MSI 290X LE quick review and thoughts

TNA · 8 Mar 2015 at 10:00

The Running Man said:
That's always been the problem for me with ATI they just can't get the basics right, refresh rates, black screens, shockingly bad control panel.

They have been in this industry for over a decade and they still have no clue.

When i had my 5830 in COH each driver would screw up the game in a different way usually the fire fx in the map, some drivers would just crawl the fps. I gave up. Had to make custom resolution or refresh rate profiles for basic setups. ..

I am not surprised to sre nothing had changed.

144 gaming has been out a while, why would you need to wait till Monday to hope it's been fixed?

I game at 60hz with a single you which is fine for me and as a result have never come across any major issues. Perhaps that's why I never see why people think nvidia is better. I had a gtx 670 not so long ago when I was into fsx and it was the same experience for me. Wanted to try out mantle so I went to the card I have now and needed more than 2gb ram as at the time I was on 2560x1600.

Now I will wait until June and hope amd price their cards well, as I dont want to give nvidia my money so soon after what they pulled with the 970.

pieman109 · 8 Mar 2015 at 10:49

Nice, unbiased mini review there mate. I myself went from a galax 970 to an MSI 290x 8gb due to Nvidia's (due handling of the Vram debacle) and I've also noticed the "smoothness" in game which I thought was a sort of placebo effect, but I reckon is now a fact.

Gregster · 8 Mar 2015 at 10:53

pieman109 said:
Nice, unbiased mini review there mate. I myself went from a galax 970 to an MSI 290x 8gb due to Nvidia's (due handling of the Vram debacle) and I've also noticed the "smoothness" in game which I thought was a sort of placebo effect, but I reckon is now a fact.

Cheers. I always give as honest as possible reviews. My only gripe and it is quite annoying, is the tearing. Not the cards fault at all and I have just ordered a startech lead to try and get at least 120Hz. You don't realise how good you had it till it is gone

Gibbo · 8 Mar 2015 at 11:06

shankly1985 said:
Yeah mate can't get get 144hz only 120hz

Was same for me, 120Hz was fine at 1440P but 144Hz a no go.

slick rick · 8 Mar 2015 at 11:32

Glad to hear you like the card Greg. Strange that it wont let you run at 120hz though? Hopefully the Startech cable sorts it out, I am using a Startech mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort for 2160p 60hz with no issue seems to be a decent cable.

Gregster · 8 Mar 2015 at 11:36

Did some more game testing and yer, everything runs nicely.

Played some more Elite Dangerous (addicted to it), ran a quick play on SoM, Batman AO, Hitman Absolution and everything runs well.

pete910 · 8 Mar 2015 at 11:52

Nice review Greg!

You come across as surprised to be honest.

Only question, Did you think mantle was just sort of "another API"?
I get the feeling you was genuinely impressed/surprised by it

Gregster · 8 Mar 2015 at 12:02

pete910 said:
Nice review Greg!

You come across as surprised to be honest.

Only question, Did you think mantle was just sort of "another API"?
I get the feeling you was genuinely impressed/surprised by it

I would say surprised and surprised at how well it holds up at 1440P. So far in the games I have tested, it has done remarkably well. Nothing I have played has shown bias to nVidia or AMD and pretty much a muchness. With Mantle, I was impressed with the minimums really and this clearly shows how an API can make a difference. Both systems felt the same and looked the same but when the action was happening, the minimums remained high and that was what impressed me with Mantle. Kudos to them for that.

shankly1985 · 8 Mar 2015 at 12:06

Try mantle again once you get 120Hz working. Even better in its smoothness..
Yeah so far the jump to 1440p hasn't been that demanding over 1080p I was expecting worst.

Gregster · 8 Mar 2015 at 12:10

shankly1985 said:
Try mantle again once you get 120Hz working. Even better in its smoothness..
Yeah so far the jump to 1440p hasn't been that demanding over 1080p I was expecting worst.

For sure. It isn't really something I can fairly compare, purely on the basis of screen tearing.... That is doing my nut in if I am honest (how do people cope with 60Hz monitors?) I expect 120Hz to help a lot with that and should smooth things out more as well.

setter · 8 Mar 2015 at 12:12

shankly1985 said:
Try mantle again once you get 120Hz working. Even better in its smoothness..
Yeah so far the jump to 1440p hasn't been that demanding over 1080p I was expecting worst.

I suspect in your case shankly, things will feel even better once the drivers for freesync and xfire are available. Im sure your champing at the bit to try it out.

arc@css · 8 Mar 2015 at 12:14

Gregster said:
I would say surprised and surprised at how well it holds up at 1440P. So far in the games I have tested, it has done remarkably well. Nothing I have played has shown bias to nVidia or AMD and pretty much a muchness. With Mantle, I was impressed with the minimums really and this clearly shows how an API can make a difference. Both systems felt the same and looked the same but when the action was happening, the minimums remained high and that was what impressed me with Mantle. Kudos to them for that.

