R9 390 vs 970: AMD Radeon R9 390 vs Nvidia GeForce GTX 970: What is the difference?

10.0 /10

1 Votes

8.3 /10

4 Votes

268 7.

8.8 /10

4 votes

Performance

1.GPU clock rate

1000MHz

1050MHz

GPU clock is higher.

2.turbo GPU

Unknown. Help us offer a price. (AMD Radeon R9 390)

1178MHz

When the GPU is running below its limits, it can jump to a higher clock speed to increase performance.

3.pixel rate

64 GPixel/s

67.3 GPixel/s

The number of pixels that can be displayed on the screen every second.

4.flops

5.12TFLOPS

3.4 TFLOPS

FLOPS is a measurement of GPU processing power.

5.texture size

160 GTexels/s

109 GTexels/s

Number of textured pixels that can be displayed on the screen every second.

6.GPU memory speed

1500MHz

1753MHz

Memory speed is one aspect that determines memory bandwidth.

7.hatch patterns

Shading units (or stream processors) are small processors in a video card that are responsible for processing various aspects of an image.

8.textured units (TMUs)

TMUs accept textured units and bind them to the geometric layout of the 3D scene. More TMUs generally means texture information is processed faster.

9 ROPs

ROPs are responsible for some of the final steps of the rendering process, such as writing the final pixel data to memory and for performing other tasks such as anti-aliasing to improve the appearance of graphics.

Memory

1.memory effective speed

6000MHz

7012MHz

The effective memory clock frequency is calculated from the memory size and data transfer rate. A higher clock speed can give better performance in games and other applications.

2.max memory bandwidth

384GB/s

224GB/s

This is the maximum rate at which data can be read from or stored in memory.

3.VRAM

VRAM (video RAM) is the dedicated memory of the graphics card. More VRAM usually allows you to run games at higher settings, especially for things like texture resolution.

4.memory bus width

512bit

256bit

Wider memory bus means it can carry more data per cycle. This is an important factor in memory performance, and therefore the overall performance of the graphics card.

5.versions of GDDR memory

Later versions of GDDR memory offer improvements such as higher data transfer rates, which improve performance.

6. Supports memory troubleshooting code

✖AMD Radeon R9 390

✖Nvidia GeForce GTX 970

Memory troubleshooting code can detect and fix data corruption. It is used when necessary to avoid distortion, such as in scientific computing or when starting a server.

Functions

1.DirectX version

DirectX is used in games with a new version that supports better graphics.

2nd version of OpenGL

The newer version of OpenGL, the better graphics quality in games.

OpenCL version 3.

Some applications use OpenCL to use the power of the graphics processing unit (GPU) for non-graphical computing. Newer versions are more functional and better quality.

4. Supports multi-monitor technology

✔AMD Radeon R9 390

✔Nvidia GeForce GTX 970

The video card has the ability to connect multiple screens. This allows you to set up multiple monitors at the same time to create a more immersive gaming experience, such as a wider field of view.

5. GPU Temperature at Boot

Lower boot temperature means that the card generates less heat and the cooling system works better.

6.supports ray tracing

✖AMD Radeon R9 390

✖Nvidia GeForce GTX 970

Ray tracing is an advanced light rendering technique that provides more realistic lighting, shadows and reflections in games.

7. Supports 3D

✔AMD Radeon R9 390

✔Nvidia GeForce GTX 970

Allows you to view in 3D (if you have a 3D screen and glasses).

8.supports DLSS

✖AMD Radeon R9 390

✖Nvidia GeForce GTX 970

DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) is an AI-based scaling technology. This allows the graphics card to render games at lower resolutions and upscale them to higher resolutions with near-native visual quality and improved performance. DLSS is only available in some games.

9. PassMark result (G3D)

This test measures the graphics performance of a graphics card. Source: Pass Mark.

Ports

1.has HDMI output

✔AMD Radeon R9 390

✔Nvidia GeForce GTX 970

Devices with HDMI or mini HDMI ports can stream HD video and audio to an attached display.

2.HDMI connectors

More HDMI connectors allow you to connect multiple devices at the same time, such as game consoles and TVs.

3rd HDMI version

Unknown. Help us offer a price. (AMD Radeon R9 390)

HDMI 2.0

Newer versions of HDMI support higher bandwidth, resulting in higher resolutions and frame rates.

