AMD Radeon R9 390 8GB review
It’s an excellent example of how competition drives performance. When Nvidia’s GTX 970 arrived, the high-end graphics card market was blown apart. Factory overclocked examples traded blows with Nvidia’s prior flagship — the GTX 780 Ti — and performance could be pushed further, bringing it into line with the top-end GTX 980. AMD’s Radeon R9 290 and 290X suddenly looked excessively expensive and rather mediocre. Almost a year on and the red team has responded well: it has its limitations, but the performance can’t be denied — the new R9 390 8GB is indeed faster than the GTX 970.
AMD’s formula for challenging Nvidia’s top-end cards is simple enough. The existing Hawaii chips used in R9 290 and 290X are utilised here, receiving an overclock to the GPU core, while the GDDR5 memory modules are replaced with faster, more capable parts with 500gbps of additional bandwidth. It’s a simple recipe for success that extracts just enough additional performance on the Radeon R9 390X to make it a contender in its price range, and the formula is arguably even more effective on the R9 390, delivering impressive results up against the GTX 970.
In essence then, the performance is there but it comes at a cost: the Hawaii chip now generates even more heat than it did previously, meaning quite remarkable levels of power consumption. Secondly, dissipating that heat requires a substantial cooling assembly. For our R9 390 8GB review, we’re assessing the new Asus DirectCU 3 model — the top-end cooler the company produces, based on top-of-the-line components and boasting beautiful build quality. In fact, it’s the exact same set-up used on the firm’s R9 Fury card, the difference being that the less capable R9 390 actually produces more heat than AMD’s slightly cut-down flagship.
And that’s really where the inevitable GTX 970 comparisons should begin. The Nvidia card basically comes in virtually every shape and size available — the model we use is a tiny Zotac version. That product has a miniscule factory overclock (+25MHz to the core), but is more notable for its diminutive dimensions, allowing it to fit inside most of the mini-ITX gaming cases available.
We’ve also had hands-on experience of the MSI Gaming 4G model — very much a standard size GPU, but with the overclocking headroom available to let the product trade blows with a GTX 980, something that the R9 390 is unlikely to be capable of in the majority of games.
Caption
Attribution
- Order the Radeon R9 390 8GB from Amazon with free shipping
In short — while the bulk of this review will centre on the performance, surrounding factors need to be taken into account before we go on. It’s bigger and much more power-hungry than the GTX 970 (especially when you venture into overclocking territory), and pumps out a lot more heat, so go into a prospective R9 390 purchase with your eyes open: you need a decent power supply to accompany this card, and decent airflow within the chassis is an absolute must. In these respects, the GTX 970 is a lot more forgiving.
Of course, the AMD challenger does have one additional advantage that shouldn’t be overlooked — the inclusion of 8GB of RAM compared to the 3.5/4GB split memory pool set-up of the GTX 970. We won’t spend too much time dissecting this (we’ve done that already) but if you have any VRAM anxiety, whether it’s doubts on Nvidia’s GTX 970 configuration, or if you want to future-proof yourself from a memory perspective, the R9 390 can’t be ignored — especially when performance is this good.
How good? Well, the time-honoured Crysis 3 1080p60 gameplay challenge gives us our first ‘real world’ indication of the noticeable difference between the R9 390, the GTX 970 and its R9 290 predecessor (our card is a reference model, with fans at a deafening 80 per cent to rule out potential throttling issues). The R9 390 gets very close to providing a properly locked 1080p60 experience, dropping just 156 frames out of an 18,650 sample. It’s up there with the R9 390X and edges out GTX 970 while positively shaming the old R9 290.
The new R9 390 and 390X square off against the GTX 980 and the R9 290 in a bid to see which cards can play a maxed-out Crysis 3 at as close to a locked, tear-free 1080p60 as possible.
| Crysis 3 1080p V-Sync Gameplay | R9 390 | R9 390X | GTX 970 | R9 290 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lowest Frame-Rate | 50.0fps | 47.0fps | 44.0fps | 34.0fps |
| Dropped Frames (from 18650 total) | 156 (0.8%) | 107 (0.6%) | 465 (2.5%) | 1347 (7.2%) |
Order the graphics cards tested against the R9 390 from Amazon, with free shipping:
- Radeon R9 290 4GB
- Radeon R9 290X 4GB
- Radeon R9 390X 8GB
- GeForce GTX 970 4GB
- GeForce GTX 980 4GB
- GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB
Initial benchmark results at 1080p appear to show that the R9 390 is much of a muchness compared to the Nvidia rival it is designed to supplant.
