MSI R9 290 OC Gaming Edition Review (1600p, Ultra HD 4K)

1. Introduction2. MSI R9 290 OC Gaming Edition3. MSI R9 290 OC Gaming Edition (Super High Res Gallery)4. Testing Methodology5. Unigine Heaven Benchmark6. Unigine Valley Benchmark7. 3DMark Vantage8. 3DMark 119. 3DMark10. Alien V Predator (1600p)11. Alien V Predator (Ultra HD 4K)12. Sleeping Dogs (1600p)13. Sleeping Dogs (Ultra HD 4K)14. Total War: ROME 2 (1600p)15. Total War: ROME 2 (Ultra HD 4K)16. Dirt ShowDown (1600p)17. Dirt ShowDown (Ultra HD 4K)18. Tomb Raider (1600p)19. Tomb Raider (Ultra HD 4K)20. Metro: Last Light (1080p High)21. Metro Last Light (Ultra HD 4K)22. GRID 2 (1600p)23. GRID 2 (Ultra HD 4K)24. Splinter Cell Blacklist (1080p)25. Splinter Cell: Blacklist (Ultra HD 4K)26. Batman: Arkham Origins (Ultra HD 4K)27. Battlefield 4 (Ultra HD 4K)28. Thermal Dynamics29. Acoustics Performance30. Power Consumption31. Overclocking32. Closing Thoughts33. View All Pages

AMD's R9 290 and R9 290X have been well received by the gaming community over the last couple of months, especially those partner cards featuring enhanced coolers and clock speeds. Today we look at a solution that has received special treatment courtesy of MSI … their R9 290 Gaming Edition. How does it stack up?

Today we supplement our tests by analysing performance at 3840×2160 (4k HD) on the Asus PQ321QE. We acquired one of these screens for high end graphics card reviews. Last year this monitor cost £2,999.99, but (as we predicted) the prices are already dropping in 2014 … down to £2399.99 this month. Sure it is still a lot of money, but prices will continue to decrease, opening up the joys of 4K gaming to a wider audience.

Setting up this monitor is simple with both AMD and Nvidia hardware (via DisplayPort cable) and we didn’t experience any issues. To achieve a refresh rate of 60hz after the Forceware or Catalyst drivers were installed we enable the Multi Stream Transport mode within a submenu of the Asus PQ321QE.

MSI have overclocked their R9 290X from reference speeds of 947mhz to 977mhz although the memory is running at default clock speeds of 1,250mhz (5Gbps effective). The Hawaii core is built on the 28nm process and features 2560 shaders, 64 ROPS and 160 Texture Units. The 4GB of GDDR5 memory is connected via a 512 Bit interface.

We do like the MSI Dragon mascot, it features on the front of this box, along with the product naming.

The bundle includes some literature on the card, a software disc and information on the ‘Hybrid' BIOS switch which offers UEFI support. There are also some converter cables in the box.

We like the black appearance, especially with the sporty red accents along the top of the metal cooler. The distinctive MSI badge is visible in the center point of the cooler, between the large fans. The rear of the card is equipped with a backplate, which helps reduce operating temperatures.

The MSI R9 290 OC Gaming Edition takes power from a single 6 pin and 8 pin power connector. This is identical to the reference design.

There is no Crossfire connector on the R9 290. The 290 and 290x offer Bridgeless Crossfire capabilities. There is a BIOS switch in this area however, with UEFI support.

The card has a DVI-I, DVI-D, full sized HDMI and DisplayPort connectors.

R9 Series graphics cards can now support up to three HDMI/DVI displays for use with AMD Eyefinity technology. A set of displays which support identical timings is required to enable this feature. The display clocks and timing for this feature are configured at boot time.

As such, display hot‐plugging is not supported for the third HDMI/DVI connection. A reboot is required to enable three HDMI/DVI displays.

The MSI R9 290 OC is equipped with a formidable cooling system. The VRM's and memory are cooled via the heatsink and a dedicated plate underneath. MSI are using high grade SKHynix GDDR5 memory on this particular board. The cooler is nickel plated and comprises 5 thick heatpipes which run between two separate racks of aluminum fins.
On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the 24.5MP Nikon D3X camera and 24-70mm ED lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source. You can right click and ‘save as’ to your computer to view later.





