AMD Radeon R9 390X, R9 380 And R7 370 Tested

[cdrkf]

Again I am left disappointed....AMD please stop doing this to me. So what I learned is the 390X is the same as the 290X at 1440p or below (which is 95% or more of gamers) and the 390X only excels at 4k but still only on par with the 980 (non ti). Looks like I'm abandoning AMD for my next GPU. damn it.

AMD have already announced that the new *high end* gpu is the new 'Fury' and 'Fury X' cards. They are the only *new* gpu's in the range and are due out in about a week. They are quoting a 275W power use (same as the 290X) for a card that is *faster on average than TiTan X* and they've announced it at the same price as the slower 980ti. Then they have the standard Fury card at $100 less which should sit in-between the 980 and 980ti.

It's disappointing they haven't re-worked the whole line up (that will happen next year with Arctic islands and the move to 14nm FF), however I can kinda understand given we're still stuck at 28nm.

TL,DR: wait for the reviews of the new Fury cards before writing AMD off (as they look set to be performance *and* efficiency winners).

 

[g-unit1111]

I was going to get a Sapphire 290X, but now it looks like I'll be picking up a MSI R9-390 for my Dark Knight rig. It will be interesting to see how it compares to the GTX 970 that I have in my White Knight rig.

 

[gc_sama]

This review made me so disappointed in AMD. I looked forward to a 380x, only to see the full tonga is Apple exlusive. Now we got rebrands that push out even more heat for more dollars -_-.

Makes me not regret buying a 960 for ~130 on a lucky deal. I mostly play FF14 right now so dont really need 970. I'll just use 960 until Pascal and go high end. By that time more graphic intense games that I want will be out/on sale.

I am so disappointed. I really do not want good competition to fade from the marketplace.

 

[mapesdhs]

FormatC, just wondering, where did the 7970 fit in to the followon from the older 7800 cards? I know it then became the 280X, but is it hanging around at all still today?

 

[littleleo]

Why does everyone kick and scream when AMD re badges some stuff but when Nvidia does it everything is all sunshine and rainbows?

Please there were lawsuits over .5GB of RAM! And there was all kind of chest beating every time anyone re-brands.

 

[mapesdhs]

(2560x1440...)

"AMD’s Radeon R9 390X doesn’t only get an overclock, it also boasts two times the GDDR5 memory. It’s the latter, not the former, that helps AMD catch an overclocked GeForce GTX 980, which it even beats in places. ..."

What is the point though when the absolute speed is not playable anyway, which means one needs two cards, ie. CF, aka driver hell & high power consumption. No thanks, at least with a 980 the SLI will work properly and the power consumption isn't crazy.

I really hope AMD fans ignore these 300 rebrands and just buy the Furys, even if they hadn't originally planned on buying something so high-end. Both gfx card makers need to learn a lesson, that enough of the rebranding already! Seeing the 390X identical to the 290X in so many of the charts really makes my blood boil.

 

[dragonsqrrl]

FormatC, just wondering, where did the 7970 fit in to the followon from the older 7800 cards? I know it then became the 280X, but is it hanging around at all still today?

Tahiti was phased out, it's been replaced by Tonga in the 300 series.

 

[LookItsRain]

Wow, amd has seriously dropped the ball here.

 

[logainofhades]

FormatC, just wondering, where did the 7970 fit in to the followon from the older 7800 cards? I know it then became the 280X, but is it hanging around at all still today?

Tahiti was phased out, it's been replaced by Tonga in the 300 series.

They should have dropped Pitcairn in favor of Tahiti LE. This has to be the dumbest AMD launch ever.

 

[LookItsRain]

As im looking at other benchmarks around the web, it seems toms is the only site that list the r9 390x as not being close to the 980 in all resolutions. Most websites have the 390x within 10 fps of the 980 at 1080p and the margin is lower at higher resolutions.

 

[Aspiring techie]

As im looking at other benchmarks around the web, it seems toms is the only site that list the r9 390x as not being close to the 980 in all resolutions. Most websites have the 390x within 10 fps of the 980 at 1080p and the margin is lower at higher resolutions.

That's because Toms used an overclocked 980 in their tests.

 

[Shankovich]

I don't get the disappointment people are having. Yea, they're rebrands. So what? Theyv'e been a bit tweaked and run better than the nVidia cards they target at their designed resolution.

How many Maxwell cards are there? Oh yea, 5. 4 really because face it, the 980ti made the Titan useless. There are going to be 4 Fiji cards (if nano is a cut), and each seems to be, again, doing better than their target nVidia cards.

Stop complaining, look at the data.

 

[dragonsqrrl]

FormatC, just wondering, where did the 7970 fit in to the followon from the older 7800 cards? I know it then became the 280X, but is it hanging around at all still today?

