WHAAA? Sapphire recently announced a 290X model graphics card with 8 gigabytes of VRAM. Holy shit. I have a feeling that they're really trying to stab at Nvidia's Titan card. I'm extremely excited for this card's potential, especially since the R9 series cards are quite competitive. I think Sapphire made a smart move with the 8 gig card, especially since Nvidia really fucked up with the false advertising of their GTX 970's VRAM.
Sapphiretech.com wrote:
The SAPPHIRE R9 290X 8GB Vapor-X OC adds an industry leading 8GB frame buffer to the company’s award winning cooling technologies and a factory overclock to deliver best in class performance with very low noise.
The new Vapor-X cooler uses SAPPHIRE’s latest and highly acclaimed Tri-X structure comprising five heatpipes and three efficient fans. The core heatpipe is an industry leading 10mm pipe, flanked by two 8mm pipes and two 6mm pipes ensuring even heat distribution across the cooler. The three 90mm fans use aerofoil section blades for maximum airflow with minimum noise, and are each equipped with two sets of dust repelling ball bearings.
To deliver sufficient power for maximum performance, the Vapor-X series uses Digital Power control and a new Aero10 VRM section delivering 10-phase power with high power Direct-FET technology to the GPU, memory and control circuitry. The power design uses the latest version of SAPPHIRE Black Diamond chokes, so called because they feature a black ferrite cooler for cool running and better efficiency. High reliability solid electrolyte capacitors are used throughout. The Aero10gets its name because the layout of the 10-phase power circuits, chokes and the dedicated FET cooler resembles the appearance of a high performance engine.
Full article here:
http://www.sapphiretech.com/presentation/product/product_index.aspx?cid=1&gid=3&sgid=1227&pid=2394&psn=000101&lid=1