Month ago I probably would have rated it at two stars as I have been getting severe artifacting in Fallout 4 (only game I have played extensively in the seven months I've owned it, although my grandson has played several and my wife a few less demanding games without noticing artifacts) starting with the Crimson drivers. I noticed that the fans practically never ran even though the temperatures were higher than I like, often in the 80s C. However, I have read too many stories of people setting up custom fan profiles and the next driver update not correctly reacting, bricking the card, to be comfortable with that. I had honestly decided to open a support ticket, but I went ahead and installed the latest Crimson driver update when prompted. To my delight, this driver seems to have fixed the issue completely. My fans always run now, which is a bit loud, but I am getting zero artifacts. If I have to choose between loud and trying to ignore multicolor checkered textures and blocky graphical representations until I am up close, then loud it is. Fallout 4 is once again pleasurable. The card is extremely competent in 1920x1080, even though that's perhaps not its strongest area; with the latest driver, there is nothing I have thrown at it which phases it, although as mentioned, Fallout 4 is the only game I have played extensively. But with a stock i5-2500K, 8GB RAM, a Mushkin system SSD, and a Samsung Evo games SSD, everything I've briefly tried from ARMA 2 & Crysis 1 & 2 to The Witcher 2 & Wolfenstein have run at over 60 FPS with everything maxed. Though as I said, those are brief exposures; there might well be slowdowns in more graphically demanding sections. As R9-390 cards go, this MSI is the best. (Although my MSI Live Update update consistently fails to load the newer version; however, it always correctly detects and installs the latest driver, so no biggy.) It is however far too loud and hot to consider Crossfire, but honestly, by the time I'm ready to consider Crossfire or SLI, my cards are typically either off the market or way over-priced for their value.



Honestly, I wish I had gone with the GTX-970 GAMING, even though I've historically had better luck with AMD cards. (I received two defective GTX-275 cards in a row, out of three defective cards I've received in 31 years of building computers, and of the cards I've had which prematurely failed, most have been nVidia even though I mostly install AMD. However, none of those defective or failed cards were MSI, so maybe it's a brand thing. YMMV) As I sit here without my headphones (which I use when gaming), this thing is REALLY loud, and it uses a lot more power. But at the end of the day, this card does everything I need today and I plan to hang onto it for at least two years, depending on what comes out in games and cards.



And when I do replace it, undoubtedly it will be with another MSI. Between graphics cards and motherboards, I've probably easily installed over a hundred MSI products without a defective or partially defective part, and the only failure has been when a glass of water was accidentally dumped through the top grill.



I should add that my case is a Coolermaster 932. It has two SSD, two opticals, and three Winchester hard drives, but it also has every fan spot filled with a high flow fan. It sits on the floor 8" from my desk and 6" from the wall, with the other two sides open and the first shelf 15" above. I have enough air flow to blow dry a cat. A large cat.