Overall Review: I did upgrade my power supply to a Rosewill Hive 650 in order to power this card. I see a lot of people hating on this card and will never understand the AMD vs Nvidia war but i feel that this is a well rounded card for any PC gamer. Hovering around the $200 price point, this particular card is a great buy for the price to performance ratio and the fact it can potentially be OC'd further to match the performance of the 280X.Ĭons: I have nothing bad to say about this card at this time, only time will tell. A nice little feature in the gaming app called the "Cool down" button runs the fans at max, cooling the card to idle conditions within about 40 seconds. Temperatures and noise levels are beyond fantastic with the twin frozr design keeping this card uber cool and ridiculously quiet even under heavy load. I haven't even overclocked this card with afterburner and it runs any game on ultra with max anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering at 60 frames no questions asked. Absolutely love using the MSI gaming app, specifically on OC mode boosting the core clock to 1,000 Mhz.
Included in the box was a drivers disc with a few other programs like the MSI gaming app, and MSI Afterburner. Removed my R7 250, seated the R9 280, connected a 6 pin and 8 pin pci-e, done. I picked this particular card because it was on sale, had the best factory overclock, and I heard great things about the twin frozr design. Pros: This is an incredible non-reference R9 280 for the price. I don't care because I would have gotten a replacement if there were any issues.
I assume this is so people can't get a full refund on the gpu. On my receipt Newegg took $150 off the price of the card and made it look like I paid for the games. I can't complain because they were free and the card was a good deal even without the games. Overall Review: I used the AMD gold reward to get 3 games valued at $70 bucks according to current Steam prices not the $150 advertised. It would be nice if there was more info about what systems are compatible. It worked fine after I switched to legacy mode so no big deal. Apparently my system isn't compatible with the Hybrid setting which I didn't figure out until after the card was installed and my pc wouldn't boot. The default setting is Hybrid which is supposed to support legacy bios and UEFI(according to the instructions) which I had no clue what that was until I looked it up. The Twin Frozer heatsink seems to work very well.Ĭons: The only issue I had was with the bios switch. I OC'd the power to +20% core clock to 1080 and memory clock to 1350 and had no problems. Every game I've played runs at 60+ fps with ultra settings including Far Cry 3, Tomb Raider, Dishonored, and Skyrim with 50+ mods. Just use Predator within Afterburner for"FREE"!įorm Factor & Dimensions Card Dimensions (L x H)Īdditional Information Date First Available Meet MIL-STD-810G standard to ensure the best stability and quality.
Silent Mode - The best operating environment with extremely low noiseĭual 10CM PWM controlled fans with Propeller Blade Technology.Īirflow Control Technology optimizes efficiency of heat pipes.
Gaming Mode -Provide a stable gaming experience with higher core clock. OC Mode - Tune up core clock and fan speed to gain a best performance. Learn more about the MSI R9 280 GAMING 3G Model Brand