MSI Radeon R9 290(X) gaming/lightning card club

[fullinfusion]

PAGE UNDER CONSTRUCTION AND WILL CONSTANTLY BE UPDATED WHEN I HAVE TIME:
owners of these cards that want good overclocks,
raise the core clocks in multiples of 10MHz, nothing besides multiples of 10 and memory you can clock either 25 or 50 mhz if the memory can withstand the frequency!

any number other then a multiplier of 10mhz will black screen you at higher clocks and give you a lower overall benchmark score.
Good luck and please post your findings so I may update what gpu and what clock multi works best for your msi card. But Im sure these are locked at 10 MHz increments and anything above or below 10 will be a fail.

Welcome to the MSI R9 290 (X) club
This is a place where us owners and onlookers can come to and share their Benchmarks and also share there experiences using these card's
and so on.
​

OVERCLOCKING SOFTWARE:
MSI AFTERBURNER
Latest MSI Afterburner
TriXX​

GAMING BIOS COLLECTION
USE THIS Reference one on the V1 card for best results
290 HERE
290X HERE
New MSI 290X gaming V2 card bios as of Nov 27/2014
V2 CARDS ONLY!
http://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/164968/msi-r9290x-4096-140701.html

CUSTOM 290 GAMING STRAIGHT FROM MSI
1007/1250
UEFI BIOS HERE
LEGACY BIOS HERE

MSI LIGHTNING BIOS
290X LIGHTNING HERE
290X REVIEW SAMPLE​

PROBLEMS WITH FAILED OR BUGGY DRIVER INSTALLS?
LOOK HERE:
CHECK FOR OLD DISPLAY DRIVERS HERE

^Thanks to > @erocker it saved my ass
Latest AMD Un-install tool for W7-W8, W8.1
Tested myself and works well

Display Driver Un-installer aka DDL
Latest BETA DDL

Tested myself and works, but I DO NOT RECOMMEND IT! It removes USB Asmedia usb 3.0 driver and other shit that WILL SCREW YOUR RIG UP!
Id recommend just going into the Local ( C: )
and under Program files X86 look for AMD and keep clicking
till you see the Set-up amd Icon and removing the driver that way.
Alot smoother imo. And alot Less hassle

Meet neliz our MSI rep goto 2:56 in the video to know whom may be helping you, One Hell of a great guy!

 

[Raovac]

Well I have only had mine for a couple of days, I am very happy with it.
I only have 1 and no plans of two, three, or four LOL.
One down fall is the voltage is locked using afterburner v3.2.1, although the power limit slider works.
I'm not a hard core overclocker so my expertice is minimal.
I have ran the card at 1100 core and 1300 on the memory only once with no problem. (Sorry no scores recorded)
Idle temp is 35c with the fan running at 44% with an ambient temp of 24c. Can't hear the fans over my system.
Ran Valley benchmark (1 run) and hit Max 72c with the fan at 100%. Fan noise its noticeable but exceptable to me. I always run my fans at 100% while gaming.

In gaming mode (977 core/ 1250 mem) running valley benchmark I got
65.5 FPS Min 26.7, Max 125.5
2740 Score
Sorry no screen shot

I don't like to stress brand new hardware so don't expect me to

One other thing and you or someone else may help me with.
This card is suppose to have a Hybrid bois switch but I can't find the damn thing. Even has a drawing of the location but hell if I can find it LOL.

Anyway, the one big thing that bothers me is it dumps most of the heat into the case. I have a nice high air flow case which helps a lot.

If you have more questions I will do my best to answer them.
Cheers

 

[fullinfusion]

Have you tried trixx? And did you check the box to unlock voltage in the sub menu of msi afterburner? You can try iTurbo fro HIS to see if the voltage unlocks. Please let me know your findings ad this card will do me no good with locked voltage.
thanks

 

[fullinfusion]

Read this, I believe you ned to download the latest version of MSI Afterburner I believe it's version 300beta18

http://www.custompcreview.com/reviews/review-msi-radeon-r9-290-gaming-4g/19995/15/

 

[Raovac]

Have you tried trixx? And did you check the box to unlock voltage in the sub menu of msi afterburner? You can try iTurbo fro HIS to see if the voltage unlocks. Please let me know your findings ad this card will do me no good with locked voltage.
thanks

No I haven't tried Trixx.
Yes I did check the box to unlock voltage in the sub menu.
Do not want to try iTubo :b

Good news is............ Downloaded the 3.0.0 beta18 and voltage is unlocked and working
Thank you.

 

[fullinfusion]

No thank you

 

[GreiverBlade]

I've ordered 2 of these bad ass looking cards and should have them on the 1st week of march.

It's the MSI Radeon R9 290 Gaming Twin Frozr IV 1GHz model and am really excited to have this power in my rig.

Any thought's on it?

Any owners in here to share there experience on these cards?

