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

[FormatC]

You are really late with this 😉

This was as mistake in translation, the original is already fixed. But... If everyone makes this mistakes, it also means that this name scheme is stupid as hell. R7 255, R8 266.5, R9 270 and 270X with the same GPU and more board power. Meh

 

[dorsai]

sorry about that last post...my reply ended up inserted into the middle of two quotes...really wish we could edit posts...

 

[gab_th]

Why would you review the 2GB 380 instead of the 4GB one?

 

[kiniku]

For those many like me that don't buy the newest flagship GPUs every time one is released Maxwell wins again. Up and down the line. I am glad I didn't wait for this and bought my Zotac AMP Extreme 970.

 

[gab_th]

For those many like me that don't buy the newest flagship GPUs every time one is released Maxwell wins again. Up and down the line. I am glad I didn't wait for this and bought my Zotac AMP Extreme 970.

If you are so budget-conscious you should have bought an R9 290. Very similar performance, and about $80 less expensive.

 

[FormatC]

Why would you review the 2GB 380 instead of the 4GB one?

I can only test what I got. It was not so easy to catch three cards.

 

[gab_th]

Why would you review the 2GB 380 instead of the 4GB one?

I can only test what I got. It was not so easy to catch three cards.

For some reason I assumed you could get your hands on anything. My bad.

 

[FormatC]

If the vendor has only 2GB before launch (4GB was not in the focus) I can do simply nothing. I was in three headquarters and I saw nowhere enthusiasm and engagement for this R300 series. Did you saw samples from HIS, PowerColor, Club3D or Gigabyte in the reviews? No interest to sample cards because anywhere are too much R200 @stock. Only a few Sapphire, Asus and MSI.

 

[gab_th]

If the vendor has only 2GB before launch (4GB was not in the focus) I can do simply nothing. I was in three headquarters and I saw nowhere enthusiasm and engagement for this R300 series. Did you saw samples from HIS, PowerColor, Club3D or Gigabyte in the reviews? No interest to sample cards because anywhere are too much R200 @stock. Only a few Sapphire, Asus and MSI.

So this launch was done without any enthusiasm at all? Do you think it's because it is basically a relaunch?

 

[FormatC]

So this launch was done without any enthusiasm at all? Do you think it's because it is basically a relaunch?

It was the first time with such problems to get samples. Normally we will be pumped up with samples and very often we are able to start at launch with a kind of roundup. This time it was all completely different. No bandwidth of samples, a last-minute driver and a lot of confusion and restrictions. This "launch" was as desaster for us. I wrote this review this time alone, not one of my cards were available for the US team. And the driver support was really lousy. Two days before launch date we got finally the working driver. But only for the R300.

But: we have to publish in a lot of different languages. Who is able to translate so much text within a few hours? Why the hell AMD has delayed all this things? Ask AMD, ask the AIC or ask god. 😀 I don't know, so don't ask me. I'm only a truckle...

 

[Dmitry Firsov]

Why the hell would they drop only 2 gigs of ram in the 380's. That's just retarded. Hell my HD7950 has 3 gigs.

Pretty sure during the conference, a 4gb was mentioned

 

[Ethan Feinhaus]

For once, I am thoroughly disappointed in AMD. I understand that they're short on cash, but the only way to make more money at this point isn't to just rebadge what they've been selling for 2-3 years. Why can't they take the Fury GPU, and then, depending on the price point, cut cores and give it either GDDR5 or HBM?

 

[InvalidError]

Why can't they take the Fury GPU, and then, depending on the price point, cut cores and give it either GDDR5 or HBM?

Because the Fury is just a transition product between the old stuff and the HBM2 stuff coming out next year. The cost of updating and marketing a whole product lineup that may have less than a year worth of market life is likely not worth it.

 

[thezooloomaster]

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

Well, the Radeon Fury X comes out on the 24th of June, so hold your breath.

 

[Gurg]

I wonder whether a major difference that everyone may be missing is 300 series compatibility with Direct X 12 vs for example the 290x compatibility. It 'may' boost the performance by a lot more. Information is lacking though, seriously AMD ... this launch could have been way more exciting if you weren't trying hold so many cards to your chest.

The MSI 980 tested here is also DirectX12 as are all the 980Ti. Do you really think the 390x is the only one that will benefit?

