MSI R9 290 Gaming Review

[tinytomlogan]

The big problem with the R9 290 was the heat, so does the MSI Twin Frozr unleash the beast?


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[Excalabur50]

Another quality review and what an amazing card for the price and to see the numbers jump with Mantle....just wow, going to be interesting to see how much further Mantle goes as the technology matures

[WYP]

Good review as always Tom.

mantle gave a good increase in performance there, especially given the CPU your using.
Only time will tell how much mantle will benefit gamers, lets hope Thief comes to market with full support for ALL GCN GPUs and works in Crossfire unlike BF4 at present.

One thing i will add here, the PCB on this MSI card is reference,so it is watercooling capable (checked by EK here), but also contains some of higher quality components compared to the reference card (MSI military class) and likely could be a higher binned chip.

Definitely worth considering for those water cooling or planning to watercool a 290, especially those who can't watercool immediately considering the stock card's noise levels and throttling. It also has a good looking backplate at stock

[Zoot]

MSi have really upped their game with the Twin Frozr coolers.

My old MSi GTX 560 with the Twin Frozr II cooler, while being fine when it's idle sounds like an aeroplane while gaming.

[Scainer]

Nice to see the overclock. Was just playing super safe with a 1047.

[AverageNinja]

That's one sexy card! AMD is back in the high-end competition

[SieB]

Looks like the Tri-X is still king of the third party coolers for the 290s.
Hottest I have seen mine go is 74*c and that was during TW2 running round a section where the GPU is at 100% most of the time for a good 30mins.

The MSI one definitely still does a good job though, one thing I did notice though is in the GPU-Z in the review says the MSI gaming has 72 GPixles and 180 GTexels. My Tri-X only has 60 GPixles and 160 GTexeles, GPU-Z may be reading it wrong? Current version is 0.7.7, I noticed the on in the review is version 0.7.4.

[flynnbo3]

Awesome review i have this coming in the next 3 weeks am so looking forward to gaming now

[Edge]

Gorgeous card.

Scan lists it as only £10 cheaper than the 780 counterpart though. Wouldn't say it's worth picking up over that (Unless you're a serious AMD fan).

[Peddeh]

I had to RMA 2 of these for dodgy (grinding noise from fans) In the end I called it a day and jumped to the green ship, having got my refund.

It's a great card though none the less, I probably just got 2 bad apples.