*380/390/390x reviews **12 reviews listed all in one spot***.

[boozzer]

Naw, AMD probably changed the code enough that HW can't limit the 390 like it does 290. /tinfoilhat



I seriously wonder if those guys just automatically give the win to whomever most recently gave them the free card. Sheesh..

I am just glad the review sites will finally stop using stupid, stupid reference 290/x in their benchmark charts.

 

[el etro]

More interesting? We'll get one Arctic Islands 14nm FinFET GPU and the rest of the lineup full of the same old rebrands again. AMD can't afford more than one chip a year any more.

Source??

Again, you and every BS speaker here have no clue about what you're thinking.

Do you really think AMD and Nvidia did not go to 20nm early only because price matters?

 

[JDG1980]

Source??

The source is AMD's seemingly never-ending capacity to disappoint and underdeliver.

Also, most of AMD's R&D funds are going towards Zen.

Do you really think AMD and Nvidia did not go to 20nm early only because price matters?

Lisa Su explicitly said that they didn't go to 20nm because it wasn't economical. Do you believe that statement was a lie?

 

[sandorski]

The source is AMD's seemingly never-ending capacity to disappoint and underdeliver.

Also, most of AMD's R&D funds are going towards Zen.



Lisa Su explicitly said that they didn't go to 20nm because it wasn't economical. Do you believe that statement was a lie?

ahh, ok, guess I'll just ignore your previous comment then.

Funny you went there though, because I wasn't saying that for AMD's future product alone.

 

[happy medium]

Yea guys...... so hows them reviews.........

Pleeeease!
thanks

 

[el etro]

1)The source is AMD's seemingly never-ending capacity to disappoint and underdeliver.

2) Also, most of AMD's R&D funds are going towards Zen.



3) Lisa Su explicitly said that they didn't go to 20nm because it wasn't economical. Do you believe that statement was a lie?

Oh well, i explain:

1) Total FUD. This is basically every single BS of AMD we hear on techwebs, being spin again and again;

2) True, but GPU funds are not bad either. Many GPU projects come to life this time(Fiji, HBM cards), but surely AMD cut some of R&D by not launching new VGAs to truly replace 7000/200 series.

3) No. 20nm process simply don't work for High-Performance processors. Without finfets no high-performance processor will be able to past 28nm.

Source: http://www.phoronix.com/forums/foru...next-gen-zen-architecture?p=623001#post623001

http://www.extremetech.com/computin...-plans-massive-16b-fab-investment-report-says

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Editorial/28-nm-GPUs-Extended-Through-2015-20-nm-Planar-Bust


Don't worry, 2016(probably early 2H16) is the year 14/16nm High-Performance products(GF and TSMC) will come to market.

 

[blastingcap]

The reviewers who willfully ignore the 290 series pricing and give it (the 390X) freaking GOLD/Highly Recommended (are you kidding me?) show their true colors.

Enthusiasts know that for max bang for the buck, it's R9 290 4GB. Only if you truly need more VRAM (running 4K or similar) should you even think about getting a R9 390 8GB which costs much more. And at those price levels, after-rebate GTX 980 becomes a viable alternative as well if you don't need the 8GB.

Edited to add: HardOCP did a clock for clock comparison and 390X basically does the same as 290X at the sub-4K 2560x1440 resolution: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2015/06/18/msi_r9_390x_gaming_8g_video_card_review/9#.VYN7oEbIe4I

 

[happy medium]

The reviewers who willfully ignore the 290 series pricing and give it freaking GOLD/Highly Recommended (are you kidding me?) show their true colors.

Enthusiasts know that for max bang for the buck, it's R9 290 4GB.

Well said, my man blastingcap,
Yea man its like they are oblivious to the r200's pricing .
If they can drop the price on the 390 just a bit and rip all the cheap 290's out of the stores, that would be a decent card for the price.

The 390 does well vs the 980 also but they are only like 50$ apart now..

 

[SolMiester]

Wow, if the 390X is just a rebrand then I'm Rumpelstiltskin. Substantial improvements across all games.

What?....same chip with slight bump in gpu & ram = rebrand to me!

Hardocp
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2015/06/18/msi_r9_390x_gaming_8g_video_card_review/9#.VYN-IkYvnpE

clock for clock, they are they are the same!

 

[SolMiester]

Of course the usuals come in to outright threadcrap and toss out non-sequiters instead of acknowledging where the card really stands.

Doesn't this get old for you guys, year after year of trying to justify your purchases or rampant fanaticism? It has to be that or some of you are on payrolls. There's no way someone does this for this long, always being up to the minute on new hardware.

Please point out the thread crap or GTFOH

 

[happy medium]

clock for clock, they are they are the same!

