MSI unveiled their 290X lightning finally at their suite during CES 2014:

The card is a beast as shown if you compare it a more “normal” but still oversized card next to it:

It’s longer than a reference card and taller too. Of course both of these are expected and we’re certainly not surprised by the card running with 2 8 pins and a 6 pin power connector setup:

The card is seriously beefy though and if we lay it down you can see the heat sink is extending beyond the slot bracket:

This seems like another 2.5 slot lightning, though this time not because of the extra clip on power module on the back of the card. That has gone in favor of a more normal backplate:

Looking at the connectors we are disappointed not to get 5 120Hz 1080p compatible outputs. Even to get 6 60Hz 1080p monitors you’d have to use a display port hub to turn the 1 DP into 3:

Hopefully next generation we’ll see DVI dissappear in favor of 5 mini DP and one HDMI.

The marketing slide confirms the dual bios as expected, though we are not sure what the 3×3 OC thing is and the GPU guy wasn’t there to tell us sadly:

It really is a beast of a card and we fully expect their to be a compatible water block, most likely only made by EK. Retail price is unknown but my guess is $650 MSRP but I think actual price at retailers will be higher due to the massive demand because of GPU based coin mining.

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4 COMMENTS

  1. Stren, do you have any idea what the dimensions of the PCB are? I noticed that the heatsink extends past the PCB in both dimensions so a watercooled 290x lightning would be more compatible with cases than the stock cooled card.

    • Sorry sadly I had no time to measure it- but you’re right it would be more compatible if that’s case!

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