4. DisplayPort outputs

Allows connection to a display using DisplayPort.

5.DVI outputs

Allows connection to a display using DVI.

Mini DisplayPort 6. outs

Allows connection to a display using Mini DisplayPort.

Price comparison

Cancel

Which graphic cards are better?

geforce gtx 970 radeon r9 390

The Nvidia GTX 970 is a game changer in terms of performance per watt and value for money. The GTX 970 is based on Nvidia’s ground-breaking Maxwell architecture which delivers considerable clock for clock performance gains over Kepler, its predecessor. Comparing the GTX 970 and 780 Ti shows that the two cards offer comparable performance yet the new GTX 970 costs nearly half as much! Unsurprisingly Nvidia are discontinuing the 780 Ti as it’s now largely redundant. These price to performance gains typically occur once or twice a decade and although the new Maxwell architecture will improve down the line with the release of the Ti/Titan versions, at the moment the 970 offers the best value for money on the market by miles. Since this summary was originally written AMD have slashed prices and older Nvidia models (780/780 Ti/770) have also been hugely discounted. See the latest value for money rankings here. [ Jul ’15 GPUPro ]

Contents

1. MORE DETAILS
2. Why is AMD Radeon R9 390 better than Nvidia GeForce GTX 970?
3. Why is Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 better than AMD Radeon R9 390?
4. What are the most popular comparisons?
5. General Information
6. Most Read
7. Article Index
8. Test System Specs & Memory

MORE DETAILS

The new AMD R9 390 is the direct successor to the R9 290. Both cards share the same GPU0 is factory overclocked. The R9 390 has a 5% higher stock GPU clock, and a substantial stock memory clock increase of 20%. Additionally the R9 390 sports a minimum of 8GB of VRAM versus 4GB on the R9 290. At the current price levels of $329, the R9 390 can’t compete given that R9 290s can be had for around $260. The increased VRAM will rarely help even at ultra high resolutions and in any case, most 4K gamers are likely to seek more GPU power than the R9 390 has to offer. We have seen several samples of the R9 390 and they scored an effective speed of 88.5% which, as expected, matches the speeds seen on overclocked R9 290s. On the face of it purchasing an R9 290 at a discount and then manually overclocking will result in the same performance as an R9390 but with a saving of around $70. [ Jun ’15 GPUPro ]

Why is AMD Radeon R9 390 better than Nvidia GeForce GTX 970?

• 1.72 TFLOPS over FLOPS

Why is Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 better than AMD Radeon R9 390?

• GPU frequency 50MHz over

What are the most popular comparisons?

AMD Radeon R9 390

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060

Nvidia GeForce GTX 970

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050

AMD Radeon R9 390

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1060

Nvidia GeForce GTX 970

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060

AMD Radeon R9 390

Gigabyte Aorus Radeon RX 580 8GB

Nvidia GeForce GTX 970

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1050 Ti

AMD Radeon R9 390

MSI Radeon RX 570 Armor

Nvidia GeForce GTX 970

Nvidia GeForce GTX 960

AMD Radeon R9 390

MSI Radeon RX 5 Gaming 80003

Nvidia GeForce GTX 970

Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060

AMD Radeon R9 390

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070

Nvidia GeForce GTX 970

Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070

AMD Radeon R9 390

AMD Radeon RX 470

Nvidia GeForce GTX 970

AMD Radeon RX 580

AMD Radeon R9 390

AMD Radeon RX 590

Nvidia GeForce GTX 970

Nvidia GeForce GTX 770 9000 AMD Radeon R3

390

AMD Radeon RX 570

Nvidia GeForce GTX 970

MSI Radeon RX 580

Nvidia GeForce GTX 970

Nvidia GeForce GTX 750 Ti

usually indicates more powerful, higher number of transistors.

Nvidia Quadro GV100

The heat dissipation requirement (TDP) is the maximum amount of energy that the cooling system will have to dissipate. A lower TDP also usually means less power consumption.

A smaller size indicates a newer chip creation process.

AMD Radeon RX 570

PCI Express (PCIe) is a high speed expansion card standard that is used to connect a computer to its peripherals. Newer versions support higher throughput and provide better performance.

