MSI Radeon R9-290X Gaming OC review - Product Photos

Much like most R9-290X cards, the card has a power consumption of give or take 280~290 Watts, AMD will actually not formally disclose that information specifically but our measurements actually show these numbers under full gaming load. The board's overall power consumption from idle to load is excellent really, roughly 10 Watt in idle and when the monitor goes into sleep mode just 3 Watt. it is a nice looking card alright. 

At the rear side of the card we see a rather full but clean PCB, I have to give props to MSI here for this backplate. MSI is amongst the first that applied little gaps and holes on the back-plate allowing the VRM area and GPU to ventilate and not trap heat. Excellent to see! The PCB is custom but sticks close to the AMD reference design.

 
You will need to hook the 290X card up to your power supply with one 6-pin and one 8-pin PCIe PEG connector. We recommend a 550~600W power supply to start with, with one card of course.

There's also a dual BIOS. On the reference cards for an uber and Quiet mode. The switches modes are as follows;

• “Quiet Mode” – Bios position one. Switch is in position closest to where you plug in your displays. This mode is designed to optimally suit a gamer that wants to keep a tight lid on acoustics. If you do not play with headphones, you do not have a high end gaming chassis, or your room’s ambient noise level is extremely low this may be the mode for you.
• “Uber Mode” – Bios position two. Switch is in position furthest away to where you plug in your displays

The Uber mode is designed to perform optimally under all performance and game testing. This includes crossfire. Trying the two modes on this MSI card, did not bring any noticerable change though.