Not that I have first hand experience here, but the impression I get is that the radeons do particularly well when running at a high resolution (allows it to stretch its legs, so to speak).

shankly1985 · 8 Mar 2015 at 12:21

Gregster said:
For sure. It isn't really something I can fairly compare, purely on the basis of screen tearing.... That is doing my nut in if I am honest (how do people cope with 60Hz monitors?) I expect 120Hz to help a lot with that and should smooth things out more as well.

I could never go back man, 60hz is very bad.

setter said:
I suspect in your case shankly, things will feel even better once the drivers for freesync and xfire are available. Im sure your champing at the bit to try it out.

Really looking forward to trying it out mam..

Gregster · 8 Mar 2015 at 12:22

arc@css said:
Not that I have first hand experience here, but the impression I get is that the radeons do particularly well when running at a high resolution (allows it to stretch its legs, so to speak).

I would put that down to the 512bit bus. The 256bit bus on the 9xx series is a little poor if I am completely honest and when the res gets bigger, you see the 512bit closing in and in a few cases, overtaking the 980.

All in all, as a massive nVidia fanboy that I am, I am having a far better experience than I did with my last AMD card (6970). I will be even more impressed if my new lead allows 120Hz. That is my only issue thus far.

Gregster · 8 Mar 2015 at 12:23

shankly1985 said:
Really looking forward to trying it out mam..

Quoted for comedy value

shankly1985 · 8 Mar 2015 at 12:40

Gregster said:
Quoted for comedy value

haaaa

Gregster said:
I would put that down to the 512bit bus. The 256bit bus on the 9xx series is a little poor if I am completely honest and when the res gets bigger, you see the 512bit closing in and in a few cases, overtaking the 980.

All in all, as a massive nVidia fanboy that I am, I am having a far better experience than I did with my last AMD card (6970). I will be even more impressed if my new lead allows 120Hz. That is my only issue thus far.

Here hoping it does, I have no idea why it doesn't already though.

setter · 8 Mar 2015 at 12:42

Gregster said:
Quoted for comedy value

Only noticed that now, from this moment i suppose ill be known as Roberta.

Gregster · 8 Mar 2015 at 12:47

shankly1985 said:
haaaa

Here hoping it does, I have no idea why it doesn't already though.

Yer me 2. Maybe it is the port on the card being weak but the cable will show what is what, as I have seen a number of people say that Startech cables have sorted it.

setter said:
Only noticed that now, from this moment i suppose ill be known as Roberta.

Lol, stop killing me softly

GoogalyMoogaly · 8 Mar 2015 at 13:26

I didn't notice much difference with Mantle in BF4, from a moothness point of view anyway.
Framerates were higher though that's for sure. Well, for a few minutes anyway and then they dropped to single digits when the VRAM was exceeded. The only way to get around it was to turn the settings down. I don't think that was all that noticeable either though. Just annoyed me that I had to reduce setting from what I could use with DX. I reduced the settings in Mantle and it performed better than DX did with higher settings. Seems a bit obvious really...

That said Mantle was introduced to BF4 so late that I'd finished the game by the time it was added so I didn't get much of a chance to really try it other than for the sake of trying to test Mantle. And then they didn't add Mantle into any other game I was interested in.

I'm hoping DX12 and Vulkan will be so I'll get chance to use it in games I want to play.

So is there any chance you'll decide against getting 2 Titan Xs and instead go for 4 x 8GB 290Xs and save some money Greg?

Gregster · 8 Mar 2015 at 13:34

GoogalyMoogaly said:
I didn't notice much difference with Mantle in BF4, from a moothness point of view anyway.
Framerates were higher though that's for sure. Well, for a few minutes anyway and then they dropped to single digits when the VRAM was exceeded. The only way to get around it was to turn the settings down. I don't think that was all that noticeable either though. Just annoyed me that I had to reduce setting from what I could use with DX. I reduced the settings in Mantle and it performed better than DX did with higher settings. Seems a bit obvious really...

That said Mantle was introduced to BF4 so late that I'd finished the game by the time it was added so I didn't get much of a chance to really try it other than for the sake of trying to test Mantle. And then they didn't add Mantle into any other game I was interested in.

I'm hoping DX12 and Vulkan will be so I'll get chance to use it in games I want to play.

So is there any chance you'll decide against getting 2 Titan Xs and instead go for 4 x 8GB 290Xs and save some money Greg?

I have not overly played any game with the 290X, so every game I have mentioned (except ED) has had a quick 20 minute play but I don't foresee any issues.

As for changing my mind on the TX, if AMD can get me 144Hz on my Swift, who knows. I am always up for saving some cash but I wouldn't go 4 cards. One thing I noticed with ShadowPlay (something I use a lot) is how it works very well with 1 or 2 cards but add in a third card and basically, ShadowPlay took all the extra performance that the third card offered and gave me the same frames as what 2 cards did and even if I ran 2 cards with ShadowPlay running, I got the same frames as I did with 3 cards and ShadowPlay running.... Not something to fuss about but made the third card pretty pointless for me.

I hope that makes sense?

So in a nutshell, I won't be going 3 cards again and CF or SLI only.