There are convincing wins in AMD favourites Far Cry 4, Ryse and Shadow of Mordor (both around 18 per cent faster) and a decent boost in Crysis 3, but it’s slower in Tomb Raider and The Witcher 3. The results are so close we creep into the margin of error on Battlefield 4 and Assassin’s Creed Unity. On aggregate, the R9 390 moves ahead of its Nvidia competitor, but only thanks to those three commanding wins on games that historically favour AMD hardware. Bearing in mind its sheer overclockability and how easy it is to unlock that ‘free’ performance, we’d say that the GTX 970 has the edge at 1080p, where its controversial memory arrangement is unlikely to cause problems — but of course, some gamers don’t trust overclocking and prefer to stay at stock speeds.
Comparisons with the R9 390X are revealing. Far Cry 4 runs in a virtually indistinguishable manner, while every game we tested brings home results that see the R9 390 deliver around 93 per cent of the performance of its more expensive sibling.
Bearing in mind that the 390X is £100 more expensive, that’s quite a remarkable state of affairs and while you may find yourself encountering overheating or stability problems, much of that deficit can be clawed back via overclocking — if you can cope with even higher power consumption and more heat.
Overall then, it’s an encouraging start for the R9 390 — 1080p gameplay is the GTX 970’s heartland, the area in which it defeated the R9 290 and 290X so comprehensively, and the new R9 390 pulls off the same trick. With all AMD cards tested on the driver released for the 300 series, we see that the hardware enhancements alone account of a 13 per cent boost in performance over the R9 290 and a six point lead over the 290X. There may not be a knockout blow against the GTX 970 here — particularly when decent examples overclock up to GTX 980 levels in many cases — but clearly AMD’s new alternative is competitive.
By and large, the R9 390 is faster at 1080p, but the aggregate average advantage it has is mostly down to its convincing wins in Ryse, Shadow of Mordor and Far Cry 4.
| 1920×1080 (1080p) | R9 390 | R9 390X | GTX 970 | GTX 980 | R9 290 | R9 290X |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Witcher 3, Ultra, HairWorks Off, Custom AA | 53.8 | 57.4 | 56.0 | 65.8 | 47.4 | 50.5 |
| Battlefield 4, Ultra, 4x MSAA | 74.1 | 78.3 | 74.6 | 86.5 | 64.8 | 69.0 |
| Crysis 3, Very High, SMAA | 75.1 | 80.1 | 71.4 | 81.5 | 65.1 | 69.7 |
| Assassin’s Creed Unity, Ultra High, FXAA | 51.6 | 56.0 | 51.7 | 62.4 | 46.2 | 50.0 |
| Far Cry 4, Ultra, SMAA | 82.1 | 82.4 | 77.4 | 87.4 | 70.9 | 75.0 |
| Ryse: Son of Rome, High, SMAA | 76.6 | 81.8 | 65.1 | 76.1 | 69.9 | 74.5 |
| Shadow of Mordor, Ultra, High Textures, FXAA | 95. 2 |
101.9 | 80.8 | 91.7 | 84.5 | 89.4 |
| Tomb Raider, Ultimate, FXAA | 100.4 | 107.1 | 102.4 | 118.2 | 88.6 | 97.9 |
If you’ve been following the great AMD vs Nvidia battle at the top tier over the last couple of years, you can probably guess what happens next. AMD’s Hawaii-based cards come with a wide 512-bit memory interface, up against the 256-bit bus of the Nvidia Maxwell cards in this sector — the GTX 970 and the GTX 980. As resolution scales upwards, the importance of that hardware element becomes more apparent.
The R9 390 is a good card for 1440p gameplay, and it demonstrates this by taking point on every benchmark (each run at the exact same settings as the 1080p equivalents, where the GTX 970 was more competitive). The gap between the newcomer and the GTX 970 varies on a per game basis: The Witcher 3 and Battlefield 4 barely scrap by with a two to three per cent boost, but other wins are more impressive.
Far Cry, Ryse and Shadow of Mordor show gains over 20 per cent, Crysis 3 at 13 per cent and Assassin’s Creed Unity and Tomb Raider at five per cent.
At this point, you might expect the GTX 970 to rely on its remarkable overclocking potential to win through. Well, it certainly makes it more competitive in most games, but the effectiveness of its overclocking depends on its dynamic boost clock, which varies from game to game. Crysis 3 with an overclock still can’t match the R9 390 at its stock speeds, while Battlefield 4 with the same OC can see it power beyond both R9 390 and 390X, even going toe to toe with the GTX 980.