 

[littleleo]

I think it will take a few weeks to really know how this series will do for AMD. I was a little disappointed I thought we'd get the new high-end cards yesterday. So it is due out in Sept.? I hope when the smoke clears Nvidia drops their prices on their 980s down to the 960s in response perhaps we'll see a 960Ti.

 

[chicofehr]

The 390x should have been named 380x or 370x. Renaming a 290x as 390x makes it seem like it's an upgrade from a 290x. Should sue them for false advertising. I like AMD but this is stupid.

 

[Gurg]

The reference GTX 980 Ti is really limited with ther bad cooling solution. The boost clock is not stable enough under heavy load conditions. The same for TitanX. I've tried a TitanX with a fullcover water block and got an awesome performance jump (at 1.4 GHz boost clock and higher).

I think it also makes no sense to compare a hybrid cooled Fury X with an air cooled 980 Ti vanilla and this really old and undersized reference cooler. Take a look at the HIS 290X in this test! 50 Watts less and a similar performance as 390X. I have here a Gigabyte GTX 980 Ti Gaming G1 in my hands, running stable over 1.4 GHz bosst @factory. Up to 50% better performance with only 246 watts average. The 980 Ti @stock is boring. 😉

It will be compared as long as the price is above or around the Fury X price...

I think you completely missed the point. "The only gaming benchmark that AMD has shown so far is (AMD cherry picked) Far Cry 4 on the Fury X at 4K using Ultra settings ,,,.averaged 54 FPS, with a 43 FPS minimum". That was with a CLC hybrid cooler attached. The 980Ti reference at 4k at factory overclocked is only doing 50.62fps. Fanboys for AMD are saying that this means the Fury is going to be the new champ as it outperformed the reference cooled 980Ti by just under 7%. . However FormatC as pointed out above, says there are better cooling solutions including various water cooling and CLC for the 980Ti as well as the TitanX that allow a factory overclock of roughly 7% over the reference models.

He prefers comparing apples to apples.

As a further aside "AMD says one of the biggest differences between the Fury X and the rest of the Fury line is that its water-cooled card shouldn't throttle under load". Despite having a 500 watt rated hybrid CLC attached AMD used the words SHOULDN'T rather than WILL NOT.

 

[Doug Lord]

Can you please review 2x390 vs 980ti vs furyX. They are all the same price. What is the best for 4k ultra?

 

[FormatC]

Can you please review 2x390 vs 980ti vs furyX. They are all the same price. What is the best for 4k ultra?

I have two oc'ed 980 with modified BIOS (1.7 GHz stable boost clock) and an i7 5960X @4.5 GHz in my water cooled gaming table project. And, to be honest, it is nothing to play UHD in Ultra! I can mostly play in higher settings, but not Ultra with higher fps. The 4GB of this 980 are simply too less. This is the reason why I'm not playing so much games atm. I'm waiting for two fullcover waterblocks for the 980 Ti and will check this again. The same with the R9 295X2 in my museum. Too less memory and at the end also too noisy.

 

[Nintendork]

The cards are not a good sample, this new R300 line is done with glofo's 28nm not the 28nm from tsmc. All the problems regarding TSMC are gone.

 

[deppman]

Its funny because guru3d.com tested the MSI 390x and the gtx 980 and at 1440p and 4k the 2 cards are almost identical across a whole lot more games tested. Why are these tests so much different???

TechPowerUp did a similar comparison of the *stock* Maxwell cards versus the MSI cards, which is not a realistic comparison. This is better, as they are comparing over clocked cards from the same manufacturer.

 

[Scwepps]

Why did you review the 380 gaming 2gb card when there is a 4gb card available? No one will be looking to buy the 2gb card when for a few bucks more you can pick up the 4gb version.

 

[Aver88]

Its funny because guru3d.com tested the MSI 390x and the gtx 980 and at 1440p and 4k the 2 cards are almost identical across a whole lot more games tested. Why are these tests so much different???

Not only guru3d, but also hardocp.com, hardwarecanucks.com and maximumpc.com showed 390X head to head with 980 at 1440p and 4kp. Those results by tomshardware are really weird.

 

[Aspiring techie]

Its funny because guru3d.com tested the MSI 390x and the gtx 980 and at 1440p and 4k the 2 cards are almost identical across a whole lot more games tested. Why are these tests so much different???

Not only guru3d, but also hardocp.com, hardwarecanucks.com and maximumpc.com showed 390X head to head with 980 at 1440p and 4kp. Those results by tomshardware are really weird.

Toms used an overclocked 980. That's why their results are different.