Just upgraded from a 6950 to an R9 390.

[parkerface]

Got my MSI R9 390 today. Wow, what a difference from my 6950! I did unlock my previous card's shaders to 6970 spec and had a respectable air overclock on it (930 core, 1500 mem), but it was struggling with its 1gb of vram. It was time to get something new.

Initial impressions of the 390 is how heavy it is compared to the older GPU. I was concerned about the card sagging on the motherboard but that backplate is serious business. Installation was without issue. I forgot about this 390's fans not turning on until the temperature reaches 60c... I almost shut down my PC in a panic. :biggrin:

The card performs at least twice as fast at 1440p as my 6950 did at 1080p in my usual games (Grid Autosport, Dying Light, Diablo 3).

My first attempt at an overclock gave me 1200mhz core and 1700mhz on the memory using +100mv core voltage and +50 aux. I was impressed although the Hawaii heat output is no joke. Conversely, I tried to undervolt the card and managed 1080mhz core 1650mhz mem at -100mv. This lowered the load temps by 6c from stock. For those interested in knowing, the card's ASIC is 76.1%.

Just thought I'd share my experience about this card, as I've poured over this forum the last few weeks trying to decide on what to buy. Overall, the 390 is worth every penny spent to me even if my card does have horrendous coil whine. I typically game with vsync enabled, so even with open-backed headphones on it hasn't been a problem.

edit: benchmarks added below.

 

[alcoholbob]

It should be comparable to 6970 Crossfire, so yes it's quite a large upgrade. Also the coolers are way better than the old reference 290 coolers.

 

[beginner99]

Nice. Just bough a used 290x to replace my 5850...Should arrive today or tomorrow. Nest in line is a new display. Still on 1680x1050...

 

[Silverforce11]

1080 with -100mV is a golden sample. Extremely good. At that undervolt, it'll be sub 200W easily.

 

[parkerface]

1080 with -100mV is a golden sample. Extremely good. At that undervolt, it'll be sub 200W easily.

I will update this thread tomorrow with some wattage readings of the 390 at that undervolt, stock, and overclocked. Should be some interesting data points.

I do know during Firestrike bench @+100mv I saw well over 550 watts total system draw.

 

[SPBHM]

It should be comparable to 6970 Crossfire, so yes it's quite a large upgrade.

it should be WAY better than that once you hit vram limitations, tessellation performance and general lack of optimization from newer games/drivers.

so it's a huge upgrade.

 

[Gikaseixas]

A overclocked CPU will add to that 550 watts, what CPU do you have now? I assume you have a i7, FX or X6

looking forward to see your wattage readings

 

[Flapdrol1337]

Got my MSI R9 390 today.

Initial impressions of the 390 is how heavy it is compared to the older GPU. I was concerned about the card sagging on the motherboard but that backplate is serious business. Installation was without issue. I forgot about this 390's fans not turning on until the temperature reaches 60c... I almost shut down my PC in a panic. :biggrin:

The MSI 390 is really nice imo. It's like a lightning, but more elegant.

 

[parkerface]

I did a few benchmarks today to see what kind of power usage I had at stock voltages and stock speeds, -100mV core and -100mV aux undervolt at stock speeds, as well as a +100mV core +50mV aux +50% power limit for a 1200mhz core 1700mhz memory overclock.

My system specs are an i5 4670k running at 4.6ghz@1.260V and 8GB of 2133mhz DDR3 stuffed into a Fractal Design R5 case, with a 24C room ambient temperature. System idle power usage was 60w at desktop. Peak power readings were taken from both HWMonitor and an APC Pro 1500 unit.

I used GPU-Z to record GPU temps and VDDC Power In. I believe that VDDC Power In doesn't represent the GPU's full power usage but maybe the data from benchmark to benchmark might reveal something interesting.

First up was FurMark.

http://imgur.com/9c0QSvC

I neglected to mark it while creating this graph, but the 390 overclocked started to throttle back within 2 minutes.

I tried Unigine Valley next, allowing it to loop for 15 minutes before taking any readings.

http://imgur.com/psvmUni

Again, with the high voltage overclock in my R5 case the 390 began to throttle back. I did however remove the side case panel to allow it to finish the benchmark for a comparison.

The 390 scored as follows:

69.3 fps, 2898 score, 38.2 min, 122.4 max @said undervolt; stock speed.
71.2 fps, 2980 score, 37.6 min, 130.0 max @stock voltages; stock speed.
77.9 fps, 3259 score, 38.2 min, 138.0 max @said power bump; 1200core, 1700mem. This one was only possible by removing the case panel.

Last test I performed was using Grid Autosport @1440p, looped for 15 minutes before taking any readings.

http://imgur.com/xx7J13g

And again, in my closed case scenario the 390 throttled back with the voltage bump. (only just, from 1200 to 1148)

There you have it. I've never done anything like this before so comments and constructive criticisms are welcomed. I leave any conclusions to be drawn to you all, although I am leaning towards maximizing clock speeds with undervolting. The best I've gotten so far was 1080mhz core and 1650mhz vram with -100mV core voltage. :biggrin:

 

[Headfoot]

What kind of case and fan set up do you have? It sounds like in the case that open air cooler exhaust isn't being exhausted out of the case properly

 

[rycmurray]

I wonder what kind of a difference it would make to go from a Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition to the R9 390? Anyone have any experience there?