Today we slot the MSI R9 290 OC Gaming Edition into a series of tests we have ran on other cards this week. We are using the latest AMD Catalyst 14.12 beta driver and the Nvidia ForceWare 334.89 driver.

We are using one of our brand new test rigs supplied by PCSPECIALIST and built to our specifications. If you want to read more about this, or are interested in buying the same Kitguru Test Rig, check out our article with links on this page.

We are featuring results today with an Apple 30 inch Cinema HD Display at 2560×1600 resolution and an Asus PQ321QE Ultra HD 4K screen running at 4K 3840 x 2160 resolution.

Room ambient was held at 23c throughout testing.

Comparison cards:
Sapphire R9 290X Tri-X OC (1,040mhz core / 1,300mhz memory)
AMD R9 290X (1000mhz core / 1,250mhz memory)
AMD R9 290 (947mhz core / 1,250mhz memory)
Palit JetStream GTX780 Ti OC (980mhz core / 1,750mhz memory)
Nvidia GTX780 Ti (876mhz core / 1,750mhz memory)
Nvidia GTX Titan (837mhz core / 1,502mhz memory)
Nvidia GTX780 (863mhz core / 1,502mhz memory)
MSI GTX780 Lightning (980mhz core / 1,502mhz memory)
Sapphire R9 280X Toxic Edition (1,150mhz core / 1,600mhz memory)
Palit GTX770 OC (1046mhz core / 1753mhz memory)

Software:
Windows 7 Enterprise 64 bit
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
Unigine Valley Benchmark
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
3DMark
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark

Games:
Sleeping Dogs
Total War: Rome 2
Dirt Showdown
Tomb Raider
Metro Last Light
GRID 2
Splinter Cell Blacklist
Batman Arkham Origins
Battlefield 4

All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform generally under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests games across five closely matched runs and then average out the results to get an accurate median figure. If we use scripted benchmarks, they are mentioned on the relevant page.Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset.

A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.

Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

• Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
• Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
• Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
• Multicore CPU support
• Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
• Powerful C++ API
• Comprehensive performance profiling system
• Flexible XML-based data structures

We use the settings shown above at 2560×1600.

Performance is good in this Direct X 11 benchmark, with the MSI R9 290 OC Gaming Edition averaging around 51 frames per second.
Valley Benchmark is a new GPU stress-testing tool from the developers of the very popular and highly acclaimed Heaven Benchmark. The forest-covered valley surrounded by vast mountains amazes with its scale from a bird’s-eye view and is extremely detailed down to every leaf and flower petal. This non-synthetic benchmark powered by the state-of-the art UNIGINE Engine showcases a comprehensive set of cutting-edge graphics technologies with a dynamic environment and fully interactive modes available to the end user.

We test with the settings above both at 2560×1600.

The MSI R9 290 OC Gaming Edition manages to slightly outperform the Nvidia GTX780 Reference board, averaging 59.4 frames per second.
Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7. This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.

The final score of 44,717 points is good, ahead of the reference card, and just behind the R9 290X in the Quiet Bios setting.
3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.

The MSI R9 290 OC Gaming Edition scores well in this benchmark, around 300 points ahead of the reference clocked Nvidia GTX Titan.
3DMark is an essential tool used by millions of gamers, hundreds of hardware review sites and many of the world’s leading manufacturers to measure PC gaming performance.

Futuremark say “Use it to test your PC’s limits and measure the impact of overclocking and tweaking your system. Search our massive results database and see how your PC compares or just admire the graphics and wonder why all PC games don’t look this good.

To get more out of your PC, put 3DMark in your PC.”

The MSI R9 290 OC Gaming Edition outperforms the MSI GTX780 Lighting, scoring 10,490 points in the graphics test.
Aliens V Predator has proved to be a big seller since the release and Sega have taken the franchise into new territory after taking it from Sierra. AVP is a Direct X 11 supported title and delivers not only advanced shadow rendering but high quality tessellation for the cards on test today. To test the cards we used a 2560×1600 resolution with DX11, Texture Quality Very High, MSAA Samples 1, 16 af, ambient occlusion on, shadow complexity high, motion blur on.