So your saying if you took a 375$ aftermarket 290x 8gb and overclocked it to max would = a $430 overclocked to the max 390x? Or would the new thermal solutions on the 390 keep it from throttling before the 290 and be faster overall?

This is what the reviews seem to indicate. 390x is cooler , quieter, uses a little less power and therefore overclocks better.

 

[SolMiester]

So your saying if you took a 375$ aftermarket 290x 8gb and overclocked it to max would = a $430 overclocked to the max 390x? Or would the new thermal solutions on the 390 keep it from throttling before the 290 and be faster overall?

Hardocp seemed to think they are the same chip and therefore capable of same performance when clocked the same, so yeah!

 

[Cookie Monster]

Completely missed this one:

http://www.moorinsightsstrategy.com...e-to-Radeon-by-Moor-Insights-and-Strategy.pdf

Whenever a company like AMD launches a new series of graphics cards like the
Radeon 300 series, they usually accompany it with a new graphics driver. However,
AMD is not simply updating their drivers to support the R9 Fury X, they are completely
overhauling their drivers across the board.

Ive also noticed that some review sites are using old beta drivers vs the new betas. Sounds like maybe their drivers have gone through some serious improvements. Maybe higher CPU utilization/drawcalls in DX11, something that nVIDIA always had an edge on?

Guess we will find out soon with regards to what they did here.

 

[MTDEW]

Hardocp seemed to think they are the same chip and therefore capable of same performance when clocked the same, so yeah!

Hardocp also contradicts themselves a bit later on when doing apples to apples comparison of 390x/290x running TW3 with hairworks enabled though.
LINK

We ran two separate tests here because we couldn't believe how much faster the MSI R9 390X was over the R9 290X, but it was that much faster. It comes much closer to GTX 980 performance in this game, and that is with HairWorks enabled in both tests above. There just might be something to that improvement in tessellation performance noted in the introduction.

But it also may just come down to the 390x was running a different driver than the 290x and the 390x driver has better optimization for TW3 tessellation.
Its a shame we can't get them to retest using the 15.5 R9 300 series driver on the Guru3D forums that is modified to work on R9 200 series GPUs also for a better apples to apples comparison using the exact same drivers.

 

[MTDEW]

Completely missed this one:

http://www.moorinsightsstrategy.com...e-to-Radeon-by-Moor-Insights-and-Strategy.pdf



Ive also noticed that some review sites are using old beta drivers vs the new betas. Sounds like maybe their drivers have gone through some serious improvements. Maybe higher CPU utilization/drawcalls in DX11, something that nVIDIA always had an edge on?

Guess we will find out soon with regards to what they did here.

Thanks,that was an excellent link with lots of good info! :thumbsup:

Driver Update Brings New Use Cases & Value
Whenever a company like AMD launches a new series of graphics cards like the Radeon 300 series, they usually accompany it with a new graphics driver. However, AMD is not simply updating their drivers to support the R9 Fury X, they are completely overhauling their drivers across the board.

AMD is releasing a two-phase driver release with Catalyst 15.15 and 15.20
. The 15.15 drivers are available immediately,and the 15.20 drivers are coming a few weeks later.

The Catalyst 15.15 drivers bring new features like:
FPS Targeting - The ability to save power by setting a maximum FPS target
Virtual Super Resolution - The ability to down scale a game from a high
resolution to a lower resolution, giving a user higher-quality textures in game
(also known as supersampling)
Performance optimizations:
Adding game performance optimizations to AMD R9 Fury Xand other graphics cards.

Although Catalyst 15.15 drivers will not be available for Windows 10, Catalyst
15.20 will be.
The Catalyst 15.20 drivers will bring features like:
Catalyst Uninstaller:Allows users to uninstall their AMD catalyst drivers
cleanly, so new drivers can be installed without incident.
OpenCL 2.0 optional features.
Multiple performance and feature additions
FreeSync + CrossFire:The ability to run FreeSync dynamic screen refresh
technology with multiple GPUs in CrossFire mode.

Catalyst 15.20 divers will also have Windows 10 specific features like:
HEVC(High Efficiency Video Codec):Enables quality streaming and 4K
experiences
DirectX 12:Support for the low-level efficient graphics API for Windows 10
Windows 10 WHQL(Windows Hardware Quality Lab)

AMD’s latest driver release (15.20) will be WHQL and WHQL for Windows 10 as well

 

[Cookie Monster]

Hardocp also contradicts themselves a bit later on when doing apples to apples comparison of 390x/290x running TW3 with hairworks enabled though.
LINK


But it also may just come down to the 390x was running a different driver than the 290x and the 390x driver has better optimization for TW3 tessellation.
Its a shame we can't get them to retest using the 15.5 R9 300 series driver on the Guru3D forums that is modified to work on R9 200 series GPUs also for a better apples to apples comparison using the exact same drivers.

