1
00:00:00,680 --> 00:00:07,120
this card features a Hawaii XT core with

2
00:00:04,319 --> 00:00:12,160
2,816 stream processors clocked at 1.08 gigahertz boost clock 4 gigs of

3
00:00:09,920 --> 00:00:18,840
gddr5 memory on a 512 bit bus and all that's clocked at 5 GHz as well but

4
00:00:16,800 --> 00:00:25,880
spoiler alert that's not actually the interesting thing about this product the

5
00:00:21,400 --> 00:00:29,519
R9 290x lightning from MSI is the

6
00:00:25,880 --> 00:00:34,280
fastest hands down R9 29x card we have

7
00:00:29,519 --> 00:00:37,559
ever tested and really it it feels like

8
00:00:34,280 --> 00:00:39,399
unlocks the potential of AMD's latest

9
00:00:37,559 --> 00:00:42,440
and greatest GPU in a way that we haven't seen

10
00:00:47,039 --> 00:00:54,800
yet with its Factory tuning and data center DNA an Intel 730 series SSD is an

11
00:00:52,960 --> 00:00:59,559
amazing choice for gamers and performance enthusiasts now it's not as simple as I

12
00:00:58,359 --> 00:01:04,559
mean I know that sounds great but it's not as simple as just okay well everyone

13
00:01:01,600 --> 00:01:11,680
should just get R9 290x lightning cards because it's 150 bucks more than a base

14
00:01:07,759 --> 00:01:14,280
R9 290x and even $100 more than MSI's

15
00:01:11,680 --> 00:01:18,920
pretty strong gaming card that has you know a dual fan cooler and some of that

16
00:01:16,320 --> 00:01:21,439
aftermarket stuff that we like to see so like what do you actually get for your

17
00:01:20,560 --> 00:01:28,040
extra $100 well for one thing MSI has moved

18
00:01:24,680 --> 00:01:30,280
beyond the dual fan twin frozer cooler

19
00:01:28,040 --> 00:01:35,040
design to what they're calling the fry frozer and while I'm not necessarily

20
00:01:32,520 --> 00:01:39,799
convinced that three fans offers a tangible benefit over two larger ones um

21
00:01:37,960 --> 00:01:44,880
what's cool about this design is that each of the fans is pwm and can be

22
00:01:42,759 --> 00:01:49,159
individually controlled in software so you could actually run how whichever

23
00:01:46,880 --> 00:01:53,439
ones you want however fast you want so you can be like okay well I want the the

24
00:01:50,680 --> 00:01:56,920
86 mm ones on the outside to run faster and the 7mm one I'm going to ramp that

25
00:01:55,040 --> 00:02:00,960
one down because when you have smaller fans and you turn the RPMs up they can

26
00:01:58,960 --> 00:02:06,759
tend to get a little bit whiny and loud so you can actually control that however

27
00:02:03,079 --> 00:02:08,319
you want to um now okay so before we get

28
00:02:06,759 --> 00:02:12,520
into some of the other special stuff it does support the usual AMD technology so

29
00:02:10,479 --> 00:02:16,680
Crossfire up to four-way although you'll need to water cool it if you want to do

30
00:02:14,440 --> 00:02:20,319
that EK does have a block coming for this card specifically because it is a

31
00:02:18,360 --> 00:02:26,040
triple slot design out of the box you've got support for AMD mantle uh true audio

32
00:02:23,599 --> 00:02:30,640
powertune which is their Dynamic uh clock speed ramping up and ramping down

33
00:02:28,599 --> 00:02:34,840
to sort of keep the card safe and within the right temperatures and power you've

34
00:02:32,280 --> 00:02:38,480
got easy Affinity with no DisplayPort monitor required so you could run three

35
00:02:36,319 --> 00:02:43,480
monitors off of two DVI ports in an HDMI port which is really cool or even up to

36
00:02:40,879 --> 00:02:48,640
six displays if you use a DisplayPort Hub and then of course it's got a 4 gig