Smooth frame rates throughout, averaging 75 frames per second.
Aliens V Predator has proved to be a big seller since the release and Sega have taken the franchise into new territory after taking it from Sierra. AVP is a Direct X 11 supported title and delivers not only advanced shadow rendering but high quality tessellation for the cards on test today.

To test the cards we used a ULTRA HD 4K resolution (3840×2160) with DX11, Texture Quality Very High, MSAA Samples 1, 16 af, ambient occulsion on, shadow complexity high, motion blur on.

Ultra HD 4K places a lot of demand on the graphics card, and ideally you would want an overclocked R9 290X or GTX780Ti to get smooth frame rates.
Sleeping Dogs started development as an original title, but was announced in 2009 as True Crime: Hong Kong, the third installment and a reboot of the True Crime series.As a result of the game’s high development budget and delays, it was canceled by Activision Blizzard in 2011. Six months later, it was announced that Square Enix had picked up the publishing rights to the game, but the game was renamed Sleeping Dogs in 2012 since Square Enix did not purchase the True Crime name rights.

This game is still a system killer at these maximised settings. We test at 2560×1600.

The MSI R9 290 OC Gaming Edition manages to maintain smooth frame rates, holding at 25 frames per second or greater at all times.
Sleeping Dogs started development as an original title, but was announced in 2009 as True Crime: Hong Kong, the third installment and a reboot of the True Crime series.As a result of the game’s high development budget and delays, it was canceled by Activision Blizzard in 2011. Six months later, it was announced that Square Enix had picked up the publishing rights to the game, but the game was renamed Sleeping Dogs in 2012 since Square Enix did not purchase the True Crime name rights.

We used the ‘HIGH’ graphics level setting at 4K- 3840×2160. This uses a mixture of high and extreme graphics settings, detailed above.

By reducing the image quality settings a little we are able to maintain smooth frame rates at Ultra HD 4K resolutions. The MSI R9 290 OC Gaming Edition averages 39 frames per second, holding above 25 at all times.
Total War ROME 2 is the eighth stand alone game in the Total War series, it is the successor to the successful Rome: Total War title. The Warscape Engine powers the visuals of the game and the new unit cameras will allow players to focus on individual soldiers on the battlefield, which in itself may contain thousands of combatants at a time. Creative Assembly has stated that they wish to bring out the more human side of war this way, with soldiers reacting with horror as their comrades get killed around them and officers inspiring their men with heroic speeches before siege towers hit the walls of the enemy city. This will be realised using facial animations for individual units, adding a feel of horror and realism to the battles.

We test with the ULTRA profile at 2560×1600. Details shown in the screenshots above.

No problems powering this engine at 1600p with the image quality settings close to the limit.
Total War ROME 2 is the eighth stand alone game in the Total War series, it is the successor to the successful Rome: Total War title. The Warscape Engine powers the visuals of the game and the new unit cameras will allow players to focus on individual soldiers on the battlefield, which in itself may contain thousands of combatants at a time. Creative Assembly has stated that they wish to bring out the more human side of war this way, with soldiers reacting with horror as their comrades get killed around them and officers inspiring their men with heroic speeches before siege towers hit the walls of the enemy city. This will be realised using facial animations for individual units, adding a feel of horror and realism to the battles.

We test at 4K – 3840×2160 with the Very High Preset selected, as shown in the screenshots above.

By reducing the image quality settings from ULTRA to Very High, we are still able to maintain smooth frame rates at Ultra HD 4K resolution. The MSI R9 290 OC Gaming Edition outperforms the reference clocked Nvidia GTX Titan.
Dirt Showdown is the latest title in the franchise from Codemasters, based around the famous Colin McRae racing game series, although it no longer uses his name, since he passed away in 2007.

Today we test the hardware at 2560×1600 with the Ultra profile and 8 x MSAA.

