I had a custom MSI R9 290X before and while it's a pretty powerful card it has 2 major flaws.
(1) The card functions at 94 degrees and that's with the 2 fans at 100% speed which is unsettling and (2) it is a very very noisy card when gaming.
you read it
The sapphire addresses both of those issues and rarely passes 75 degrees on full load.
There were a few comparisons and it was even cooler than the 970. The MSI is arguably the worst version of 290, with Asus being 3rd best behind Sapphire and PCS
Frankly the 5-10 fps (most likely down to better optimization for Nvidia products as I have seen many benchmarks in which 290 has outperformed, http://i.imgur.com/8K3JZKO.png) doesn't justify the 0.5 less Vram (that is already proving to be an issue with games like Shadow of Mordor), higher price and flat out wrong consumer practices that Nvidia tried to endorse.
Hence my purchase, but to each their own.
EDIT: For reference in regards to your 290X reaching 90+, the Sapphire is the best 290/x version http://i.imgur.com/pUXo9UY.png.
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