Power, Temperature and Noise
System-wide power consumption is right in line with expectations at 48 watts when idle and 343 watts when playing Far Cry 3.
The Vapor-X card is all about maximum cooling performance, and credit where it's due: others have had difficulty in taming AMD's top-of-the-range GPU, but Sapphire has had no such problems. 70ºC under load is not only exceptional for an R9 290X, it's actually the coolest card on show.
And the top-notch cooling performance doesn't come at the expense of fan noise. You can hear the Vapor-X card under load - as you'd expect from any triple-fan solution - but it isn't any louder than most other 290X designs and fan speed rarely exceeds 44 per cent. What we like is the fact that Sapphire's card is able to turn off two fans during light loads, making it the quietest in our lineup when idle.