Excellent performance at 1600p, averaging 74 frames per second – around 5 frames behind the Palit GTX780 Ti JetStream.
Dirt Showdown is the latest title in the franchise from Codemasters, based around the famous Colin McRae racing game series, although it no longer uses his name, since he passed away in 2007.

Today we test with the ULTRA profile, at 4K 3840×2160 resolution and with 8 times Anti Aliasing.

Even at Ultra HD 4K resolution, the MSI R9 290 OC Gaming Edition holds a good performance curve, averaging 47 frames per second and holding close to 40 frames per second in the most intensive sections of the environment.
Tomb Raider received much acclaim from critics, who praised the graphics, the gameplay and Camilla Luddington’s performance as Lara with many critics agreeing that the game is a solid and much needed reboot of the franchise. Much criticism went to the addition of the multiplayer which many felt was unnecessary. Tomb Raider went on to sell one million copies in forty-eight hours of its release, and has sold 3.4 million copies worldwide so far.

We use the ULTIMATE profile shown above and test at 2560×1600.

Tomb Raider runs fantastically well on the MSI R9 290 OC Gaming Edition, just behind the reference clocked Nvidia GTX Titan.
Tomb Raider received much acclaim from critics, who praised the graphics, the gameplay and Camilla Luddington’s performance as Lara with many critics agreeing that the game is a solid and much needed reboot of the franchise. Much criticism went to the addition of the multiplayer which many felt was unnecessary. Tomb Raider went on to sell one million copies in forty-eight hours of its release, and has sold 3.4 million copies worldwide so far.

We test at 4K 3840×2160 resolution with the ULTRA profile setting enabled – details in the images above.

By lowering the image quality settings from ULTIMATE to ULTRA we can maintain smooth frame rates, holding above 32 at all times.
Metro: Last Light takes place one year after the events of Metro 2033, proceeding from the ending where Artyom chose to call down the missile strike on the Dark Ones. The Rangers have since occupied the D6 military facility, with Artyom having become an official member of the group. Khan, the nomad mystic, arrives at D6 to inform Artyom and the Rangers that a single Dark One survived the missile strike. 4A Games’ proprietary 4A Engine is capable of rendering breathtaking vistas, such as those showing the ruined remnants of Moscow, as well as immersive indoor areas that play with light and shadow, creating hauntingly beautiful scenes akin to those from modern-day photos of Pripyat’s abandoned factories and schools.

We test this game with the built in benchmark with very high quality settings at 1920×1080 – details shown in the image above.

The MSI R9 290 OC Gaming Edition scores as we would expect in this benchmark test, alongside the R9 290X with the QUIET bios setting enabled.
Metro: Last Light takes place one year after the events of Metro 2033, proceeding from the ending where Artyom chose to call down the missile strike on the Dark Ones. The Rangers have since occupied the D6 military facility, with Artyom having become an official member of the group. Khan, the nomad mystic, arrives at D6 to inform Artyom and the Rangers that a single Dark One survived the missile strike. 4A Games’ proprietary 4A Engine is capable of rendering breathtaking vistas, such as those showing the ruined remnants of Moscow, as well as immersive indoor areas that play with light and shadow, creating hauntingly beautiful scenes akin to those from modern-day photos of Pripyat’s abandoned factories and schools.

We test this game with the built in benchmark, with the settings detailed above. Direct X 11 mode, Quality is set at medium, 16 AF, normal Motion blur, Tessellation Normal, Advanced PhysX disabled and SSAA disabled.

The overclocked MSI R9 290 scores well, outperforming the MSI GTX780 Lightning.
Grid 2 is the sequel to the racing video game Race Driver: Grid. It was developed and published by Codemasters. The game includes numerous real world locations such as Paris, numerous United States locations, and many more, and also includes motor vehicles spanning four decades. In addition, it includes a new handling system that developer Codemasters has dubbed ‘TrueFeel’, which aims to hit a sweet spot between realism and accessibility.

We test at 2560×1600 with the Ultra image quality preset, as shown above. 8x MSAA was enabled to improve image quality.

