What is the difference between the Vapor-X and the Tri-X cards? They look the same and have the same core clocks. Prices are different though...
1985245
There are a few differences: The Tri-Xs I'm seeing have a core speed of 1000MHz and the Vapor-X comes in at 1030. The Tri-X has a slower memory clock than the Vapor-X. Tri-X is 5.2GHz and the Vapor-X is 5.6GHz shipped. Vapor does have a different kind of heat sink than the Tri. The fan configuration is the same. The Vapor heat sink should allow for a higher max clock of the memory and core. The Tri-X is a reference PCB and the Vapor is a custom. This usually makes the video card longer but the heat sink is the same length for these 2. The Tri-X uses the reference parts on the PCB and the Vapor uses custom parts. This is most notable with the voltage controllers. I compared these 2 reviews to come up with the differences listed above: Tri-X: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7601/sapphire-radeon-r9-290-review-our-first-custom-cooled-290 Vapor-X: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2014/06/05/sapphire-radeon-r9-290-vapor-x-oc-review/1 Bottom line: Buy the Vapor if you want and expect to push the hardware past the factory OC. Buy the Tri-X if you're happy with the factory OC or if you're planning on replacing the heat sink with something else like a full coverage water block.
1379880
-Very minimal performance loss if ANY at all will be seen. I have posted this sites testing results that are specifically tailored to this question as well as the link to the full article that is easy to read and understand in layman's terms. I also provides comprehensive graphs showing the tests results. "Conclusion: Our testing has pretty clearly shown that for gaming using either PCI-E 2.0 or PCI-E 3.0 will give you nearly identical performance. Oddly, in some benchmarks PCI-E 2.0 was actually faster than PCI-E 3.0. At the same time, x16 was not consistantly faster than x8. Again, x8 was actually faster than x16 in many cases. So unless you care about getting up to 1.5 FPS better performance, you might actually want to manually set your video cards to operate at x8 speeds - although we really would not recommend doing so. This isn't to say that PCI-E 3.0 is not faster than PCI-E 2.0, or that x16 is the same as x8, but rather that current video cards and games are simply not able to utilize the additional bandwidth they provide. In fact, we recently showed that the performance of a Xeon Phi card is greatly reduced if you run it at x8 speeds in the blog post Performance of Xeon Phi on PCIe x8. While we recommend using the latest PCI-E revision whenever possible, if your motherboard or video card only supports PCI-E 2.0 our results show that this really is not a problem. At the same time, if you want to install a sound card into your Z87 system but doing so would limit your video card to x8 speeds, that is also not a very big problem. At most you may see ~1.5 FPS drop in performance, but that change is so small that it is very unlikely to ever be noticeable." For the full article here: http://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Impact-of-PCI-E-Speed-on-Gaming-Performance-518/
982408
the ftw version is clocked higher so you get more power out of cores, a regular is around 863mhz and the ftw is around 980mhz, and then boosted from a regular 900mhz to around 1033mhz. this all enables the cards to do tessellations faster thus increased performance. and yeah, its a single.
2097681
This card has a slightly higher clock speed (base/boost:1072/1137 versus base/boost:1046/1111) and better cooling. Everything else is the same performance and feature-wise.
2237168
If you want a quiet or cool card stay far away from the AMD R9 series. The reference R9 290x sounds like a leaf blower sometimes when I would game with eyefinity. I ended up selling it for a GTX 970.
752985
The base evga and Asus cards are identical, although the superclocked/ signature editions are a few percent faster and often still cheaper than the Asus one on here.
1183412
that doesn't explain the difference between the two identical cards, read OP........
1178660
I can only comment on the Asus...The Gigabyte does have the tri fan setup and supposedly quiet and runs cool. For me I have a large plexiglass window and asthetics are important and didn't like the lattice on the side and the Asus worked with my current theme. The Asus over clocks to 1300mhz and 8000mhz on the vram raising the voltage up to 1.21v. Runs not over 81*C. Not sure what the Gigabyte card does. Although I did have to RMA the Asus card twice for no display and was not an easy process. I now have the Asus GTX 770 4GB.
589381
It doesn't look much different to me except for that eyefinity technology but it claims to do the same thing. I had to put a new power supply in with my Video Card, a Corsair 600W. The one you're looking at only requires 300W or better so you wouldn't have to swap out your power supply unless you're looking for AMD Crossfire technology, you'll have to go to a 400W power supply. My video card is very big and take up a lot of room. For the money, it looks like you have a found a comparable card for $100 less. I have had no problems for a year with my card and just this past Sunday, removed it and put it in my new PC with no issues. Good luck sir.
2177453
The 980 has a few more features than the 970 (2 available temperature settings, etc). If you pull up the specifications for each you should see a couple more listed for the 980. We went with the 970 because it was more affordable and worked perfectly for our needs.
787043
The Sapphire Tri-X is both quieter and cooler than the Asus DC2 card. Check out PcPer, they have both cards reviewed and compared.
994186
accelero s1 passive cooler also a good choice...drop 35 deg. off of stock. For the money the XFX is the best card for the buck...if you got the XXX version. ....and do you care what the card looks like in the case, or on your screen?
886471
I am not sure why you would by this instead GTX 770 for just $20 more. If I had that option, I would have done that too. I had a EVGA GTX 670 in my machine but it burnt up due to my lack of cleaning the dust from the card. Make sure you vacuum and than blow air through your machine at least once a month. I have pets so I have to do it twice a month.
546697
Crossfiring two of these cards will equal a 7970 and the new Catalyst drivers have gotten rid of the microstutter. With the current prices of 7950s 7970s, and 280X units I think I would sell this card and replace it with a newer version unless you can get another one at a great price.P.S. This card will still keep up with all current games without dragging if you have a good rig to support it. Another poster says CF is a good deal if under $250.00. I don't agre, under $130.00 is about right. AMD cards are getting less expensive fast with the mining craze dying out.
1012599
I am looking to upgrade my old card to use with this board. I won't go past $200 for a single card so the best option might be a GTX660 (Nvidia). I'm sure you can get a better card that won't be bottlenecked, but some people i know who bought this board also bought the GTX560 series cards. Hope I helped.
745631
I would opt for the msi card especially if you plan on overclocking. The triple over voltage of the msi card will give you higher stable overclocks. It also runs extremely silent compared to the evga blower style cooling system. Just my two cents :).
2104158
One is Superclocked and for the money is better to get from EVGA IMHO... it will not make a WORLD of difference but EVGA Superclocked Edition still runs very cool and no extra power needed... and will give just ever so slightly smoother gameplay.... I almost always buy the EVGA Superclocks because the price isn't usually anymore and even SOMETIMES less than standard!!! Plus I dont' like to Overclock myself so the little extra that a product can be overclocked will come out of the boxed overclocked.