Most Read

Article Index

Earlier this year we decided to dust off the venerable GTX 980 Ti along with the Radeon R9Fury X to see how they were getting on it modern titles and what, if anything, had changed since we last checked them out. Although I only benchmarked six or so games for that test, we observed competitive results between the GTX 980 Ti and Fury X. Since then we’ve had loads of requests to create a similar article comparing the Radeon R9 390 and GeForce GTX 970. So that’s exactly what we’re doing.

Lined up I have 22 games, most of which are very recent tiles and all have been tested at 1080p and 1440p. For comparison, we have not just the GTX 970, but also the GTX 1070, 1060, 1050 Ti, RX 480 and RX 470, so we should be able to work out exactly where the R9 390 slots into today’s landscape.

For testing I have taken my old HIS Radeon R9 390 IceQ X2 OC graphics card, benchmarked it in the factory configuration and then again with a custom overclock. Out of the box the card features a core clock speed of 1020 MHz, which is a negligible 2% boost over the AMD reference clock frequency. I was able to manually raise the core frequency to 1120 MHz which was a further 10% overclock. By default the GDDR5 memory comes clocked at 1500MHz and for our custom overclock I pushed it up to 1700 MHz for a throughput speed of 6.8 Gbps.

Finally, all testing was conducted using our Intel Core i7-7700K test system overclocked to 4. 9GHz with 32GB’s of DDR4-3000 memory.

Test System Specs & Memory

• Intel Core i7-7700K @ 4.9 GHz
• Asrock Z270 Extreme4
• 32GB DDR4-3000 RAM
• Samsung SSD 850 Evo 2TB
• Gigabyte GTX 1050 Ti G1 Gaming [4GB]
• Gainward GTX 970 Phantom [4GB]
• MSI RX 470 Gaming X [4GB]
• MSI RX 480 Gaming X [4GB]
• MSI GTX 1060 Gaming X [3GB]
• MSI RX 480 Gaming X [8GB]
• HIS R9 390 IceQ X2 OC [8GB]
• Gainward GTX 970 Phantom [4GB] OC
• EVGA GTX 1060 FTW+ [6GB]
• HIS R9 390 IceQ X2 OC [8GB] OC
• Gigabyte GTX 1070 G1 Gaming [8GB]
• Windows 10 Pro 64-bit
• GeForce Game Ready Driver 381.89
• Crimson ReLive Edition 17.4.4

The R9 390 performs like a champ in Far Cry Primal, leaving the RX 480 behind and comfortably beating the GTX 970. Even factoring in overclocking, the R9 390 has just enough headroom to stay ahead of the overclocked GTX 970.

Moving to 1440p the R9 390 remains very strong pushing 48 fps while the overclocked GTX 970 does fall away managing just 43 fps. It would seem that the larger memory buffer of the R9 390 is playing to its advantage here, that said both cards did play much better at 1080p.

The Division is a visually demanding game using the ultra quality preset, but even so the 390 makes out very well and once overclocked averaged 58 fps at 1080p. This made it slightly faster than the GTX 970 for good measure. Now at 1440p gamers will want to reduce the quality setting slightly as 43 fps on average with dips below 30fps isn’t ideal. The same will be true for GTX 970 owners.

AMD Radeon R9 380X Review: What made it possible to release the best graphics card for 1080p gaming? | PC World

The AMD Radeon R9 380X fills a gap in the world of graphics cards and is offered at a very competitive price.

AMD Radeon R9 380X review feat. Sapphire: The best graphics card for 1080p gaming, priced to fight, PCWorld, November 2015.

With the introduction of the new Radeon R9 380X, AMD has filled a major gap in the graphics market between the «most 1080p gaming» Radeon R9 380 / GeForce GTX 960 (approximately $200) and the R9 390 / GTX 970, which are designed for 1440 resolution and higher and are offered for $300.

Previously, nVidia announced the 960 Ti model of the GeForce 900 series, and AMD in June updated the entire Radeon family in one fell swoop, but there was no equivalent to the old Radeon R9 280X board in the R9 300 series. In the most important price range — «from 200 to 300 dollars.» — the company had no offers, and gamers who wanted a modern graphics card that could handle 1080p well had to save up for products that cost more than $ 300. Frankly, such a price is already beyond the budget of most computer fans games, and the capabilities of the GTX 970 and the Radeon R9 390 for those who need only 60 fps at 1080p are clearly overkill.

