Anandtech spotted MSI R9 290X Lightning in MSI booth at CES 2014.
It looks like MSI redesigned the cooler for Radeon R9 290X. It is now definitely triple-slot design due to higher heat sink (GTX 780 Lightning was also 3-slot, but this card is slightly bigger). This change was probably caused by much more demanding power design of the Hawaii GPU.
The Tri-Frozr cooler shroud is the same as on GTX 780 Lightning. It was designed in Triple Force architecture. Other interesting features of MSI Lighting are: Triple Level Signals (load level LED indicators), Military Class 4 components, enhanced power design (Digital PWM) and TWIN Bios.
The leaked PCB shot revealed that we might be looking at 12+3+2 phase power design, which is definitely an upgrade from reference board. What’s more it will also require 3 power connectors including a pair of 8pins and a single 6pin.
The MSI R9 290X Lightning is equipped with Hawaii XT GPU which holds 2816 Stream Cores and 64 ROPs. Additionally we have 4GB GDDR5 memory and 512-bit interface.
All that will be premium priced. However, Anandtech did not ask about the price and the release date, so this remains unanswered.
Source: Anandtech