37
00:02:45,599 --> 00:02:51,159
frame buffer like all r9290 X's for a

38
00:02:48,640 --> 00:02:57,480
better 4K gaming experience it also has some unusual stuff so in the

39
00:02:53,760 --> 00:02:59,480
extremely sexy folding box that actually

40
00:02:57,480 --> 00:03:05,159
has like a drawer at the bottom for the access accessories along with the usual

41
00:03:02,080 --> 00:03:07,000
like you know stickers and Driver disc

42
00:03:05,159 --> 00:03:14,560
and manual and all that stuff is a certificate of stability adapters for

43
00:03:10,760 --> 00:03:18,080
using a multimeter to check voltages and

44
00:03:14,560 --> 00:03:20,879
a replacement vrm heat sink for subzero

45
00:03:18,080 --> 00:03:26,200
cooling now the card itself is designed with Subzero in mind it uses a

46
00:03:23,080 --> 00:03:27,879
completely non-reference PCB with a 12

47
00:03:26,200 --> 00:03:33,599
plus three-phase power design for the GPU and the RAM and three PCIe

48
00:03:31,159 --> 00:03:39,000
connectors two eight pins and one six pin something that that power hungry GPU

49
00:03:36,640 --> 00:03:43,560
core in there may actually need when you're really ramping up the clock speed

50
00:03:40,840 --> 00:03:48,200
it's got an ln2 bio switch which is something that manufacturers tell us

51
00:03:46,239 --> 00:03:53,879
isn't necessary if you're not going Subzero but this is two cards in a row

52
00:03:51,280 --> 00:03:59,799
now that we've run into weird throttling issues on the first one was the Kingpin

53
00:03:56,120 --> 00:04:02,760
classified 780 Ti from EVGA that was

54
00:03:59,799 --> 00:04:06,439
immediately fixed by enabling ln2 mode and then once ln2 mode was on remember

55
00:04:05,000 --> 00:04:11,720
you turn it off flip the switch cuz you're loading a new BIOS and then reboot it the card was a dream to

56
00:04:09,920 --> 00:04:16,320
overclock and we didn't run into any issues at all so also on the top of the

57
00:04:14,400 --> 00:04:21,880
card we have an LED indicator to show the card's load so in theory um the

58
00:04:19,639 --> 00:04:26,080
lightning logo is green for no load blue for medium and red for a heavy load but

59
00:04:23,840 --> 00:04:29,759
in practice uh once we overclocked it it just kind of stayed red because we were

60
00:04:27,639 --> 00:04:33,120
pushing it pretty pretty hard and then it also has a series of blue LEDs on the

61
00:04:31,680 --> 00:04:37,360
back that show you how many of the power phases are active at any given time I

62
00:04:35,199 --> 00:04:41,880
did mention that that cooler takes up three slots but I can see why they did

63
00:04:39,639 --> 00:04:48,840
it unlike some three slot coolers I've seen before almost the entire top of the

64
00:04:45,000 --> 00:04:51,440
card is basically a solid like grid of

65
00:04:48,840 --> 00:04:55,759
aluminum lines and heat pipes running through it and all of that so in terms

66
00:04:53,360 --> 00:05:00,160
of the sheer Mass the card is extremely heavy so it's not like they just made it

67
00:04:58,120 --> 00:05:05,960
thick in order to like kind of put fancy things on it it's three slot because it

68
00:05:02,360 --> 00:05:07,680
actually does perform that well and I

69
00:05:05,960 --> 00:05:11,320
would love to see what a system would look like if you did pull the coolers

70
00:05:09,120 --> 00:05:15,600
off and put water blocks on them uh with four of them running especially because

71
00:05:13,720 --> 00:05:19,199
you don't need the interconnects anymore so it would look extremely clean no

72
00:05:17,639 --> 00:05:23,280
Crossfire Bridges it's all done over the PCI Express Bus and would perform

73
00:05:21,720 --> 00:05:28,440
incredibly well now before I hand off to Luke for