How do they overclock?
Hows the temperatures when running full out?
Hows the fan noise?

so on so forth...

Thanks

if i could have only one of them, that would be the best day of my tech addict life ... i content myself with my MSI R9 270 Gaming OC but i take the chance to say that MSI with their Twin Frozr IV have a pure winner for a non ref cooler its by far the best and quieter i ever had, i see it on the little sister of that R9 290, i clocked it 1050/1500 and the temp are low so is the noise and also pretty much stable no matter what i do with.

i will see later if i either buy a 2nd 270 and do a X16/X4 CFX as the A88X chipset allow it or if i sell the 270 once i have enough to add to it to take a 290 but no matter what the next card i will take will be a MSI Gaming serie.

 

[neliz]

representing:

BTW, don't try this at home, it doesn't work, our PCBs are custom and you can't fir a TFIV on a reference card.

 

[adulaamin]

What RAM do they use on these cards? Is it the same with the 290X? Just asking coz I'll be buying myself one by the end of the month. The only review I could find was at Guru3D for the 290X and it's not as comprehensive as Wiz's review.

 

[neliz]

What RAM do they use on these cards? Is it the same with the 290X? Just asking coz I'll be buying myself one by the end of the month. The only review I could find was at Guru3D for the 290X and it's not as comprehensive as Wiz's review.

Hynix
Check for yourself: http://media.msi.com/main.php?g2_itemId=104281&g2_imageViewsIndex=1

And here's another source for you: CustomPCReview:
http://www.custompcreview.com/reviews/review-msi-radeon-r9-290-gaming-4g/19995/

 

[RejZoR]

You can always tweak the fan profile with MSI Afterburner. Just set it to keep the fans at minimum till it reaches lets say 80°C which is reasonable for any GPU, but can be kept at low RPM. When i had TwinFrozr cooler on HD6950 i kept it at 30% fan speed till 80%. And in my case it rarely speed up at all. Same now with WindForce 3X. It actually never makes the fans go faster because the temperatures stay below 75°C even with clocks like 1100/6200 that i'm using now.

R9-290X will behave a bit differently, but with some re-adjusting you should make it fairly silent and with high clocks.

 

[buildzoid]

I have a suspicion that MSI is using underpowered inductors which is why they voltage locked the cards.

 

[neliz]

I have a suspicion that MSI is using underpowered inductors which is why they voltage locked the cards.

Lolol The cards aren't voltage locked, he just used an old version of Afterburner that didn't support the 290s.

 

[buildzoid]

AB still has really conservative settings and maxes out at +100mv whereas Trixx goes up to +200mv.
And I won't trust those inductors until I see a close up because from the few photos I did find they look like R19/R22 magics which are underpowered.

 

[neliz]

AB still has really conservative settings and maxes out at +100mv whereas Trixx goes up to +200mv.
And I won't trust those inductors until I see a close up because from the few photos I did find they look like R19/R22 magics which are underpowered.

1. close ups are everywhere in the links.
2. Underpowered enough to have about 10 WR's for fastest 290X right now, that is until the Lightning drops.

 

[buildzoid]

1. close ups are everywhere in the links.
2. Underpowered enough to have about 10 WR's for fastest 290X right now, that is until the Lightning drops.

Unigine Extreme is currently held by a DCUII card
Firestrike Extreme is held by a reference R9 290X
Vantage is held by DCUII card
3Dmark 11 is held by a reference card
Catzilla 720p and 1440p are held by a reference card
For 2 cards
Unigine Extreme is currently held by reference cards
Firestrike Extreme is held by reference cards
Vantage is held by reference cards
3Dmark 11 is held by a mix of reference cards and Gaming cards
Catzilla 720p and 1440p are held by reference cards

And I could go on and list this for 3x and 4x crossfire but it would basically follow the same pattern.

And I checked a larger picture and those inductors are R19 magics and on the magic site under shielded pin type inductors there is not a single one that is both 190nH and pushes more than 60A so they are underpowered unless magic has R19 inductors that do 70A that they won't list on their English site. On the Taiwanese site I did find inductors that do 71A however they are SMD and a totally different shape compared to the ones on the Gaming R9 cards. The 71A ones are the ones that gigabyte Windforce cards use.
Now 60A is still very good as the VRM will still do 300A just fine but the R9 290X's core at 1.4V pull around 321A at furmark load. Now if you use AB to OC that's not an issue because AB allows a maximum 1.3V but Trixx lets you do 1.4V and that could cause the VRM to burn out when running Furmark but for games it should be fine.

 

[adulaamin]

Hynix
Check for yourself: http://media.msi.com/main.php?g2_itemId=104281&g2_imageViewsIndex=1

And here's another source for you: CustomPCReview:
http://www.custompcreview.com/reviews/review-msi-radeon-r9-290-gaming-4g/19995/

Spoiler

Sorry I was referring to the 290X Gaming OC card. But thanks for the links I was able to look up pics for the 290X.

