MSI 290/290X Gaming Edition Thread

[the1gooner]

Thanks the1gooner. I will give it a try and save myself a few hundred quid

Before I took out the i5 760 I ran a load of benchmarks with the 290X and I have the results to compare with the i7 4770K.

Will post them over the weekend.

The only reason I upgraded to Haswell was because my Socket 1156 motherboard was only a basic H55M one and sometimes it wouldn't boot due to not having very good power delivery.

If I could have got a better motherboard for the i5 760 I would have kept it.

 

[Djxinator]

Gibbo, my order is on D_HCA, will I still get one from this batch? I kinda want it delivered tomorrow :/

 

[Gibbo]

Gibbo, my order is on D_HCA, will I still get one from this batch? I kinda want it delivered tomorrow :/

What is D_HCA ?

 

[Wizzfizz]

I've gone with the - Gigabyte Radeon R9 290X OC WindForce 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card.

I understand that it has no back plate, no biggy really. I'm sure there's no real world difference between r9 290x cards. Plus it fits better into my system with not having any red in!



is the PCB black on this Windforce?

 

[the1gooner]

I've gone with the - Gigabyte Radeon R9 290X OC WindForce 4096MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card.

I understand that it has no back plate, no biggy really. I'm sure there's no real world difference between r9 290x cards. Plus it fits better into my system with not having any red in!



is the PCB black on this Windforce?

Ha good choice, yes the pcb is black.

The card does look stunning when you first see it out of the box.

 

[Djxinator]

What is D_HCA ?

Nevermind Gibbo, impatience is one of my key traits. Its being printed.

In regards to colour scheme, the inevitable upgrade of my CPU/Mobo/RAM will bring along new colour scheme options, either that or I'll vinyl paint the Gaming editions shroud blue.

 

[Tattysnuc]

my Sapphire 290 arrived long with an EK "Clean" Nickel/plexi water block. Fun and games ahead

 

[Lew666]

I'll be ordering my sapphire r290 tri x tomorrow is it worth the extra 120 for one. Gonna get 2 see as gonna crossfire

 

[Lew666]

120 over the r290x that is

 

[LtMatt]

As i said before, just get the Sapphire 290 Pro Tri X. Not worth spending the extra money for the full fat Sapphire 290X Tri X.

 

[Steampunk]

Best part, OcUK has all three in stock, NONE OF OUR COMPETITORS DO!

I know you want to sell what you've got in stock, but have you seen the HIS ICQ x2 or the Powercolor PCS+ yet? Are they better and worth waiting on? Given these two have OCUK "special relationships" for RMA or heatsink removal, I was hoping you'd have played with samples already.

 

[l2ez4m]

Looks like His 290 aka 'Gold Cube' specimen sports decent finstack/heatpipe array, basically reference pcb and phase design but on the other hand VRM cooling looks bit disappointing (very similar to Asus DCU2).

Uses Hynix vidmem chips

 

[northun_munky]

Good man. Any more problems?

Not with the card thankfully

Just trying to get my head around afterburner... I've read your guide you linked to and got the OSD working nicely but how does AB display voltage?

GPU tweak used to specify the default volts which was easy to keep track of. How does AB do it?

For example:

So the slider goes to +100mv which would add .1 to the voltage I assume, but whats the stock voltage?

 

[Duvar]

Try reading that with GPU-Z.

 

[northun_munky]

Would that be the VDDC voltage in GPU-Z? It fluctuates under load....

 

[LtMatt]

Not with the card thankfully

Just trying to get my head around afterburner... I've read your guide you linked to and got the OSD working nicely but how does AB display voltage?

GPU tweak used to specify the default volts which was easy to keep track of. How does AB do it?

For example:

Spoiler

So the slider goes to +100mv which would add .1 to the voltage I assume, but whats the stock voltage?

Stock voltage fluctuates but is somewhere between 1.15v-1.2v. You can display the voltage on the OSD so do that and you can monitor it while you game. I undervolt my cards at stock -0.050mv so i can run my fan at a lower speed.

A few hours of playing BF4 with my quiet/lazy fan profile. I get a bit of throttling with this profile but the core never drops much below 940mhz so im happy with that as i have more fps than my monitor can benefit from. This is several hours non stop of bf4 without vsync.





I use HWINFO64 to monitor my 290 reference cards VRM temps and Vram chip temps. Its possible to add those to the afterburner overlay and a good way to get your 'nerd' on. I find on the reference cooler the vrms sit about 10-12C cooler than the core. (around 83c-84c) and the vram chips sit around 66-70C) I also have HWINFO display the wattage pulled from each card. (it does not display the wattage pulled from the vram chips though)

Spoiler

 

[northun_munky]

I use HWINFO64 to monitor my 290 reference cards VRM temps and Vram chip temps. Its possible to add those to the afterburner overlay and a good way to get your 'nerd' on. I find on the reference cooler the vrms sit about 10-12C cooler than the core. (around 83c-84c) and the vram chips sit around 66-70C) I also have HWINFO display the wattage pulled from each card. (it does not display the wattage pulled from the vram chips though)

Nice. I'll have a mess around with AB overlay but is there a simple way to incorporate the HWINFO64 info? IIRC you could do it with rivatuner back in the day by adding in which sensors it took its feed from...

 

[LtMatt]

Nice. I'll have a mess around with AB overlay but is there a simple way to incorporate the HWINFO64 info? IIRC you could do it with rivatuner back in the day by adding in which sensors it took its feed from...

It can be handy to have a 3d app running like Valley basic mode so it runs in a small window. That way you can see the changes happening to the on screen display as you do them.

These screenshots should point you in the right direction of what to do in HWINFO.

 

[northun_munky]

Matt, you are a good man. Cheers

 

[northun_munky]

OSD works nice in Valley but can't get it to work in BF$

you need the latest afterburner beta 17 or 18 , and enable 64bit support in rivatuner

done this but still doesn't display ... Probably missing something really obvious