74
00:05:26,360 --> 00:05:32,680
benchmarking and telling you guys you know what I've been teasing just exactly

75
00:05:30,560 --> 00:05:37,840
how fast this card is I'd like to give MSI some props here even though they are

76
00:05:35,319 --> 00:05:42,840
asking for a significant premium for the privilege they're giving their customers

77
00:05:39,960 --> 00:05:47,280
the option to push the card as hard as they want with that ln2 BIOS even at the

78
00:05:45,479 --> 00:05:51,479
risk of bricking it and while officially they could reject your warranty for

79
00:05:49,000 --> 00:05:55,479
stuff that you do to it in my experience as long as there's nothing physically

80
00:05:53,479 --> 00:05:59,919
altered on the card when they receive it back they're not going to do that so if

81
00:05:57,600 --> 00:06:04,759
you grab a 290x lightning you can can pretty much go to town on it because

82
00:06:02,160 --> 00:06:09,479
this is a very nicely bended GPU in here with an extremely robust and actually

83
00:06:06,880 --> 00:06:13,720
quite quiet underload cooler an awesome back plate it looks great and okay okay

84
00:06:11,840 --> 00:06:18,680
I'll stop stalling and I'll hand it off to Luke to let you guys know just how

85
00:06:15,840 --> 00:06:22,680
Ballin this card is all right guys we're going to start off with the bench we

86
00:06:20,080 --> 00:06:27,919
have a CPU which is a 3960x clocked at 4.0 GHz for our RAM we have our RAM

87
00:06:25,120 --> 00:06:31,919
running at 1866 MHz and for the graphics card it varies so check the overclocking

88
00:06:30,280 --> 00:06:37,240
dock in the description below and be able to correlate the overclocking settings for those cards along with the

89
00:06:35,080 --> 00:06:42,039
graph that we will show in a moment it did well it did pretty much exactly how

90
00:06:39,360 --> 00:06:45,199
I expected and that's not too surprising it's a really well- bended 290x I've

91
00:06:43,960 --> 00:06:49,240
been waiting to get a really well- bended 290x so that it could beat my 780

92
00:06:47,400 --> 00:06:54,000
for a while now and this one did it handily it doesn't beat the 780 Ti which

93
00:06:51,240 --> 00:06:57,280
is again expected but it's still very nice if you're looking for overclocking

94
00:06:55,560 --> 00:07:01,479
tips if you get this card I would highly recommend switching into ln2 mode even

95
00:06:59,720 --> 00:07:04,360
if you're just air cooling this seemed to add actually quite a bit of stability

96
00:07:02,919 --> 00:07:08,560
to the car and I was able to get core clock speeds much higher once I switched

97
00:07:06,560 --> 00:07:11,479
into that mode all right guys if you enjoyed this and want to see all the

98
00:07:09,720 --> 00:07:14,319
rest of our Linus Tech tips content be sure to subscribe to Linus Tech tips

99
00:07:12,960 --> 00:07:20,039
here on YouTube and while you're here and while your cursor is below this video clicking subscribe be sure to also

100
00:07:17,960 --> 00:07:23,039
click like share favorite all that kind of stuff and comment on whether or not

101
00:07:21,720 --> 00:07:28,680
this is a card you're interested in I know some of the American viewers might be a little bit shaky about getting it

102
00:07:26,720 --> 00:07:32,080
just to the cost prohibiti there is on buying a 290 X in the states right now

103
00:07:30,680 --> 00:07:36,280
due to coin mining and all that kind of stuff but if you want to talk about that more maybe jump over to the Forum it's a

104
00:07:35,080 --> 00:07:41,039
little bit friendlier of a comment section and if you want to get rid of those ads on the Forum you can always

105
00:07:39,280 --> 00:07:45,319
contribute any contribution level on the Forum gets rid of all the ads so yeah

106
00:07:44,240 --> 00:08:11,300
thanks for watching I'll see you guys next time