ASUS R9 290X Matrix Platinum Review

Test Setup

ASUS R9 290X Matrix
Intel Core i7-3960X @ 4.6GHz
ASUS Rampage IV Extreme
Corsair Dominator Platinum
Corsair AX1200i
Corsair Neutron GTX
Corsair H100i
Windows 7 x64

Overclocking

We’re almost disappointed in the overclocking capabilities of the Matrix. We know that, to some degree, the silicon lottery plays a part but we still hoped to see the Matrix going far beyond the 1150MHz that is nearly guaranteed to be extracted from the Hawaii GPU. Even the memory isn’t the most blisteringly fast we’ve seen. This is almost the antithesis of the results we obtained from the GTX780Ti Matrix, which was spectacular.

Temperatures

Of course the Radeon GPU is monumentally hotter than the nVidia equivalent but even still the Matrix is hardly impressive. ASUS’ own DCU II model is cooler, and the MSI Lightning 290X is so much cooler (20°C) that it’s off the bottom of the graph. Hmm.