Well, one thing I can tell you is that MSI R9 390 is more expensive because it has more clock speed than sapphire R9 390 nitro and it has more room to overclock.
Getting into the matter, the MSI R9 390 is faster than Sapphire R9 390. MSI R9 390 has 1080 mhz stock clock speed, and reviewers seem to agree that the graphic card can deliver up to 1170-1200 mhz clock speed when overclocked. This being the sweet spot of the graphic card and not an extreme overclock as you could think. This is due to MSI custom PCB building, having optimized not only the air cooling but the whole construction of the graphic card.
Sapphire, on the other hand, and I´m telling you by experience because I have the R9 390 Nitro, is a pretty good graphic card off course, but it has less stock speed than MSI (1050 mhz) and it´s not overclocking friendly. I´ve always overclocked graphic cards and CPU´s, and with this particular graphic card I won´t overclock because it seems to work to its full capacity at stock speeds. It gets up to 80ºC playing games such as GTA V at high/ultra settings at 1080p. So to me, there´s no good reason to push it any further overcloking. In any case, if you read some forums, you´ll see that even with state of the art case cooling and high tec components, there´s no point trying to overclock this card up to 1175 mhz clock speed, it just won´t deliver. MSI on the other hand gets to that mark with no problem.
Not saying that sapphire r9 390 is not a great card (which it is), it is just that MSI R9 390 is a better card because of its custom and optimized build starting from scratch.
By the way, if you´re using Windows 10... Maybe R9 390´s are not the best option. A lot of guys having trouble. AMD Catalyst drivers and windows 10 are just a big mess right now. In my case, haven´t been able to play any game yet without the computer rebooting at some point. It doesn´t matter the game. So...
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