And here comes the AMD Radeon R9 380X, offered for $230. Yes, you read that right, not $250, but $230. That’s what healthy competition does.

Radeon R9 380X Technical Specifications

The Radeon R9 380X is not a stripped-down version of the R9 390, but rather an improved version of the R9 380. There are more stream processors and more memory, faster memory and higher core clock speeds, etc. If R9380 graphics processor frequency is limited to 970 MHz, and the amount of expensive memory is 4 GB, these characteristics have become just a starting point for the new board. The Radeon R9 380X is based on the Tonga GPU (first introduced in the old R9 285 board) with a new AMD architecture that supports all Radeon software features including FreeSync, Frame Rate Target Control and Virtual Super Resolution.

The table below shows the main specifications of the R9 reference sample.380X, but you will not find such a board in stores. The first wave of R9 380X products will be introduced by AMD partners VisionTek, Asus, XFX, Gigabyte, HIS, PowerColor, and VTX3D. The models they offer will have higher clock speeds and a dedicated cooling system, and prices will start at $240.

AMD sent us a Sapphire Nitro R9 380X board for us to write this review. Of course, its dual-fan cooling system is not as powerful as the triple-fan Nitro 39.0/390X, but is reasonably efficient and almost as quiet.

Without a doubt, Sapphire’s cooling system is one of the best on the market. The thermal control provided by it made it possible to increase the processor core clock speed to 1040 MHz, and the data exchange rate with memory to 6 Gb / s. According to AMD, most 380X boards, like the Sapphire board, will be 50-60 MHz faster than the reference.

The Sapphire Nitro R9 380X also has other design features: thick copper heat pipes, two ball bearing fans, Black Diamond chokes, a full-length horizontal fin heatsink, and an eye-catching futuristic design. It is immediately clear that you have a reliable, expensive and uncompromising solution.

The board is equipped with DVI-D, DVI-I, HDMI and DisplayPort connectors. The latter is absolutely necessary if you intend to use the FreeSync display, recommended when running games at 1440p and specifically designed for this niche. Power on R9The 380X is fed through two 6-pin headers and has a TDP of 190W.

AMD Radeon R9 380X Testing

For testing the Sapphire Nitro R9 380X, we used a system that includes the following components:
• Intel Core i7-5960X processor with a closed loop Corsair Hydro Series h200i liquid cooling system, eliminating any delays from the CPU that could affect the results of execution graphic tests;
• Asus X99 Deluxe motherboard;
• Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 memory, Obsidian 750D tower case with AX1200i 1200W PSU;
• 480GB Intel 730 Series SSD;
• Windows 8.1 Pro operating system; we have decided to postpone the transition to Windows 10 until the availability of games that support DirectX 12.

If AMD positions its board as an entry-level solution for running games with a resolution of 2560 × 1440 pixels, then the inscription on the Sapphire Nitro R9 box380X notifies us that this is a high-end product for 1080p gaming. With that in mind, we compared the board to both cheaper 1080p models ($200 VisionTek R9 380, $200 EVGA GeForce GTX 960 SSC, $160 EVGA GeForce GTX 950 SSC) and more. expensive ones that get good results at 1440p (Sapphire Nitro R9 390 and EVGA GeForce GTX 970 FTW, which are priced at $300 and up).
Each game ran its built-in test with default settings unless otherwise noted (V-Sync, G-Sync, FreeSync) and specialized features disabled (such as nVidia Multi-Frame-Sampled technology). anti-aliasing).
DirectX 12 tests have also appeared recently, but we decided not to use them, since they are not yet included in the finished products. There are currently no games that support DirectX 12 on the market, but it is expected that they will appear at the end of this year. Thus, despite all the theoretical advantages of DirectX 12, it is still too early to start practical testing of this technology.

Zeros on the diagrams mark the modes in which specific graphics cards were not tested.

Ready? Good. Then let’s get started.

The memory requirements of Grand Theft Auto V can be a bit of a problem for high-end boards as well, but the game scales well, and at 1080p or 1440p the load isn’t as intense. Since there are no preset modes (Medium or Ultra) here, we tested in various ways: with FXAA enabled and all other settings set to Normal at 1080p, with FXAA enabled and all others set to Very High at 1440p and with the same 1440p settings with 4x MSAA and Reflection MSAA enabled.

