MSI R9 290 Gaming Review
Metro Last Light
Published: 15th February 2014 | Source: MSI | Price: £367.99 |
Metro Last Light
Last Light sandwiches the 290X we've reviewed, with the stock MSI card coming out as the best of the normal R9 290s, and the overclock just shading the more powerful R9 290X. Not a patch on the GTX780Ti's, but it's not priced to match them anyway.
Most Recent Comments
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 maturesQuote
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 stockQuote
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 stockQuote
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.Quote
My old MSi GTX 560 with the Twin Frozr II cooler, while being fine when it's idle sounds like an aeroplane while gaming.Quote
Nice to see the overclock. Was just playing super safe with a 1047.Quote
That's one sexy card! AMD is back in the high-end competition 
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