The R9 390 does a decent job of overtaking the GTX 970 at 1440p resolution. Its improvements over GTX 970 vary on a game by game basis, and more aggressively overclocked GTX 970s will get closer.
| 2560×1440 (1440p) | R9 390 | R9 390X | GTX 970 | GTX 980 | R9 290 | R9 290X |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Witcher 3, Ultra, HairWorks Off, Custom AA | 40. 3 |
43.5 | 39.2 | 47.5 | 35.6 | 38.2 |
| Battlefield 4, Ultra, 4x MSAA | 51.7 | 54.5 | 48.9 | 57.0 | 44.2 | 47.2 |
| Crysis 3, Very High, SMAA | 48.7 | 52.3 | 43.0 | 50.0 | 42.0 | 44.8 |
| Assassin’s Creed Unity, Ultra High, FXAA | 35.5 | 38.4 | 32.8 | 39.7 | 31.4 | 34.4 |
| Far Cry 4, Ultra, SMAA | 64.7 | 69.0 | 53.9 | 61.3 | 52.9 | 57.5 |
| Ryse: Son of Rome, High, SMAA | 57.5 | 62.2 | 46.3 | 54.1 | 52.0 | 55.9 |
| Shadow of Mordor, Ultra, High Textures, FXAA | 69.2 | 74.4 | 57.0 | 66.0 | 61.6 | 65.9 |
| Tomb Raider, Ultimate, FXAA | 69.0 | 75.7 | 65.5 | 76.7 | 61.3 | 67. 2 |
As always, 4K turns out to be something of a double-edged sword for AMD hardware. On the one hand, this is where the bandwidth advantages of the Hawaii card set-ups come to the fore, especially so in these new 300 series overclocked renditions, but on the other hand, there’s still the sense that there’s just not enough rendering power to bring home both the insane pixel count and the visual effects we want to see at decent frame-rates in modern titles. It’s a choice between one or the other really. We’ve posted frame-rate averages here in these benchmarks, but it’s worth pointing out that on four titles — AC Unity, Crysis 3, Ryse and The Witcher 3 — frame-rates dip at their lowest below 30fps, even though we’ve dropped settings down ‘one notch’ from the 1080p and 1440p tests.
But the reality is that the R9 390 offers some remarkable boosts over the GTX 970. Factor out the ‘mere’ seven per cent lead in Battlefield 4 (a title Nvidia aggressively optimised to compete against the now deprecated Mantle) and the smallest lead is 14 per cent with Assassin’s Creed Unity, while the largest sees both Far Cry 4 and Ryse operate 36 per cent faster.
To conclude, 4K benchmarks give AMD an opportunity to comprehensively bash GTX 970 over the head with some big increases, but let’s be clear — the practical application of these GPUs at 4K on recent PC titles is fairly limited.
Perhaps the real question here isn’t whether the R9 390 should be competing with GTX 970 (in actual fact, it’s challenging the GTX 980 here), but whether two cards in CrossFire might be a better option than the R9 Fury X. Certainly there wouldn’t be the VRAM anxiety you’d get with 4GB of memory for high-end 4K gameplay. However, the challenge there is of a more practical nature: both R9 390 and 390X are two of the hottest graphics cards we’ve ever tested — the DirectCU 3 cooler does an excellent job in dissipating the heat from the core, but you still need to get all of that heat out of the chassis. You’ll need a meaty power supply, and a big chassis with plenty of fans.
At 4K resolution, the refreshed Hawaii cards post their biggest increases over Nvidia’s second-gen Maxwells, but in truth, none of these products have the raw power to provide satisfying ultra HD gameplay on modern titles at very high settings.
| 3840×2160 (4K) | R9 390 | R9 390X | GTX 970 | GTX 980 | R9 290 | R9 290X |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Witcher 3, High, HairWorks Off, Custom AA | 26.8 | 29.1 | 22.8 | 27.7 | 23.7 | 26.1 |
| Battlefield 4, High, Post-AA | 42.3 | 44.5 | 39.5 | 46.8 | 37.2 | 39.6 |
| Crysis 3, High, SMAA | 38.5 | 40.2 | 31.9 | 39.0 | 33.8 | 36.1 |
| Assassin’s Creed Unity, Very High, FXAA | 21.0 | 22.7 | 18.4 | 21.8 | 17.7 | 18.7 |
| Far Cry 4, Very High, SMAA | 40.8 | 44.4 | 30.0 | 36.1 | 34.2 | 37.4 |
| Ryse: Son of Rome, Normal, SMAA | 35.0 | 37.8 | 25.7 | 31.5 | 31.2 | 34.0 |
| Shadow of Mordor, High, High Textures, FXAA | 43. 8 |
50.1 | 35.3 | 42.4 | 41.0 | 44.8 |
| Tomb Raider, Ultra, FXAA | 46.6 | 51.4 | 39.0 | 47.1 | 41.3 | 45.9 |
In our Radeon R9 390X review, we shied away from overclocking owing to the extreme levels of power consumption and heat generated when you really pushed the envelope. It’s a similar state of affairs here, particularly when Asus has already applied a 50MHz factory overclock. In combination with our 4.6GHz CPU OC, pushing clocks to 1150MHz with the R9 390 caused the system to hit 560W in overall power consumption (!), and we had real trouble getting any kind of stability with the card, requiring us to drop clocks in increments to see how far it could go without crashing. Temperatures were nightmarish too — if we’re hitting 85 degrees Celsius with the DirectCU 3 cooler in an open air test-bed, we’re going to have problems.
