Sapphire Nitro R9 390 8G D5 Review

[eodeo]

As long as you, THG, ignore AMD's negligence to fix their multi monitor and video playback power usage, AMD will happily continue to ignore them too.

Using 3d clocks/voltages just because you have a paused 240p YouTube video somewhere among many open tabs in your browser is simply unacceptable.

Nvidia fixed this for all their dx11 GPUs via drivers in 2012. 2015 is in its last quarter and AMD has done exactly ziltch to address the problem.

 

[turkey3_scratch]

This is certainly a huge card!

 

[ErikVinoya]

Damn, I'm already set to get the 970 this December, and now I'm back to the drawing board again... Thing is, I live in tropical country with expensive electricity... If getting the 390 would mean a hotter system, and around $60+ more per year in electricity bills, do you guys think its still worth getting over the 970?

 

[alextheblue]

With 8GB of RAM and a decent price, these things were practically built to be run in Crossfire. I would like to see some 4K+ benches of that.

 

[alextheblue]

Damn, I'm already set to get the 970 this December, and now I'm back to the drawing board again... Thing is, I live in tropical country with expensive electricity... If getting the 390 would mean a hotter system, and around $60+ more per year in electricity bills, do you guys think its still worth getting over the 970?

There's a lot of factors involved. If you're buying something to keep for a few years, and you game a LOT (several hours daily) then the 970 is a good choice. Honestly they're both good cards though. If you only average an hour or two per day, power uasge isn't an issue.

 

[ykki]

With 8GB of RAM and a decent price, these things were practically built to be run in Crossfire. I would like to see some 4K+ benches of that.

Well Powercolour has made the Devil version of the 390 (2x390 on a single PCB).

 

[anubis44]

[/quote]
Yeah. And if you pair it with one of those 220 watt processors your PC can serve as a space heater in the winter months.[/quote]

Don`t be an nVidiot. Changing the subject makes you look like an nVidiot. Face it, AMD`s re-branded Hawaii cards kick nVidia`s a$$ at their respective price points, and give you more memory for your money, AND AMD doesn`t try to lock you into proprietary tech like G-Sync. Stop feeding the Green Goblin already. It doesn`t need any more feeding in exchange for its lying, cheating ways, what with 3.5GB cards labelled as 4GB cards. Just cut it out already and don`t buy nVidia cards.

 

[Jeffs0418]

[/quote]
Yeah. And if you pair it with one of those 220 watt processors your PC can serve as a space heater in the winter months.[/quote]

Don`t be an nVidiot. Changing the subject makes you look like an nVidiot. Face it, AMD`s re-branded Hawaii cards kick nVidia`s a$$ at their respective price points, and give you more memory for your money, AND AMD doesn`t try to lock you into proprietary tech like G-Sync. Stop feeding the Green Goblin already. It doesn`t need any more feeding in exchange for its lying, cheating ways, what with 3.5GB cards labelled as 4GB cards. Just cut it out already and don`t buy nVidia cards.

I'm sure it blows away all others in your opinion.
There is nothing wrong with AMD cards. And they don't have comparative lackluster performance like their CPU's. They just need beefier power supplies and better cooling to compete with the competition.

 

[tridon]

I got the MSI 390x a few weeks back, and I am mightily pleased with the performance at that price point. It is surprisingly silent (my subjective claim) even when under full load, and at 1920x1200 it eats up everything I throw at it.

I must however admit that the heat that baby spews out is noticeable in a 26m2 livingroom. Looking forward to the winter, indeed

 

[firefoxx04]

4.6GHZ 4790k and 16GB of ram yet Tom's articles crash my browser. Why must the entire article be loaded onto one giant page. You any idea how painful that is?

Guy arguing that wattage means nothing, child please. You must live in a cold area without heat and resort to your PC. I love AMD but its hard knowing that not only are their CPU's power hogs but right now so are their GPUs. That wont stop me from buying one but it certainly makes me think a big more about it.

 

[Creme]

The gtx 970 uses about 100w less than the 390 under load. But the 390 has better specs on paper & seems more future proof. Plus I m worried I'd be stretching my 650w psu with the 390.
sigh.....

Use a framerate limiter like RivaTuner or AMD's Frame Rate Target Control. It will reduce the power usage in scenarios where the framerate is above your monitor's refresh rate.
It will still use more power than the 970, but it will be much more manageable, and you'll only hit the 250w figure when you're really pushing the card.

 

[Casecutter]

While the 970 had been with such Über OC versions relished as a strong contender in "Super Middleweight", now we see it was/is just punching more beneath "Welterweight". The real problem is Nvidia... now on the ropes, though grandiosity maintaining such Über version (like the EVGA "SSC" seen here although some charts indicate just an "SC" ?) still have business asking for "Super Middleweight" prize money. Efficiency when gaming while nice, what a 390 save in Sleep Mode due to ZeroCore is not trifling either ~10W as a vampire load adds up.

 

[salgado18]

4.6GHZ 4790k and 16GB of ram yet Tom's articles crash my browser. Why must the entire article be loaded onto one giant page. You any idea how painful that is?

3.5GHz FX-8120 and 8GB of ram, often with +20 tabs open in Chrome, no issues whatsoever with Tom's. Your PC must be misconfigured.

