s custom fan curve (100% at 90 °C) to keep clock rates steady. But I was only able to hit 1100 MHz at those settings. Still, it’s a steady 1100 MHz, which is roughly 50% faster the frequency floor you'll see when the R9 290 throttles all the way down.
I’m incredibly critical of marketing material, so I was dubious of this quote from VisionTek’s product description:
Obtaining maximum performance from the CryoVenom R9 290 couldn’t be easier. You just enter the specifications from the included build sheet in the Catalyst Control Center and in less than a minute, the CryoVenom R9 290 can safely deliver up to 1175 MHz GPU speed...a 24% increase from the stock setting of 947 MHz. The memory clock speed is also increased to 1450 MHz...16% faster than the 1250 MHz stock setting.
So, what did I get?
Hitting a 1160 MHz core clock and 1440 MHz GDDR5 memory frequency is still in the neighborhood of what I was told to expect. Then again, I'm a little fussier than the marketing folks when it comes to things like exact specs and game stability. I did, after all, increase the power limit by 50% to prevent the card from throttling back the instant I needed its maximum performance.
Benchmarking:
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