 

[neliz]

And I could go on and list this for 3x and 4x crossfire but it would basically follow the same pattern.

Our GAMING cards aren't reference and hold plenty of those records you mentioned

https://scontent-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/t1/1551601_10152132644083349_497488186_n.jpg

And I checked a larger picture and those inductors are R19 magics and on the magic site under shielded pin type inductors there is not a single one that is both 190nH and pushes more than 60A so they are underpowered unless magic has R19 inductors that do 70A that they won't list on their English site. On the Taiwanese site I did find inductors that do 71A however they are SMD and a totally different shape compared to the ones on the Gaming R9 cards. The 71A ones are the ones that gigabyte Windforce cards use.
Now 60A is still very good as the VRM will still do 300A just fine but the R9 290X's core at 1.4V pull around 321A at furmark load. Now if you use AB to OC that's not an issue because AB allows a maximum 1.3V but Trixx lets you do 1.4V and that could cause the VRM to burn out when running Furmark but for games it should be fine.

You make it sound like anything other than VRM's with 70+Amps will explode, yet the heat generated on the 70A's is much, much higher. R19's run about 20 Degrees cooler.

 

[buildzoid]

Our GAMING cards aren't reference and hold plenty of those records you mentioned
You make it sound like anything other than VRM's with 70+Amps will explode, yet the heat generated on the 70A's is much, much higher. R19's run about 20 Degrees cooler.

I have two of the Gigabyte cards with 71A inductors and it's perfectly fine when it comes to VRM temperature.
Also the records you listed are multi GPU and there it's not so much about how good the cards are it's about the fact that very few people have more than 2 cards (there are 7 submissions for 3x CF and only 4 on 4x CF). Holding the record when there is very little competition is easy also LN2 drops power draw so as long as the VRM is almost sufficient for 1.4V on air it's good for 1.4+V on LN2.
I said could burn the VRM out because many manufacturers under rate inductors and list current rating at 125C° so if the R19s run 20C° cooler than the R15 which most cards run at 90C these run at 70C at which point they can take more current probably 63-64A. And I can point out that R19s have tighter ripple suppression than the R15s so there are positives and negatives but I personally prefer higher current capabilities even at the cost of efficiency and ripple suppression.
Basically it's a good card and it probably won't even burn up at 1.5V because Nvidia reference VRMs(GTX TITAN / GTX 680) survived current over steps of 20% on everything before they went boom but I still prefer having more current than less current allowance.
BTW I've been looking into replacing the inductors on my R9 290X and R9 290 with 80A R17s from Coilcraft that throw of slightly more heat than the inductors that they currently have.

 

[fullinfusion]

Nice discussion, been a great read so far.

 

[fullinfusion]

About the vrm and inductors, I read somewhere that they are also cooled by the fin array. Correct?

 

[neliz]

About the vrm and inductors, I read somewhere that they are also cooled by the fin array. Correct?

There is ONLY direct contact between the fin array of the heatsink and the mosfets on the R9 290(X) GAMING. So the chokes aren't cooled by any heat-sink, but by the air passing through the fin array .

It's the metal bar halfway through the left part of the array in this picture:
http://media.msi.com/main.php?g2_itemId=104240&g2_imageViewsIndex=1

You can see how it connects here:

between the capacitors on the right side of the card.

Also be aware that everyone in the industry calls this specific component a choke because it's a specific component.

 

[fullinfusion]

representing:

BTW, don't try this at home, it doesn't work, our PCBs are custom and you can't fir a TFIV on a reference card.

What do you mean TFIV? two fan IV?

The cards Im getting are they going to have the AMD logo like your 2nd picture?

Plus What about coil whine? I have the MSI R7970 OC edition cards atm and one of them whine like a little Biotch!

How's these 290 Twin gaming cards for whine?

And thank you for posting here! I cant see your tag under your name on my phone and thought .... ah nvm your golden my friend!

 

[neliz]

What do you mean TFIV? two fan IV?

TF = Twin Frozr

The cards Im getting are they going to have the AMD logo like your 2nd picture?

Nope

Plus What about coil whine? I have the MSI R7970 OC edition cards atm and one of them whine like a little Biotch!

How's these 290 Twin gaming cards for whine?

I haven't seen it exhibited at home or during in-house testing, advice: don't skimp on your PSU.

And thank you for posting here! I cant see your tag under your name on my phone and thought .... ah nvm your golden my friend!

yw

 

[fullinfusion]

TF = Twin Frozr


Nope


I haven't seen it exhibited at home or during in-house testing, advice: don't skimp on your PSU.


yw

Ok so why is the card called a twin froz? and you mention don't try this because it wont work? I'm lost on that comment

And why no amd logo? what is the real difference from the reference pcb to your msi one?

How many layer pcb is it?

And please tell me the card has zero sag when installed in the case!