That GTAV favors nVidia boards is obvious to the naked eye. To put everyone on an equal footing, we ran our tests at Normal settings and 1080p resolution. However, the Radeon R9 380X allows you to set the vast majority of the parameters to High or Very High and at the same time maintain a constant frame rate of 60 fps. (We might start choosing higher settings in the future.) And without MSAA enabled, the R9 380X averaged over 50 fps even at 1440p.

Our board passed the 60fps barrier in the Dragon Age Inquisition test at High settings as well. At the same time, its performance was 5 — 10 fps higher than the results shown by $ 200 boards. The DAI Ultra mode should bring the quality and anti-aliasing parameters to the maximum level, but at the same time the frame rate drops so much that it is no longer possible to talk about enjoyment. However, at maximum settings and 1080p resolution, the Sapphire Nitro R9 boardThe 380X delivered a pretty decent 44 fps. We saw the same at High settings at 1440p, which is well below the capabilities of the R9 390 and GTX 970.

Nvidia’s slogan «Enjoy the game the way it was meant to be» comes into full play in the early screens of Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, which are full of special effects, but our tests showed that the game favored Radeon cards more. Since not all parameters were set to maximum in Ultra mode, on boards that support 1440p resolution and have 4 GB of memory, we did this manually using the HD Ultra Texture Pack.

At 1080p/Ultra and 1440p/High, the Radeon R9 380X achieved the desired 60 fps, beating the R9 380 and GTX 960 by 5-10 fps. In High mode at 1080p, the frequency increased to 90 fps. A very responsive game.

Alien Isolation is terrifying yet delivers amazing performance. At 1080p/Ultra settings, even the $100 GTX 750 Ti board broke the 60 fps barrier, and the Sapphire Nitro R9 380X hit the 100 fps barrier. At 1440p, our board hit 71fps, well behind the R9390 and GTX 970. They both beat the R9 380X by 20 fps.

Sleeping Dogs: Definitive Edition is an improved version of the popular game. At Extreme settings, multi-pass anti-aliasing is performed here, which leads to a significant drop in frame rate. Therefore, it makes sense to focus on the High mode. As in all other tests at 1080p, the R9 380X was well ahead of the $200 boards, and at 1440p, alas, it was also hopelessly behind the $300 products.

Likewise, Metro: Last Light Redux is an improved version of the excellent, long-lasting Metro: Last Light. The R9 380X performed well here, although it did drop below the FPS-critical 60fps at 1440p/High settings. In 1080p/Ultra mode everything was fine.

All boards ran the synthetic but highly respected and frequently used 3DMark Fire Strike test in the industry.

Everyone is used to the fact that AMD boards consume more power than Nvidia products, and the R9 380X’s increased potential compared to the GTX 960 resulted in an additional 100 watts of power consumption in our tests. Power consumption was measured by connecting to a Watts Up meter, after which the Furmark load test was run for 15 minutes. The results obtained can be considered as the worst case scenario. In most real games, the R9 380X draws between 270 and 300 watts.

Taking into account the higher power consumption, the R9 380X is slightly hotter than the R9 380 and GTX 960. The board gets even hotter than the $300 products, although these models are equipped with a much larger heatsink and an additional fan. In practice, the Sapphire cooling system works very efficiently, and during the game, as I mentioned earlier, the board is almost inaudible.

Conclusion

A recent review of the $200 VisionTek R9 380 board concluded: “ You get a great mainstream 1080p gaming product for the money. Most of the time, on Ultra settings, the frame rate exceeds 60 fps, although sometimes it may be necessary to turn off anti-aliasing options, and in some games, go to High settings — , but only if the barrier of 60 fps is really critical for you. However, the frequency of the VisionTek Radeon R9380 never drops below the console level of 30 fps, even with all the graphical enhancements enabled in the most resource-hungry games .» An additional advantage of the AMD R9 380X product is an 8-15% increase in frame rate compared to its little brother. The increase is not too significant, but noticeable. The board breaks the 60 fps barrier at High and Ultra settings, and 4 GB of memory provides headroom for the future, as opposed to the baseline of 2 GB in the R9 models380 and GTX 960. The Sapphire cooling system works great. The expediency of switching to the R9 380X from the old Radeon 7850/7870 is beyond doubt, and the owners of the R9 280X have something to think about.

