Msi R9 290x lighting or msi R9 290x gaming?

[Peanut2013uk]

apart from the slight core clock speed I see no difference can someone enlighten me because the lighting is £400 ish and the gaming is under £300 atm I'm upgrading from the asus Radeon HD6950 (don't think changing the bios to 6970 is good enough now) I have everything I need to run it etc, 900w psu saber tooth P67 and i7 2600k (yes I'm going to upgrade motherboard and cpu next).
Also if the Lightning is the better option can I run it at the 900w setting?

 

[i7Baby]

See http://www.tomshardware.de/nvidia-geforce-gtx-970-gtx-980-roundup-vergleichstest,testberichte-241658-18.html

The Lightning is a bit better than the Gaming

But also consider a gtx970 which performs about the same eg Gigabyte G1 - 300 quid - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-147-GI

 

[KingSaif]

Lightning has core clock of 1080MHz while Gaming has 1040MHz

 

[Peanut2013uk]

See http://www.tomshardware.de/nvidia-geforce-gtx-970-gtx-980-roundup-vergleichstest,testberichte-241658-18.html

The Lightning is a bit better than the Gaming

But also consider a gtx970 which performs about the same eg Gigabyte G1 - 300 quid - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-147-GI

Nice, the gtx 970 pips out both and at a flat £300, although I've never had an nvidia gpu before hmm, might be time for a switch!

 

[Trossa]

The Lightning is the fastest 290x, full stop. Do consider the 970 though, unless you get a cracking deal on the 290x the 970 is the better option. The overclocking headroom is immense and it uses less power than the previous gen 760.

 

[KingSaif]

Definitely agree with Trossa. The 970 is literally 30 degrees celsius cooler than the 290x. That's enough reason for me to get a 970 honestly, but also, the 290x requires more power, recommended at 650w by http://www.realhardtechx.com/index_archivos/Page362.htm, while the 970 only needs 500. Also, the 970 beats it by 6 FPS in BF4 Ultra 1080p, as well as by a few FPS in other games. The 290x also beats the 970 in a few games, too, but isn't worth it imo. If you already ordered the 290x, return it or something, cuz you're really missing out on an amazing card for an amazing price.

 

[KingSaif]

Just read that you have 900W. Why do you have such a high amount lol.., it's way too much headroom to run a single 290x or 970. I would say replace it with a high quality 500w-550w PSU from Seasonic,XFX,or Antec. If u go with the 290x tho, u need more than 500w, so check out 650w-700w PSUs. I'd recommend the 970 over the 290x any day tho, but it's your pick. Good luck

 

[Peanut2013uk]

Just read that you have 900W. Why do you have such a high amount lol.., it's way too much headroom to run a single 290x or 970. I would say replace it with a high quality 500w-550w PSU from Seasonic,XFX,or Antec. If u go with the 290x tho, u need more than 500w, so check out 650w-700w PSUs. I'd recommend the 970 over the 290x any day tho, but it's your pick. Good luck

Its a Antec 900w psu bronze and it was on special off for £150 instead of £200 something also in my defence when I ran the Asus HD6950 on my old rig with my old psu the card was running at 756MB instead of 2048mb so I got angry and got that whopper
Also I did get the GTX 970