The XFX DD R9 290X 1000M is more or less what the reference R9 290X should have been all along; It is a lot quieter than the reference card and it offers superior performance.

The biggest selling point of the XFX card is of course the cooler, which allows it to make better use of the GPU even at stock clocks. We are happy to report that the XFX card managed to maintain a 1000MHz GPU clock throughout the test.

The Ghost 2.0 cooler delivers great performance, keeping the card about 17 degrees cooler than the reference cooler in most scenarios. If you care about aesthetics, the card looks great, too. We think it’s the best looking 290-series card to date, but that’s just our subjective opinion.

Although it is not silent, it is not too noisy even for long gaming sessions. In terms of noise, it is roughly on par with the GTX 780 Ti, which has a very good stock cooler.

Overall the XFX card on reference clocks delivers up to 11 percent performance boost over the reference R9 290X card with the Standard BIOS. In other words, it delivers Über performance without the noise.

There is some potential for overclocking, too, nothing spectacular but it can make a difference. Given its performance at stock clocks, we assume many users simply won’t bother anyway, since it is not easy to push AMD’s Hawaii to its limits with current games.

To sum up, the XFX card offers same performance as the R9 290X in Über mode, but thanks to its non-reference Double Dissipation cooler it stays quiet. In fact, it is quieter than the reference card in Normal mode. It is also worth mentioning the Battlefield 4 bundle. In case you were not willing to pull the trigger on the reference R9 290X due to its subpar cooler, we can easily recommend the XFX DD R9 290X 1000M as a very good alternative.