The R9 380X might be considered an entry-level solution for 1440p gaming, but you won’t get the desired 60fps on High settings on most games. And on newer and more demanding games (for example, Witcher 3), it can drop significantly lower. Perhaps, fans of games in this resolution will have a desire to buy a FreeSync monitor as well. But if you want real fun, you’d be better off spending the extra $50 on the R9.390 or GTX 970. These costs will pay off with interest, and the Sapphire Nitro R9 390 and EVGA GTX 970 FTW boards proved to be the best in the tests. At 1440p, they leave the R9 380X far behind.

An alternative option could be to purchase R9 290 boards that are currently in short supply, which are still found in online stores in some places. We’ve seen them for $200 — yes, just $200 — and they still deliver great performance, on par with the R9 380X, although a little behind the newer R9s.390 and GTX 970.

Summing up, it is worth noting that the R9 380X has filled an important market niche. This is the best board for 1080p and 60fps — at least for the time being. It would be strange if NVIDIA didn’t respond to AMD’s outburst with the GTX 960 Ti, but it will be hard to compete with the R9 380X’s $230 price tag. While retail prices for the R9 380 boards are down to $180 already, Nvidia is still offering the GTX 960 for $200 and up, and the GTX 950 doesn’t drop below $160. Nvidia is now very limited in maneuvering. It will either have to cut prices across the board or release a board that is higher than the R9.380X performance and offered at a higher price.

I want to repeat once again: healthy competition is a very useful thing. By refocusing the Radeon Technologies group, equipping the Fury family with high-performance memory, completely overhauling the software, and offering the best mainstream boards in the $200-$250 price range, AMD is poised to take on another round of nVidia in 2016. Although, of course, the «Green Team» will not sit idly by either.

Testing the GeForce GTX 970 using Gainward

as an example

Sunday, 28 February 2016

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Video cards

Author

Alexander

We continue to compensate for the lack of reviews of some current video cards on our website. GeForce GTX 970 was periodically present in various tests for individual games. It’s time for a summary review. We will describe the general features of the GeForce GTX 970 and consider a specific model by Gainward. Tests will be carried out at the recommended frequencies, with factory overclocking and at the maximum frequencies that we managed to achieve on this card. We will compare the performance of the GeForce GTX 970 with some flagship solutions and rivals from AMD.

The GeForce GTX 970 is a low-end solution based on the second generation Maxwell architecture GM204 GPU, essentially a stripped-down version of the GeForce GTX 980. This card has a nasty history, when the official specifications were amended after the release of the product. At the same time, the product itself did not change in any way, just initially NVIDIA did not disclose all its technical features.

In the full version, GM204 operates with 2048 CUDA-cores and 128 texture units, which are organized into two clusters of 8 SMMs each. The GeForce GTX 970 has 3 out of 16 SMMs disabled, resulting in 1664 active CUDA cores and 104 texture units. The 256-bit memory bus remained unchanged. But, as it turned out later, the GeForce GTX 970 is also slightly simplified in terms of ROP — there are 56 of them instead of 64. Along the way, the L2 cache blocks associated with them are cut off, and instead of 2 MB, the junior card has 1792 KB in the asset. One of the eight 64-bit memory controllers has lost its allocated cache area. It works with the last memory segment. As a result, out of 4 GB of the video buffer in the GeForce GTX 970, 3.5 GB work at maximum bandwidth, and the last 512 MB act as an additional segment, and the speed of working with it is much lower. To simplify, we can talk about 3.5 GB of effective memory and 0.5 GB of auxiliary memory, which is not always used.

The general organization of such a structure is shown in the block diagram. For clarity, we can give a more familiar block diagram of the GM204 core, which you could see in various reviews. On it, we removed deactivated blocks.

Together with some simplifications, the GeForce GTX 970 managed to achieve high energy efficiency and a TDP of 145 watts. The Boost frequency of the core is declared at an average level of 1178 MHz with a base value of 1051 MHz. The effective frequency of the memory chips is 7 GHz. Regarding the GeForce GTX 980, the junior card is 23% weaker in terms of main computing units, the difference in ROP is 14%. A little lower and the frequency of the GPU. For better clarity, let’s compare the characteristics of these two video cards in one table.