 

[AtenRa]

I wonder what kind of a difference it would make to go from a Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition to the R9 390? Anyone have any experience there?

At 1440p close to +50% and close to +40% for 1080p. But it may be higher in DX-12 games.

 

[MongGrel]

I'd imagine it would be huge from a 6950.

Those are pretty old, good post on results on the new one OP.

Surprised you were running a CPU like that with that old card to begin with, but things take time I guess.

I've been using an ASUS R9 280X DCUII TOP 3Gb awhile now and haven't even gamed much lately I guess, so can't say much.

The 390's do look pretty killer these days, having the fans kick on at 60C the first time would be a bit freaky I imagine but still barely breathing hard.

 

[aaksheytalwar]

It is about 3-4 times as fast as a 6950.

Worst case 2 times

Best case > 4 times

Like you said, you went from 1080p to 1440p but still doubled your FPS. 1440p usually nets 60% of 1080p's performance.

So you yourself indicated a total performance of 3.5 times as much.

It will be comparable to 6970 Quad Fire when scaling is excellent and VRAM isn't an issue.

 

[thesmokingman]

It should be comparable to 6970 Crossfire, so yes it's quite a large upgrade. Also the coolers are way better than the old reference 290 coolers.

It's more like 6970 x 2 = 7970 x 1, etc etc.

 

[wege12]

Sorry, didn't mean to post in this thread

 

[Red Hawk]

It's more like 6970 x 2 = 7970 x 1, etc etc.

Ehhhhh, I wouldn't say that Tahiti (the 7970) is twice as powerful as Cayman (the 6970). It still has the same amount of geometry engines and ROPs, and doesn't have double the shading power. It's Hawaii that has double or more of everything over Cayman.

But yeah, in any case, going from a 6950 to a 390 is a big upgrade.

 

[thesmokingman]

Ehhhhh, I wouldn't say that Tahiti (the 7970) is twice as powerful as Cayman (the 6970). It still has the same amount of geometry engines and ROPs, and doesn't have double the shading power. It's Hawaii that has double or more of everything over Cayman.

But yeah, in any case, going from a 6950 to a 390 is a big upgrade.

6970/50s unlocked whatever were not all that fast. Tahiti was a huge jump, especially when overclocked. Cayman could not clock all that high which hurt it when comparing real overclock vs overclock. Also, you're comparing VLIW vs GCN, nevermind the shrink too which makes the difference/or similarity in specs hard to compare. That said, at max overclocks my single tahiti actually outpaced dual cayman.


Just a quickie search. I've got runs with a single 7970/280x (depending on loaded bios) clocked up to 1400mhz too. The 6970s are not clocked very high, so even if you extrapolated it out they still would not have walked away from a 7970 with a helluvalot more in the tank.

http://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/4606145/fs/1243963

Btw, here's one for kicks.

http://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/4309805/fs/2563759

The quad 7970s were probably clocked around 1340/1850 ish iirc from memory. Ooh found another one with beta driver.

http://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/4309805/fs/2563759/fs/2563930

 

[Geforce man]

What is incredibly impressive is how low the power usage goes when undervolted. That is some impressive stuff. and a 300w difference between undervolted and overvolted? pretty nuts!!!

I have a far less accurate (kil-a-watt) reading than you, but definitely noticed 50-100w less from undervolting my r9 290 over stock. Able to O/C pretty decently too, even with the undervolt.

 

[Mondozei]

Too bad to hear about that coil whine. Have you thought about getting a new one?

Honestly, I would always buy Sapphire for AMD in the same way I'd trust EVGA over any other brand for NV. If you only focus on one card, you make sure your products work great and that's been both my personal experience and from what I've seen others write on coil whine and other more general quality issues. Quite a few people get coil whine with non-EVGA/Sapphire GPUs these days, ASUS is worst but I've heard similar stuff about MSI as well.

That being said, since you got a golden sample, it would seem harder than normal to turn it in for a new GPU but I personally just can't accept coil whine, especially if it's bad as you indicated.

 

[Mondozei]

Oh yeah forgot to add a congrats for the upgrade

The 390 is a beast. Have you tried unlocking it to a 390X?

 

[showb1z]

The 390 is a beast. Have you tried unlocking it to a 390X?

Has this ever been reported? AFAIK it's not possible.

 

[Temuka]

Has this ever been reported? AFAIK it's not possible.

I'm also interested in that. R9 390 Nitro user here

 

[Flash831]

My first attempt at an overclock gave me 1200mhz core and 1700mhz on the memory using +100mv core voltage and +50 aux. I was impressed although the Hawaii heat output is no joke. Conversely, I tried to undervolt the card and managed 1080mhz core 1650mhz mem at -100mv. This lowered the load temps by 6c from stock. For those interested in knowing, the card's ASIC is 76.1%.

Would it be possible to run some benchmarks where you compare default clock vs overclock vs underclock (undervolt).

I have a feeling AMD have been pushing these cards past their sweet spot, and that an undervolt would result in a small performance hit but a big improvement on power consumption

 

[werepossum]

That's near the same upgrade I did, stock 6850 1GB to MSI 390. It's sweet. Honestly, I was playing mostly Counterstrike GO and heavily modded Fallout 3 so I hadn't come up against anything I couldn't play maxed (except no AA) at 1080p, but I would not have enjoyed my rig struggling with Fallout 4!