Tahiti was phased out, it's been replaced by Tonga in the 300 series.

They should have dropped Pitcairn in favor of Tahiti LE. This has to be the dumbest AMD launch ever.

Agree on the Pitcairn part, but I really think they should have phased out GCN 1.0 entirely. It's dated in terms of both feature level support and efficiency, and I think it would've resulted in a more cohesive and progressive product lineup. To me it also would've made a lot more sense to move everything down a step, so there would actually be a meaningful performance progression at each SKU. Something like this:

Fiji: 390X/390
Hawaii: 380X/380
Tonga: 370X/370
Bonaire: 360X/360

Oddly enough this is also much closer to what AMD and Nvidia have traditionally done with their new lineups, at least from a performance perspective. Certainly doesn't address the larger issues AMD is facing with this lineup, but I think it would've helped.

 

[jeremymau]

Oh well, I was so hoping that these cards would offer a little more performance than their parents. But nope, all I see here from AMD is a desperate attempt to sell old stock. It should be illegal to rebrand a product, it's misleading.

Anyway, If you want to go with AMD right now, save yourself 100 dollars and buy the Radeon R9 290x, if you want more bang for your buck, buy the Nvidia GTX 970 or better yet, GTX 980 if you can afford to spend a little extra cash. AMD is going to fall hard if their Fiji cards cannot beat Titan X or the 980 TI.

 

[IInuyasha74]

Great article Igor.

I have to say though, I feel like the real winners right now are the people who bought the original AMD Radeon 7000 GPUs a few years ago. I purchased my Sapphire AMD Radeon 7850 back in 2013 after the prices started to drop, and I only paid $135. Don did a review of the cards back then.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-7870-review-benchmark,3148-19.html

The power consumption was below 100 W. Something about the Pitcairn GPU core is just ridiculously efficient. Though the test results back then showed the AMD Radeon 7870 had a good deal more performance, that was at stock clocks speeds, and the 7850 simply has more overclocking headroom because it is clocked lower to begin with. I actually reduced the voltage on my card, overclocked it from 920 MHz to 1175 MHz and I manage to outperform any stock R9 270 benchmarks I see. Maybe i need to turn of AA, but I can play basically everything maxed out. Long story short, I can keep using this to play high end games so I'm happy.

 

[turkey3_scratch]

At least the 390X's 8GB vRAM is better for Crossfire.

 

[InvalidError]

At least the 390X's 8GB vRAM is better for Crossfire.

I think the ~20% faster memory clock is going to be far more important than the extra 4GB RAM.

 

[Cons29]

i dont get it (although i havent done any reading recently), they just announced the next gen right? so that is high end only for now but they released these rebranded ones? won't it cause confusion to those who are not familiar with pc hardware?

 

[ern88]

I also doubt that there will be a lot of overclocking room with the R9 390x. Since I bet it's near its limits now!!!!

 

[Epic Sasa]

r9 380 is released in 2014 lol look at the cpu z

 

[Josese]

Very dissapointing :l Waited more from AMD, so will wait till fury x

 

[computertech82]

Soooo....basically it's the EXACT SAME MODEL as the OLD CHIPSETS, but with slightly faster memory, that doesn't make any difference at all. 0_o

 

[Emanuel Elmo]

Nice to see 980 Ti still stomps everything, glad I bought one... a wise investment!

These are rebadge cards, their new cards are due out in days. Fanboy

And exactly which ones will those be?

The Fury X and the Fury X2 which are the new Fiji based cards with HBM. However, my understanding is that they won't be released to market until around September this year. Benchmarks show the Fury X often beating the 980 Ti, but the Fury X2 blows everything away due to it being a dual GPU card (that is still smaller than the 780 Ti/980 Ti - wowza).

thank you for the kind explanation. I would be very curious to see the power consumption on those cards since AMD cards usually suck more power. If they come anywhere close to nvidias GPU on power consumption that is going to be crazy good

 

[dragonsqrrl]

I would be very curious to see the power consumption on those cards since AMD cards usually suck more power. If they come anywhere close to nvidias GPU on power consumption that is going to be crazy good

FuryX supposedly has the same 275W TDP as the 390X, so power consumption should be similar.

 

[photonboy]

AMD to NVidia:
Pfftt.. don't you know the future is 4K gaming?

4K! 4K! 4K!

Oh, and we have new, awesome HBM memory. It uses less power. Yay! I know, let's put that in our BEST cards. For 4K.

Oh, we can't put in more than 4GB? Oh well... It's HBM though so, um... surely that's better than 8GB of more power efficient memory?

No? Um... "Hey look at what NVidia did..."