Now let’s take a look at a specific Gainward GeForce GTX 970 Phoenix model.

The video card comes in a large box. Complete with power adapter, DVI/D-Sub adapter and software CD.

Gainward GeForce GTX 970 Phoenix is ​​a massive device with a cooling system that takes up more than two slots. The cooler uses two fans. The plastic case is covered with decorative elements of red and silver colors.

The card has two power connectors that are closer to the center. At the same time, the board itself is full-length. Gainward is protected by a warranty seal on one of the screws. For this reason, we were not able to disassemble the Phoenix and examine the board in detail.

There are four interface connectors for image output: HDMI, two DisplayPort, DVI.

You can evaluate the design of the cooler indiscriminately. The plastic housing is removed separately. Under it is visible a large radiator with three copper heat pipes.

The heatsink has a «window» for power connectors. In the area of ​​​​the power node there is a finned radiator on transistors.

Airflow is provided by two 92mm Apistek fans. They are screwed to a plastic removable case.

Gainward GeForce GTX 970 Phoenix’s operating frequencies are above the recommended level. Base value 1152 MHz with Boost Clock 1304 MHz. The memory frequencies remained at the standard level of 7012 MHz.

Boost frequency is determined by the power limit and temperature limit. If they are not exceeded, the frequencies are higher than the declared Boost Clock level. As it heats up or exceeds power limits, the frequency may decrease to lower values. Our test unit peaked at 1367 MHz Boost. The reductions relative to the maximum are small, in some applications only by 12-25 MHz, in some games more. For example, during the passage of the Metro Last Light benchmark, the core frequency sometimes dropped to almost 1300 MHz, but not lower than the declared Boost Clock.

The noise level is very moderate. The temperature was kept within 75 °C.

Overclocking was done through the MSU Afterburner utility. The base frequency was increased to 1277 MHz, which allowed us to achieve Boost up to 1505 MHz after a slight increase in voltage. The memory was overclocked to 8100 MHz.

To maintain stability, we had to increase the speed of the fans, which is already fraught with the appearance of a certain hum. If the issue of noise is extremely critical, then without increasing the voltage with less overclocking, the video card will be able to work at the same noise level as in the nominal.

We are also interested in the performance of the simplest version of the GeForce GTX 970. Based on other reviews, we can conclude that the Boost frequency largely depends on cooling and operating conditions, even if the technical characteristics of different video cards are the same. As a result, we chose such a base frequency so that the peak value does not exceed 1230 MHz. At the same time, the power limit was lowered, which reduced the Boost core to 1177 MHz in the most difficult moments. In simpler games, the resulting Boost value was closer to the maximum.

With these settings, the Gainward video card will replace the reference version in our comparison.

Characteristics of test participants

An old flagship represented by the GeForce GTX 780 Ti has been added to testing. This video adapter is equipped with less memory, but boasts a 384-bit bus. It is interesting to compare its capabilities with the GeForce GTX 970 in modern games. Earlier, we compared the flagship cards of two generations from NVIDIA and AMD in a separate review, but the junior model based on GM204 was not included in it. For clarity, the results of GeForce GTX 9 are added80 Ti. This is the most powerful serial card. Its default level is higher. But I wonder what the gap will be with the extremely overclocked GeForce GTX 970.

AMD’s competitors include top solutions based on the Grenada (Hawaii) processor — Radeon R9 390X and Radeon R9 290X, plus Radeon R9 Fury.

Only the Gainward GeForce GTX 970 graphics accelerator was tested during overclocking, all other participants were tested at the recommended frequencies.

Technical characteristics of all participants are shown in the table. The frequencies are official data for Boost. Performance charts show GeForce base and peak frequencies.

Test bench

• Processor: Intel Core i7-3930K @4.4GHz
• motherboard: ASUS Rampage IV Formula
• Memory: Kingston KHX2133C11D3K4/16GX, 1866MHz, 4x4GB
• hard drive: Hitachi HDS721010CLA332, 1 TB
• power supply: Seasonic SS-750KM
• operating system: Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64
• GeForce driver: NVIDIA GeForce 359.06
• Radeon Driver: AMD Radeon Crimson Edition 15. 11

Tests were performed at 2560×1440. The diagrams on the left indicate the minimum fps, on the right the average fps. The list of tests is not very large, so the description of the testing methodology was not included in a separate section of the article. All descriptions and necessary notes come before the results.

