The first thing you will come to realise when shopping for the R9-285 is that there are no reference designs per say. This is especially so with the cooling as each manufacturer will adapt there own existing designs to fit onto the new card. In this case, Sapphire have made use of there Dual-X cooler which as the name suggests, uses twin fans as the basis for moving air over the heatsink hidden away beneath. It has to be said that the contrasting metallic purple and matt black design is very attractive and is a definite break from the normal black/red designs that are now common place among custom cooling designs.


The good news continues here too as Sapphire have had the foresight to ensure the power circuit board is black. Any PCB other than black is a pet hate of ours at Vortez, not because we have a fondness for black but because pcb colouration can disrupt a PC's colour scheme which is becoming almost as important as the components contained within.


Rather than having the heatpipe exposed on the outer/visible edge, Sapphire have made sure the neat design is continued and hidden away the obtrusiveness of the cooling.


The graphics card measures 264(L) X113(W) X 34(H) mm making this a twin port cooler that is a little shorter on average than the R9-280 which is sure to please the mATX users among us.


the standard array of ports are available on the R9-285:
1 x HDMI (with 3D)
1 x DisplayPort 1.2
1 x Dual-Link DVI-D
1 x Dual-Link DVI-I


Power is supplied through twin 75W 6-pin PCIe cables. Sapphire recommend a PSU capable of 500W for a single GPU system and 850W for Crossire-X.


Overall, the Sapphire card impressed visually. We especially liked the purple and black theme Sapphire have going on with this card which is a refreshing and welcome change. Another bonus is the reduction in length how this card will still take up two motherboard slots.

Let's take a closer look...