 

[Compuser10165]

I personally went with the MSI Gaming R9 390.

 

[vertexx]

Damn, I'm already set to get the 970 this December, and now I'm back to the drawing board again... Thing is, I live in tropical country with expensive electricity... If getting the 390 would mean a hotter system, and around $60+ more per year in electricity bills, do you guys think its still worth getting over the 970?

If you're gaming at 1080p, get the 970. 1440p would nudge the decision over to the R9 390 IMO. But make sure you get one with a good cooler. From what I've read, this Sapphire is the best of the 390's.

 

[alextheblue]

Well Powercolour has made the Devil version of the 390 (2x390 on a single PCB).

That looks pretty interesting but if you're not deadset on a single-card solution then two separate cards have some advantages. You can get an entry level 390 under $300 now. Then there's memory clocks. The Devil 13 Dual Core R9 390 has a stock memory clock of 1350. All the single 390s I've seen run stock at 1500. That's pretty substantial. Not to mention that I'm seeing a Strix model with a 1070 OC mode for $300 after MIR.

I'd like to see an aggressively priced dual Tonga. Fully enabled and with slight drops in clock speeds and voltages to bring TDP down. But dual GPUs are still niche at least until we see some interesting new usage of dual GPUs with the low-level APIs.

 

[alextheblue]

If you're gaming at 1080p, get the 970. 1440p would nudge the decision over to the R9 390 IMO.

Well that brings up another point, even if you're at 1080p the card with more raw power might provide better future proofing in a demanding DX12 title a year from now. Only time will tell, a lot of it depends on how aggressive developers are with using DX12's features to push the graphical envelope.

 

[Guest]

Damn, I'm already set to get the 970 this December, and now I'm back to the drawing board again... Thing is, I live in tropical country with expensive electricity... If getting the 390 would mean a hotter system, and around $60+ more per year in electricity bills, do you guys think its still worth getting over the 970?

390 will last longer than 970 as it have more vram and GCN is better suited for parallel processing (new apis like dx12, vulkan will use it) but as you can see from the review, it consumes 80W more power too. it's your choice pay more for electricity or buy new graphics card soon.

 

[ElMoIsEviL]

Once you factor in DX12 gaming, which we're starting to see with the Ashes of the Singularity as well as Fable Legends benchmarks, you notice that the R9 390 competes with the GTX 980 regardless of the resolution.

These are in two upcoming titles whose pipeline occurs less than 20% of the time in the compute queue. DX12 games, on the horizon, are even more demanding in terms of compute. Deus Ex: Mankind divided, is a good example of a game which will make good use of Asynchronous Compute. There's the new Tomb Raider, the new Hitman as well as the new Mirror's Edge. Each one of these titles will perform better on the R9 390 than a GTX 970 or GTX 980.

I honestly don't see a reason to purchase a GTX 970 at this point in time. Sure, naysayers will attempt to demand that we 'wait' for these titles but the problem is that these folks are not knowledgeable in terms of the GPU architectures at play. They cannot deduce future performance based on developer talks on the topics at hand.

I'm not Nostradamus, I make logical deductions based on knowledge of the aforementioned Maxwell 2 and GCN 1.1 290/390 series GPU architectures.

Feel free to save this post and return to it once the titles, mentioned in this post, are released. You will be happy to see this post to be 100% accurate

 

[Guest]

4.6GHZ 4790k and 16GB of ram yet Tom's articles crash my browser. Why must the entire article be loaded onto one giant page. You any idea how painful that is?

that's odd. athlon x2 270, 4gb ram. 10 tabs open. 5 chrome, 5 opera. no problem here.

 

[nikoli707]

all these fanboy arguments. both cards go blow for blow consistantly. in a blind gaming test you would never notice the differences in 99% of games.

but "12.12 inches long, thats what is ultimately the deal breaker. now that we are nearing the end of atx sized form factor era, this card is truly the last of a dying breed.

discounting some obvious pitfalls though the card performs exceptionally well and is a great product.

 

[turkey3_scratch]

I personally went with the MSI Gaming R9 390.

I did, too. Well, for one thing the Sapphire wouldn't fit in my case without me removing drive bays, and I already run 3 drives. But this is still a great card for sure.

 

[eodeo]

which of these two reviews is true?

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Powercolor/R9_390_PCS_Plus/30.html

Techpowerup says the 390 is noticeably slower, while THG says its faster. I imagine one of the reviews is less true.

 

[turkey3_scratch]

which of these two reviews is true?

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Powercolor/R9_390_PCS_Plus/30.html

Techpowerup says the 390 is noticeably slower, while THG says its faster. I imagine one of the reviews is less true.

Noticeably slower than what? The 970? At higher resolutions, the 390 tends to do better than the 970. The 970 does beat the 390 at lower resolutions typically.

However, I would argue the 390 has better Crossfire capabilities with its 8GB vRAM.

 

[eodeo]

Yes, gtx970. And I see it there too now. Above 1080p, 390 is faster. I ignore those resolutions since they make no sense and are unplayable with the current tech.

Still at 1080p, 970 is faster on TPU while slower on THG.