PowerColor Radeon R9 390 PCS+

[HEXUS]

Tempting users away from the GTX 970?

Read more.

[Worms]

This graphicscard is a beast!

[cheesemp]

Wonder how this compares to the 380X. It was rumoured to launch this week and I was waiting for it before buying a new card. Seriously tempted by a 390 however...

[Haxorus]

Looks fantastic!

[gingerninja7]

Typo on page 9 (Total War) guys:
"This one's fun in a sadistic way. R9 390 and GTX 970 are in a different league to the R9 390 [sic] and GTX 960."

Great review, though I do wonder why you'd choose the 390 over the 970 when they're so matched in performance and price but the 390 draws so much more power and doesn't overclock very well. Hopefully the next generation of cards from AMD and nVIDIA will be closer matched on performance per Watt.

[ceejays88]

I was impressed with my 290 and I expect the same with this.
I will hold out for this for a few months and see what prices are like after new year

[enemys]

Great review, though I do wonder why you'd choose the 390 over the 970 when they're so matched in performance and price but the 390 draws so much more power and doesn't overclock very well. Hopefully the next generation of cards from AMD and nVIDIA will be closer matched on performance per Watt.

I've chosen 390 over 970 for 3 main reasons:
1. CF performance scalling is better than SLI, and I'm seriously thinking about buying a second card in a couple of months.
2. 390 has an edge on high resolutions, and I mostly use a triple-monitor setup.
3. I want to give some money to AMD, because I like them . So if 390 is about on par with 970, I'll go for 390, since I'm not very concerned about power consumption.

[aniilv]

970 did 20fps more on gta test lol... so yeah, only people who feel like giving money to amd will buy them.. or someone who needs the larger frame buffer, but thats very specific...

[enemys]

970 did 20fps more on gta test lol... so yeah, only people who feel like giving money to amd will buy them.. or someone who needs the larger frame buffer, but thats very specific...

Yeah, Nvidia is much faster in one game that I don't even own. You can also find a set of games and resolutions, where AMD will win (maybe not by as much, but then again you won't find a big set of titles where Nvidia wins by as much as in GTA V). And that won't change the picture that they are roughly equal performers on stock clocks. The main advantage of 970 is much better OC (as I said, power consumption doesn't matter much to me), but CF and high-res performance were more important to me.

[Skate]

Typo on page 9 (Total War) guys:
"This one's fun in a sadistic way. R9 390 and GTX 970 are in a different league to the R9 390 [sic] and GTX 960."

Great review, though I do wonder why you'd choose the 390 over the 970 when they're so matched in performance and price but the 390 draws so much more power and doesn't overclock very well. Hopefully the next generation of cards from AMD and nVIDIA will be closer matched on performance per Watt.

Throw in a new 1440p adaptive sync monitor purchase into the equation, and you get the picture. The price of a top of the line 1440p G-sync monitor (Asus PG279Q) is around 200€ more than the Freesync equivalent. Either you save 200€ and buy the R9 390, which costs the same or less than the 970, or throw in a R9 Fury which gives you close to GTX 980ti performance. So, which would you buy, a 970 + monitor or the R9 Fury + monitor?

[crossy]

970 did 20fps more on gta test lol... so yeah, only people who feel like giving money to amd will buy them.. or someone who needs the larger frame buffer, but thats very specific...

I'm going to kind of disagree with you there. Okay, the 970 did well on the GTA V test, but if you're not a GTA player (and I'm not) then that's not really a big deal is it? As to the larger frame buffer comment, I'd kind of agree, and so would The Tech Report blog - based on the article here. Basically VRAM does make a difference once you get to very high gaming resolutions (which given I'm at 1080p isn't me), but also that comment that the next-gen (or should that be "current gen" seeing as PS3/XB360 are now "last gen"?) consoles have "up to" 8GB (V)RAM, so there's incentive for the ported titles to run best with more than 4GB VRAM - or since we're talking about the 970 - 3.5GB VRAM. Oh, there's also an interesting opinion piece over at PGN.

Props to Tarinder on not falling into the usual trap of only comparing the cards to the previous versions (280/290 series). I'm not the only person thinking about perhaps upgrading an old 7870/7970 to the "latest and greatest", so having the 7970 in there for comparison was really helpful.

Oh, and aniilv, there's another reason to go for a 390 - if you're looking for a replacement for an existing AMD card then the 390 does look attractive, simply on the basis of the "devil you know". I've been an NVidia loyalist up to my current card and only "defected" to TeamAMD because of the amount of annoyance that the Geforce drivers were causing - e.g. forced reboots on every driver install, along with all those enforced bits that the driver pack also installed.

That said, my current 7970 runs hotter and louder than the GF460 that it replaced.

[cheesemp]

Hmmm. Got an offer on flubit for one of these exact cards for £238... Very very tempting. Wonder if my 650W antec PSU can cope?

[aniilv]

I'm going to kind of disagree with you there. Okay, the 970 did well on the GTA V test, but if you're not a GTA player (and I'm not) then that's not really a big deal is it?

The thing is, they only tested a couple of games so You can't say "oh there is just this one game where nvidia wins". If other and older reviews is anything to go by, then it's just this one current game where nvidia wins but I bet my ass they win by as much in a lot more older games and will win (at least till dx12 comes out) in new ones too. Game optimization by devs for nvidia cards has always been a bad point for amd.

Therefore I'm personally not at all moved by these numbers. It will have to take at least noticeable fps gain in almost EVERY game to get me to buy AMD again.

p.s. Those driver issues seem rather specific. Since for years now nvidia does not require restarts to update drivers. And there always has been custom install option to not install all crap, which I've been using and is working great. And as for nvidias new way of not updating drivers and only releasing once per quarter - I don't really care. I have tested it before, game ready drivers never have improved fps anyway and never did I require game ready driver in all my 10+ year gaming with nvidia. Installing last available WHQL driver is all that has been required.

[ceejays88]

AMD seems to be catching up Nvidia pretty qucik now since the 290 it seems more game makers are swaying with who to develop more towards

[iranu]

Hmmm. Got an offer on flubit for one of these exact cards for £238... Very very tempting. Wonder if my 650W antec PSU can cope?

Easily. I'm running an MSI 390 on a Corsair 620W (along with an OC cpu) with oodles to spare.

[gupsterg]

Very very tempting. Wonder if my 650W antec PSU can cope?

In the review it states 308W as system power consumption when gaming, so I'd deem a good quality PSU of 650W to be able to defo run a 390.

Used a Sapphire 290 Tri-X STD edition for a few weeks on my Q6600 rig with a 650W PSU. Stock clocks 947/1250 but I did run it overclocked to 1000/1300 24/7 (plus at times 1100/1475). Never had an issue whilst gaming or benching to compare with my i5 4690K rig and also done continuous 48hrs folding@home without issues.

I think the manufacturer recommendations regarding PSU wattage are to cover situations where an owner may have one of those poor quality peak power rated PSUs.