GRID 2 doesn't prove a problem for any of the hardware on test today, and the MSI R9 290 OC Gaming Edition averages 77 frames per second at these high image quality settings.
Grid 2 is the sequel to the racing video game Race Driver: Grid. It was developed and published by Codemasters. The game includes numerous real world locations such as Paris, numerous United States locations, and many more, and also includes motor vehicles spanning four decades. In addition, it includes a new handling system that developer Codemasters has dubbed ‘TrueFeel’, which aims to hit a sweet spot between realism and accessibility.

We select 4K 3840×2160 resolution and enabled the ULTRA profile with 8 times anti aliasing, as shown in the screenshots above.

An average of 50 frames per second at Ultra HD 4K resolution is impressive, almost in line with the reference clocked GTX780 Ti.
Splinter Cell Blacklist is the sixth installment in the series. The game begins with Sam Fisher and his old friend Victor Coste who are about to depart from Andersen AFB in Guam when an unknown enemy force destroys the entire base. Assisted by hacker specialist Charlie Cole, Sam and Vic manage to escape, although Vic is injured after protecting Sam from a grenade.

Soon after, a terrorist group calling itself “The Engineers” assumes responsibility for the attack and announce that it was the first of a deadly countdown of escalating attacks (called “The Blacklist”) on United States assets, declaring that they will halt the attacks only after the U.S. government accomplish the demand of calling back all American troops deployed abroad.

We test with a series of high image quality settings as shown above and with 4x MSAA and 16 x Anisotropic filtering enabled.

The GTX780 Ti is clearly the best solution to power this engine, although the MSI R9 290 OC Gaming Edition scores well, averaging 60 frames per second.
Splinter Cell Blacklist is the sixth installment in the series. The game begins with Sam Fisher and his old friend Victor Coste who are about to depart from Andersen AFB in Guam when an unknown enemy force destroys the entire base. Assisted by hacker specialist Charlie Cole, Sam and Vic manage to escape, although Vic is injured after protecting Sam from a grenade. Soon after, a terrorist group calling itself “The Engineers” assumes responsibility for the attack and announce that it was the first of a deadly countdown of escalating attacks (called “The Blacklist”) on United States assets, declaring that they will halt the attacks only after the U.S. government accomplish the demand of calling back all American troops deployed abroad.

We selected 4K – 3840×2160 resolution and the ‘High’ Graphics quality preset. Screenshots shown above.

This is a great looking game when running at Ultra HD 4K and the MSI R9 290 OC Gaming Edition has no problems delivering a smooth game experience, averaging 46 frames per second.
Batman Arkham Origins moved development away from series creators Rocksteady Studios, and is written by Corey May and Dooma Wendschuh. The game’s main storyline is set five years before that of 2009′s Batman: Arkham Asylum and follows a younger and less refined Batman who has a bounty placed on his head by crime lord Black Mask, drawing eight of the world’s greatest assassins to Gotham City on Christmas Eve. The game is presented from the third-person perspective with a primary focus on Batman’s combat and stealth abilities, detective skills, and gadgets that can be used in both combat and exploration. Arkham Origins is the first game in the series to feature multiplayer gameplay.

We test at Ultra HD 4K with a mixture of high image quality settings and 2 MSAA, shown above.


The Palit GTX780 Ti Jetstream is way out in first position, followed by the reference clocked GTX780 Ti and GTX Titan. The MSI R9 290 OC Gaming Edition averages 39 frames per second, dropping to 27 a couple of times during our test run.
Battlefield 4 (also known as BF4) is a first-person shooter video game developed by EA Digital Illusions CE (DICE) and published by Electronic Arts. The game is a sequel to 2011′s Battlefield 3. Battlefield 4 is built on the new Frostbite 3 engine. The new Frostbite engine enables more realistic environments with higher resolution textures and particle effects. A new “networked water” system is also being introduced, allowing all players in the game to see the same wave at the same time.Tessellation has also been overhauled.

We test at Ultra HD 4K with the high image quality profile, shown above.

