MSI Radeon R9 290X Gaming 4 GB Review

Name: MSI Radeon R9 290X Gaming 4 GB
Brand: MSI

W1zzard

on Feb 24th, 2014,

in Graphics Cards.

Manufacturer: MSI

(35 Comments) »

Introduction

AMD's Radeon R9 290X is built on the company's new Hawaii GPU, the first truly new high-end graphics chip from the company in a very long time (21 months). Using 6.8 billion transistors, the GPU is built on a 28 nanometer process at TSMC, Taiwan; it features 2816 shaders and 64 ROPs connected to 4 GB of memory using a 512-bit wide memory bus.

We are reviewing the MSI Radeon R9 290X GAMING today. It comes with an overclock of 30 MHz on its GPU. Memory clocks are unchanged. The thermal solution is MSI's famous TwinFrozr dual-fan cooler, which should help tame the R9 290X's heat output. According to MSI, the card retails at around $700, but we've seen prices much higher than that, especially on Newegg.

Radeon R9 290X Market Segment Analysis
	HD 7970 GHz Ed.	GeForce GTX 680	GeForce GTX 780	Radeon R9 290	Radeon R9 290X	MSI R9 290X Gaming	Radeon HD 7990	GeForce GTX Titan	GeForce GTX 780 Ti	GeForce GTX 690
Shader Units	2048	1536	2304	2560	2816	2816	2x 2048	2688	2880	2x 1536
ROPs	32	32	48	64	64	64	2x 32	48	48	2x 32
Graphics Processor	Tahiti	GK104	GK110	Hawaii	Hawaii	Hawaii	2x Tahiti	GK110	GK110	2x GK104
Transistors	4310M	3500M	7100M	6200M	6200M	6200M	2x 4310M	7100M	7100M	2x 3500M
Memory Size	3072 MB	2048 MB	3072 MB	4096 MB	4096 MB	4096 MB	2x 3072 MB	6144 MB	3072 MB	2x 2048 MB
Memory Bus Width	384 bit	256 bit	384 bit	512 bit	512 bit	512 bit	2x 384 bit	384 bit	384 bit	2x 256 bit
Core Clock	1050 MHz	1006 MHz+	863 MHz+	947 MHz	1000 MHz	1030 MHz	1000 MHz	837 MHz+	876 MHz+	915 MHz+
Memory Clock	1500 MHz	1502 MHz	1502 MHz	1250 MHz	1250 MHz	1250 MHz	1500 MHz	1502 MHz	1750 MHz	1502 MHz
Price	$470	$400	$480	$500	$600	$700	$900	$1000	$680	$1000

Packaging

You will receive:

Graphics card
Driver CD + documentation
2x PCI-Express power cable
DVI adapter

The Card

We've seen the MSI TwinFrozr cooler on several cards from the company before. It looks powerful and stylish because of its red highlights. Dimensions of the card are 27 x 13 cm.

Installation requires two slots in your system.

Display connectivity options include two DVI ports, one DisplayPort, and one HDMI port. You may use all outputs at the same time, so triple-monitor surround gaming is possible with one card.

The GPU also includes an HDMI sound device. It is HDMI 1.4a compatible, which includes HD audio and Blu-ray 3D movies support.

There are no visible CrossFire connectors on the card. With their R9 290 Series, AMD started transferring CrossFire data via the PCI-Express slot interface of the card. You may pair this card with any R9 290 and R9 290X.