The AMD Radeon R9 290x and R9 290 both have great performance when gaming, but the cards run notoriously hot. AMD says that the cards were designed to run at 94C and that there is nothing wrong with running that high, but many enthusiasts think otherwise and have waited for the add-in board partners to come out with custom cards that have aftermarket coolers. Those cards are just now starting to trickle out and we got our hands on the yet to be released ASUS Radeon R9 290X DirectCU II and the Sapphire Radeon R9 290X Tri-X.