The MSI R9 290 OC Gaming Edition averages 39 frames per second, dropping to 27 frames per second once during our test run.
The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 24c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this.Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by playing Crysis Warhead for 30 minutes and measuring the peak temperature. We also have included Furmark results, recording maximum temperatures throughout a 30 minute stress test. All fan settings were left on automatic.

The running temperatures are a little higher than I would have expected, especially when directly compared to the Tri-X cooler fitted to the Sapphire R9 290 and R9 290X. Still, they are better than the reference card, although that wouldn't be too difficult.

The VRM's however are held well in check by the cooling system, with the VRM 1 sensor in GPUz peaking at 92c and VRM 2 sensor 70c.

We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with almost completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run looped 3dMark tests.

We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the closed chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation. Ambient noise in the room measures close to the limits of our sound meter at 28dBa. It isn’t a real world situation to be measuring with a case panel off only a few centimeters away from a video card.

Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.

KitGuru noise guide

10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refridgerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

These results explain why the temperatures are a little higher than we expected on the previous page of this review. MSI have optimised their cooler with a focus on reducing noise levels as far as possible. Bonus points for MSI.
To test power consumption today we are using a Keithley Integra unit and we measure power consumption from the VGA card inputs, not the system wide drain. We measure results while gaming in Crysis Warhead and the synthetic stress test Furmark and record both results.

Power consumption falls in line with what we would expect from previous R9 290 tests.
To overclock today, we used the dedicated overclocking tools within the latest version of AMD’s Catalyst Control Center. We also tested with Asus GPU Tweak, but the end results were identical.

There is plenty of headroom on the core and we achieved a maximum clock speed of 1,133mhz – 16% above the OC core clocks configured by MSI. There was also plenty of headroom on the GDDR5 memory, peaking around 1,450mhz (5.8Gbps effective).

Increasing the power limit settings above 38% didn't improve the final clock speeds.

The substantial overclock ensures that the MSI R9 290 OC Gaming Edition takes the top spot in the chart, even ahead of the Palit GTX 780 Ti Jetstream.
We have reviewed a handful of AMD R9 290 partner cards this year, and the MSI R9 290 OC Gaming Edition has proven to be one of our favourites so far.

MSI have equipped this particular card with an excellent twin fan cooling system, comprising multiple thick heatpipes which run into two separate racks of aluminum fins on either side of the GPU block. While the running temperatures are higher than the Sapphire R9 290 Tri-X OC, the fans on the MSI solution spin very slowly under load, subsequently emitting low levels of noise at all times.

By effectively targeting noise emissions, MSI have addressed one of our major concerns with the reference AMD solution – it was close to unbearable under extended load. If you have sensitive ears, then the MSI R9 290 OC is a wise choice, as we didn't notice any additional whirring above the system fans during the last week of testing.

We do feel that MSI could have improved their load temperatures however by taking a leaf out of Sapphire's book, and adopting a triple fan cooling system.

VRM cooling on this card is well within expected tolerances – GPUZ measured VRM 1 and VRM 2 peak temperatures at 92c and 70c respectively. It is good to see MSI taking this into consideration, especially as long term high running VRM temperatures can affect reliability and stability.

While all samples will deliver varying levels of core overclocking headroom, we were able to increase the clock speeds to 1,133mhz, a full 16 percent increase over MSI's selected 977mhz speeds. Even when factoring in tolerance variations from solution to solution we feel MSI could have acted more aggressively, hitting 1,040mhz easily enough and matching the Gigabyte R9 290 Windforce OC.

If you are in the market for a new high end graphics solution for the latest games, then this card should get some serious consideration. OverclockersUK have it in stock today for £367.99 inc vat. If you manually tweak this card to 1,050mhz or greater, you will be getting R9 290X beating performance at a fraction of the cost.

Discuss on our Facebook page, over HERE.

Pros:

• low noise levels.
• looks fantastic.
• built well, with backplate.
• massive overclocking headroom.

Cons:

• triple fan cooler like Sapphire Tri-X could improve load temperatures.
• why only 977mhz core?

Kitguru says: One of the best deals right now if you want a custom R9 290. Quiet, fast, cost effective with loads of overclocking headroom available on the core.

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