When four MSI R290X Lightning made there way up to my office I could not wait to see what they where capable of. The Lightning series of cards by MSI have always been one of my favorites for there incredible build quality and outstanding overclocking headroom.
As all my recent reviews I will look at stock cooler overclocking performance first so as forum readers on ambient cooling can get an idea of how the cards will perform in there everyday systems.
A first look at these cards and you can tell they are not short of power or cooling. A massive PCB supporting one 6 pin PCI X connector with several power phases dedicated to memory alone and then two further 8 pin connectors supplying the core with some pure juice.
The cooler is two and a half slots and is a three fan remake of the successful Twin Frozr design. This outing its bigger than the original with even more cooling area and an extra fan added to push even more air whilst keeping noise to a minimum.
Here is a pic of the card being hammered in my test rig!!!
In order to be methodical in this review I thought I would first test memory OC on all 4 of the cards. Binning as I would normally call it!! I did this as ultimately I am hoping one card can take me to the top of Pro OC in Heaven bench and heaven loves memory bandwidth. MSI's Lightening is the only 290x with Samsung IC so I wanted to know how this would work with AMD architecture after seeing great results on 780's.
I was pleased to find three of the cards did 1700mhz+ mems stable on very little over stock volts. The fourth card managed 1625mhz stable.
From previous testing we have seen cards with Hynix IC perform more efficiently than there Eliphida counterparts. For example a memory overclock of 1600 on Hynix would need 1625 on Eliphida for the same benching results with the same core speeds. With this in mind I decided to test efficiency of the Samsung IC.
Here are Heaven efficiency test with Core at 1100 and mems at 1600.
Hynix
Samsung
We can see from the above results that Samsung is scoring over 30pts in Heaven better than Hynix for the same clock and thus is around 20mhz more efficient than Hynix that making it around 45mhz more efficient than Eliphida. Great choice MSI!!!
Now onto the full overclock testing.
Rig Used
4930K
ASUS RIVE
Antec 1200w PSU
Corsair Dominator Plats 2400mhz.
Win7 64 Bit
AMD Catalyst 13.12
As you can see from the above image I used the full +100mv available on consumer AfterBurner and hooked up a digital volt meter to the card. This equated to 1.35v real with no load and 1.31v real loaded volts. With this voltage and +50mv on both memory and PLL I got the card stable at 1220 Core clock and 1700 memory clock for all my benches.
Interestingly the LN2 bios lessened Vdroop under load with 1.37v drooping to 1.35v.
Here are the benchmark scores:
3D Mark 11
FireStrike
FireStrike Xtreme
Heaven
Heaven Valley
Whilst benching I monitored temps through Afterburner and GPU-Z and found the cards top temp was 65C which means not only does the R290X Lightning overclock as well as the best of the rest but it also operates at a cooler temp too. Add in the benefits of greater efficiency and consistent headroom of Samsung RAM with dedicated power and you have a real winner here. Would I recommend the card? Hell yeah!!!
I was that impressed by single card Lightning I thought I would take two for a spin for some Xfire benching. Often in Xfire the same clocks can not be reached with a two card system as that with one. Not so for the MSI R290X Lightening.
Xfire Benching results on stock air cooler.
11
FireStrike
FireStrike Xtreme
Heaven
Heaven Valley
So as can be seen from the above scores two cards on Air overclocked to 1220mhz on the core and 1700mhz on the memory which is an epic result as both Xfire and air cooling where against the Lightnings reaching these heights.
This is the best air cooled Xfire result I have seen. Temps barely changed from single card with the top Lightening topping out at just over 70C at full whack loading.
In summary I would recommend the MSI card in both single and dual card configs. Its very efficient and reaches high clocks whilst remaining both cool and quiet.
The only suggestion I would make to improve this winning formula would be to make more voltage options available on consumer AfterBurner. The PWM and Cooler are more than upto the job for sure.
