XFX Radeon R9 290 Double Dissipation Video Card Review

Temperature & Noise Testing

Temperatures are important to enthusiasts and gamers, so we took a bit of time and did some temperature testing on the XFX Double D R9 290 video card.

XFX Double Dissipation Radeon R9 290 4GB Temps:

At idle we got a respectable 33C and when gaming we hit a high of 93C, which is the thermal limit for this card. This means that between idle and load there is a 60C rise in temperatures and the fan speed went from 20% to 45%. GPU-Z shows that the XFX DD Radeon R9 290 video card had an GPU voltage of 0.984V at idle and 1.227V when at full load running 3D games. The cooling performance of the XFX Double Dissipation cooler wasn’t as good as we hoped for as the reference cooler runs at 93C. We were hoping that this aftermarket cooler would better cool the card.

Sound Testing

We test noise levels with an Extech sound level meter that has 1.5dB accuracy that meets Type 2 standards. This meter ranges from 35dB to 90dB on the low measurement range, which is perfect for us as our test room usually averages around 36dB. We measure the sound level two inches above the corner of the motherboard with ‘A’ frequency weighting. The microphone wind cover is used to make sure no wind is blowing across the microphone, which would seriously throw off the data.

The XFX Double D R9 290 was one of the quietest cards that we have tested in some time with a reading of 38.7 dB at idle and just 40.2dB at load. We are glad it runs so quiet, but we aren’t happy that it runs so quiet with the GPU running at 93C. The maximum fan speed on this card is 45% and would be nice to see the limit removed to help improve cooling as it wouldn’t hurt the noise levels that bad!