"Since we last saw a 290X a couple of things have changed. Firstly the market has seen the launch of custom cooled cards, something which helps to maximise performance on this GPU, and AMD have managed to get Mantle out of the door. On the first point the XFX version of the R9 290X is an impressive example of this product. The cooler knocks a significant number of degrees off the reference design while minimising noise levels.
Mantle is of course big news in the GPU world and while it is currently limited to one title, it does offer significant potential to change the performance landscape. In Battlefield 4 for example AMD are quoting gains of around 40% on some systems, specifically those with low end and mainstream CPUs. So while our results did see some gains, and every extra FPS is appreciated, it is a technology which currently benefits those not on enthusiast parts more than this product."
