Question 1

I want to buy the video card but I want to know if the fans are loud when you use the occur that MSI ships it with I had a hd7970 from sapphire and the fans were loud when occur a bit so are the fan noise loud?

Accepted Answer

Noise most likely will not be in issue for you. The R9 290s all tend to run on the hot side. That being said, this particular card has a great cooling system that should run quietly in any well ventilated computer case. I have this card in the worse possible computer case: EVGA Hadron Air m-ITX Modified to fit an 11" PCI-E card. It is completely silent while idling, web browsing, and light activity.

Fans are quite silent until 35% speed, become noticeable at around 50% speed, and some would find it "noisy" at 65-70%+.

In a well ventilated case, I've heard the fans don't spin up past 40% under load. In my worse case scenario (no pun intended), under a typical load in OC mode 1007mhz My fans run at 55% while operating at around 77C.

Question 2

I'm assuming this card can run most if not all games a max settings. Now my question is, is it worth buying this or is it overkill?

Accepted Answer

Depends on the resolution you're running, your tolerance for fast frame rates and the game.  Coming from an SLI 670 system, I think this is a noticeable improvement on bf4 with a 120mhz 1080 monitor.  Much smoother @ 60-100ish all ultra preset, feels less laggy - more consistent framerate.  I wasn't sure about the cost, but @$430 I feel that I don't need to xfire until I upgrade my monitor - which at this point I don't need to go.  Worth it for me.

Question 3

Does this come with a copy of BF4?

Accepted Answer

The box from MSI does not have Battlefield 4 in it.  However AMD has been running a promotion that gives BF4 away with some of their video cards.  When I purchased this from newegg the purchase was a combo that was fulfilled with a free copy of BF4 that was shipped separately.  The game was listed as a separate item with a 100% discount on the invoice.

Question 4

Does it fit into a mid-case? i have a CM Storm.

Accepted Answer

It depends on the case. I run mine in a silent NZXT mid tower case, though loose two HDD bays because of it's length. Check the dimensions stated under the product specs on newegg and then measure the unobstructed space around your PCI slot.

Question 5

Can I run it on my  PCI Express 2.0 x16?
I have GA P75-D3

Accepted Answer

Yes, PCIE 3.0 cards are baelaborate who has tested this but if there was it would most likely bckwards compatible with other generations of PCIE Slots, however there may be a slight amount of bottlenecking...I'm not 100% on this someone might want to e an extremely small amount...but tbh I'd be more worried about the other system components than your motherboard, mainly how much ram do you have and do you have a significantly fast enough processor so this card can stretch its legs per se.

Question 6

Will this bottleneck a fx-6350 cpu?

Accepted Answer

I'm using an fx 6 core currently in place of my i5 3570k the difference in fps is negligable. Unless you know you are playing cpu intensive games or software such as emulators you will not notice a difference between cpu's.

Question 7

So I bought an EVGA 650 Watt PSU, would that be sufficient to run this beast? I noticed that XFX suggests nothing lower than 750 watts. That made me concerned that my PSU wouldn't be powerful enough.

Accepted Answer

Yes, but you would not have much headroom for any sort of CPU or GPU overclock. Most importantly, you want to make sure the amperage on the +12v rail is sufficient.

Question 8

Will this work on a 610 watt psu with no trouble? Just thinking of upgrading to this.

Accepted Answer

The cards max out around 300W at max load (Furmark benchmark). My experience is they run around 200W max load in game. Your total power consumption is affected by the hardware your run (cpu, storage devices, peripheral devices, etc.) and if you are overclocking. If you google psu power consumption calculator, there are several sites that allow you to input your exact system.

Without knowing your exact system, I would say a 610W psu should be able to run a basic setup with an R9 290.

Question 9

I am very new to Pc gaming, so bear with me. What kind of power does this need? My current psu is 550W. Do I need more if I want to buy this? Thanks everyone.

Accepted Answer

That kinda depends on the rest of your system. In some cases it may be enough, in some cases not. Just depends how much power the rest of your PC is running through. This card will pull about 300watts itself at full load. If you overclock then 550w is probably not going to be enough, at stock you might get by. Close call really. Mine is on a 700w PSU, but both my CPU and GPU are overclocked substantially.

Question 10

I plan on using this with a z97 mob, Intel 4690k, an HDD, and an SSD.  Will an Antec 550w power supply be enough if I plan on overclocking?  I only plan to run one of these cards in my build. Thanks.

Accepted Answer

That power supply would be marginal even WITHOUT over-clocking.  You really want a bigger power supply with a little more headroom.

The R9 290 series of cards pull a lot of power (some over 350w) all on their own.

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