Itd also be interesting to see whats changed and how is IQ affected. Im thinking the performance boosts are coming from GW titles?

 

[boozzer]

The reviewers who willfully ignore the 290 series pricing and give it (the 390X) freaking GOLD/Highly Recommended (are you kidding me?) show their true colors.

Enthusiasts know that for max bang for the buck, it's R9 290 4GB. Only if you truly need more VRAM (running 4K or similar) should you even think about getting a R9 390 8GB which costs much more. And at those price levels, after-rebate GTX 980 becomes a viable alternative as well if you don't need the 8GB.

Edited to add: HardOCP did a clock for clock comparison and 390X basically does the same as 290X at the sub-4K 2560x1440 resolution: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2015/06/18/msi_r9_390x_gaming_8g_video_card_review/9#.VYN7oEbIe4I

if the 390/x are duds, so are 970/980 I also love seeing the 6gb advocates stating that 4gb is enough, that just brings a smile to my face.

@MTDEW I would love it if you can chime in on what you think of the 390/x cards. you seem to be one of the few that is fair.

 

[happy medium]

if the 390/x are duds, so are 970/980

I think he was saying the 390 line vs the 290's prices make them duds.

 

[soccerballtux]

Completely missed this one:

http://www.moorinsightsstrategy.com...e-to-Radeon-by-Moor-Insights-and-Strategy.pdf



Ive also noticed that some review sites are using old beta drivers vs the new betas. Sounds like maybe their drivers have gone through some serious improvements. Maybe higher CPU utilization/drawcalls in DX11, something that nVIDIA always had an edge on?

Guess we will find out soon with regards to what they did here.

I have to say, I feel like AMD's drivers have cleaned up quite a bit in the last year compared to 3 years ago. Everything seems much more stable. Alt-tab on dual monitor displays doesn't mess up anything, etc...I'm impressed.

 

[boozzer]

I think he was saying the 390 line vs the 290's prices make them duds.

that is just bad, and amd isn't competing with it self. who the hell in their right mind would upgrade to a 300 series if they already have a 290/x? D: fury for sure or 980 ti or next gen.

this refresh just made 2 of their gpus super competitve vs 970/980 without much effort, that is a huge win.

 

[Xcobra]

that is just bad, and amd isn't competing with it self. who the hell in their right mind would upgrade to a 300 series if they already have a 290/x? D: fury for sure or 980 ti or next gen.

this refresh just made 2 of their gpus super competitve vs 970/980 without much effort, that is a huge win.

THANK you! Some people just don't get it. For 290/X owners, they just have to wait what Fury has in store. Simple.

 

[Silverforce11]

Wait, what?

That isn't due to a 5% OC on the core and 20% more memory clocks, nah... I don't think they'd use old results on that 290x (which by the way isn't a blower of hell version that could explain those results by constant throttling, nope)

I'd like to see AT's review on this matter once they get cards since they usually go deep if they find stuff like this. They do mention there are a multitude of little tweaks here and there apart from the better binning and memory, but to make this difference? There's something else going on here, unless [H] screwed this one up really bad.

They are testing Ultra 1440p with HairWorks on. That setting kills Titan X performance too.

Edit: There's no way extra vram and a 50mhz clock boost from R290X would get that result so either [H] messed up in their clock-for-clock comparison (used wrong drivers??) or something funny/fudging is going on.

Witcher 3 is a game where AMD performance is already very good. I can attest I've been enjoying it a lot on my setup.

 

[happy medium]

Enthusiasts know that for max bang for the buck, it's R9 290 4GB

Yea 235$ AR and a free game, why buy a r9390 for 330$ shipped when you can just overclock a aftermarket 290 for 95$ less and get a free game?
For the 8gb of unusable ram?
You can get a gtx970 for 50$AR cheaper than the 390 now and that's even faster.

If you don't have 550$ for Fury and own a 7950,270,gtx670,760 or below, its seems worth it to me to buy a 290 or gtx970 over a 390.

 

[Silverforce11]

Actually for people who want to upgrade, forget about 970, 390X or 980.

Either jump to Fury $549 or Fury Nano.

Or get a 390. It's within 5% of 390X in general and often faster than 970 across the board.

Looks like a 290 repeat but even better this time, because the gap out of the box is only ~5% to 390X. 390 = best bang for buck for people who need mid-range class performance.

Everyone else should jump above the expensive 390X/980 class, go for Fury or 980Ti.

 

[happy medium]

Actually for people who want to upgrade, forget about 970, 390X or 980.

Either jump to Fury $549 or Fury Nano.

Do you realize what the percentage of people are that buy a 550$ card is?
We live in this Anandtech world where mabe 40% of people pay that much.
In the real world a mid range card for about 250$ is the norm/sweetspot.

So no the answer is not to jump to a $550 card. That's crazy!