More in this category:

« Testing and review of the GeForce GTX 950 by MSI

GeForce GTX 960 vs Radeon R9 380 Benchmarking »

More in this category:

« Testing and review of the GeForce GTX 950 by MSI

GeForce GTX 960 vs Radeon R9 380 Benchmarking »

90,000 VIS R9 380X ICEQ X² Turbo 4GB video card based on AMD Radeon R9 380X

01/20/16

HIS R9 380X Iceq X² Turbo 4GB (H480XQM4TR)

AMD Radeon R9 380. a number of video cards of the AMD Radeon 3XX family. Recall that the video cards of this series are based on solutions of the previous generation (Radeon 2XX) with minor changes.

By the name of R9 380X, it is easy to guess that in the line of AMD video cards it is positioned between the AMD Radeon R9 380 and R9 390 models. In the table you can compare these models with the fresh AMD Radeon R9 380X.

AMD Radeon 3XX Series Video Card Comparison

Compared to NVIDIA solutions, R9 380X should fill the gap between NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 and GTX 970 in terms of performance. NVIDIA has a pretty big speed gap between the GTX 960 and 970, and AMD’s decision to «hit» this gap looks very logical.

It makes no sense to list the functionality of the AMD Radeon R9 380X. In this regard, it is not unique and repeats the features of many other modern AMD video adapters.

The GPU frequency of this video card is increased compared to the reference R9 380X, but the increase is small.

-content/uploads/2016/01/HIS-R9-380X-IceQ-X2-Turbo-02.jpg 585w, https://hi-tech.ua/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/HIS-R9-380X-IceQ-X2-Turbo-02-205×116. jpg 205w, https://hi-tech.ua/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/HIS-R9-380X-IceQ-X2-Turbo-02-300×169.jpg 300w» /> do not currently support HDMI 2.0 (HDMI 1.4 is supported) HDMI 2.0 can be implemented using special DisplayPort to HDMI 2.0 adapters, which must be purchased separately

The 380X IceQ X² Turbo 4GB is a HIS variant of the Radeon R9 380X. The Turbo prefix immediately produces an increased frequency compared to the reference model. True, the increase is small. The GPU frequency was raised from the standard 970 to 1020 MHz, while the memory frequency was left at the reference level of 5700 MHz.

HIS R9 380X IceQ X² Turbo 4GB features a significantly redesigned heatpipe cooling system. In our conditions, when the video card worked on an open stand, the maximum temperature in games was 67 ° C, which is an excellent result, because the video card is far from the most economical and uses two additional six-pin connectors for power.

HIS R9 380X IceQ X² Turbo 4GB monitoring in MSI Afterburner

R9 380X IceQ X² Turbo 4GB noise level can be noticeable, but we have no big complaints about this video card. During idle work, such as web browsing or office applications, many modern NVIDIA graphics cards, even powerful ones, are able to completely stop the fans to ensure silent operation. Unfortunately, there is no such feature. But this feature is not specifically HIS R9380X IceQ X² Turbo 4GB, and AMD GPU-based graphics cards in general.

After installing the official drivers for the AMD Crimson Edition 15.12 video card, we noticed that the design of the settings interface has been significantly redesigned. It has been modernized somewhat. It turned out well, in our opinion. After digging through the settings, you can find the option to switch to the old interface.

Performance and energy consumption

HIS R9 380X IceQ X² Turbo 4GB, based on AMD Radeon R9 380X, we compared with AMD Radeon R9 380, R9 390 graphics cards and solutions from NVIDIA — GeForce GTX 960 and GTX 970 (see histograms).

As expected, AMD Radeon R9 380X placed between GTX 960 and GTX 970 in terms of performance compared to NVIDIA graphics cards. significant in favor of the latter.

We can assume that when using higher resolutions in games, the gap between the R9 380X and the GTX 960 may slightly increase.

In terms of performance per watt of energy expended, modern NVIDIA video cards generally have an advantage over AMD Radeon 3XX video adapters. And in this test, we once again made sure of this.

Test platform configuration:

Test histograms quality, fps