In the near future I will hit these cards with LN2. I am confident we have a record breaking product here and I intend to push it as hard as I can.
As all my recent reviews I will look at stock cooler overclocking performance first so as forum readers on ambient cooling can get an idea of how the cards will perform in there everyday systems.
A first look at these cards and you can tell they are not short of power or cooling. A massive PCB supporting one 6 pin PCI X connector with several power phases dedicated to memory alone and then two further 8 pin connectors supplying the core with some pure juice.
The cooler is two and a half slots and is a three fan remake of the successful Twin Frozr design. This outing its bigger than the original with even more cooling area and an extra fan added to push even more air whilst keeping noise to a minimum.
Here is a pic of the card being hammered in my test rig!!!
In order to be methodical in this review I thought I would first test memory OC on all 4 of the cards. Binning as I would normally call it!! I did this as ultimately I am hoping one card can take me to the top of Pro OC in Heaven bench and heaven loves memory bandwidth. MSI's Lightening is the only 290x with Samsung IC so I wanted to know how this would work with AMD architecture after seeing great results on 780's.
I was pleased to find three of the cards did 1700mhz+ mems stable on very little over stock volts. The fourth card managed 1625mhz stable.
From previous testing we have seen cards with Hynix IC perform more efficiently than there Eliphida counterparts. For example a memory overclock of 1600 on Hynix would need 1625 on Eliphida for the same benching results with the same core speeds. With this in mind I decided to test efficiency of the Samsung IC.
Here are Heaven efficiency test with Core at 1100 and mems at 1600.
Hynix
Samsung
We can see from the above results that Samsung is scoring over 30pts in Heaven better than Hynix for the same clock and thus is around 20mhz more efficient than Hynix that making it around 45mhz more efficient than Eliphida. Great choice MSI!!!
Now onto the full overclock testing.
Rig Used
4930K
ASUS RIVE
Antec 1200w PSU
Corsair Dominator Plats 2400mhz.
Win7 64 Bit
AMD Catalyst 13.12
As you can see from the above image I used the full +100mv available on consumer AfterBurner and hooked up a digital volt meter to the card. This equated to 1.35v real with no load and 1.31v real loaded volts. With this voltage and +50mv on both memory and PLL I got the card stable at 1220 Core clock and 1700 memory clock for all my benches.
Interestingly the LN2 bios lessened Vdroop under load with 1.37v drooping to 1.35v.
Here are the benchmark scores:
3D Mark 11
FireStrike
FireStrike Xtreme
Heaven
Heaven Valley
Whilst benching I monitored temps through Afterburner and GPU-Z and found the cards top temp was 65C which means not only does the R290X Lightning overclock as well as the best of the rest but it also operates at a cooler temp too. Add in the benefits of greater efficiency and consistent headroom of Samsung RAM with dedicated power and you have a real winner here. Would I recommend the card? Hell yeah!!!
I was that impressed by single card Lightning I thought I would take two for a spin for some Xfire benching. Often in Xfire the same clocks can not be reached with a two card system as that with one. Not so for the MSI R290X Lightening.
Xfire Benching results on stock air cooler.
11
FireStrike
FireStrike Xtreme
Heaven
Heaven Valley
So as can be seen from the above scores two cards on Air overclocked to 1220mhz on the core and 1700mhz on the memory which is an epic result as both Xfire and air cooling where against the Lightnings reaching these heights.
This is the best air cooled Xfire result I have seen. Temps barely changed from single card with the top Lightening topping out at just over 70C at full whack loading.
In summary I would recommend the MSI card in both single and dual card configs. Its very efficient and reaches high clocks whilst remaining both cool and quiet.
The only suggestion I would make to improve this winning formula would be to make more voltage options available on consumer AfterBurner. The PWM and Cooler are more than upto the job for sure.
In the near future I will hit these cards with LN2. I am confident we have a record breaking product here and I intend to push it as hard as I can.