We were finally stable at 1100MHz — (100MHz over reference, 50MHz over the factory overclock).
That’s a relatively small boost, but it is supplemented by a meaty 600MHz boost to the 8GB of onboard GDDR5. However, that translates to a mere five to seven per cent boost over the factory OC clocks overall. The GTX 970 has much more to offer of course, depending on the game, and there’s a night and day difference in terms of efficiency.
Power consumption figures below illustrate starkly how AMD was able to catch up with Nvidia — under load in the same conditions, both at stock and overclocked, the R9 390 consumes a lot more power and emits much more heat: anything from 170W to 190W. That’s immense.
Power consumption and heat generation are the big challenges facing R9 390 and indeed 390X. You can overclock these cards, but not by much (if you’re looking for stability across your library of games). This scene from Crysis 3 is great for testing overclock stability and peak power draw during gameplay.
| R9 390 | R9 390 OC | GTX 970 | GTX 970 OC | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Peak System Power Draw | 447W | 486W | 277W | 291W |
Before the arrival of the R9 390, it was difficult to recommend anything in this price range other than the default GeForce GTX 970 — by and large, it was faster than everything else AMD had to offer in the same price bracket and not that much more expensive than the clearance stock deals for the R9 290X.
With the new card in play, what we’re left with are two strong products battling it out at reasonably similar prices, but offering their own strengths and weaknesses.
The R9 390 shakes up the status quo by re-taking the performance crown in this market sector (at reference clocks at least) and addresses VRAM anxiety once and for all with its stupendous 8GB of GDDR5. You may never need it, but it’s simply reassuring to know that it’s there. For its part, Nvidia continues to bring home the bacon in terms of better driver support (check out those latency spikes on AMD cards in The Witcher 3), more useful GPU-level features and much better power efficiency. The GTX 970 is a physically smaller card in many of its guises, it produces much lower levels of heat, and its overclocking potential is unquestionable. In these areas, AMD isn’t at the races, but in a world where out of the box performance is king, perhaps it simply doesn’t need to compete in those areas.
Nvidia’s bold strike into the £250 GPU market changed everything and with the R9 390 8GB, we finally have a creditable contender from AMD.
True, it can’t overhaul the core strengths of the GTX 970, but nobody can deny that it comprehensively addresses its perceived weaknesses — a whopping 8GB of GDDR5 will do that. It’s a fascinating contest between the two GPUs here, but the real winner is the consumer, who now has two powerful products to choose between in a crucial market sector.
AMD Radeon R9 390 Specs
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AMD Radeon R9 390 Specs
Specifications of the AMD Radeon R9 390 graphics card dedicated to the desktop sector, with 2560 shading units, its maximum frequency is 1,0GHz The table below makes it possible to observe well the lithography, the number of transistors (if present), the offered cache memory, the quantity of texture mapping units, of render output units, the release date, the GFLOPS performance, the values obtained in the benchmark platforms.
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Specifications:
| Graphics card | AMD Radeon R9 390 | |||
| Market (main) | Desktop | |||
| Release date | Q2 2015 | |||
| Model number | 215-0880030, Grenada PRO | |||
| GPU name | Grenada | |||
| Architecture | GCN 2.0 | |||
| Generation | Pirate Islands R9 300 | |||
| Lithography | 28 nm | |||
| Transistors | 6. 200.000.000 |
|||
| Bus interface | PCIe 3.0 x16 | |||
| GPU clock | 1,00 GHz | |||
| Memory frequency | 1.500 MHz | |||
| Effective memory speed | 6 GB/s | |||
| Memory size | 8 GB | |||
| Memory type | GDDR5 | |||
| Memory bus | 512 Bit | |||
| Memory bandwidth | 384,0 GB/s | |||
| TDP | 275 W | |||
| Suggested PSU | 600W ATX Power Supply | |||
| Multicard technology | — | |||
| Outputs |
2x DVI |
|||
| Cores (compute units, SM, SMX) | 40 | |||
| Shading units | 2. 560 |
|||
| TMUs | 160 | |||
| ROPs | 64 | |||
| Cache memory | 1 MB | |||
| Pixel fillrate | 64,0 GPixel/s | |||
| Texture fillrate | 160,0 GTexel/s | |||
| Performance FP32 (float) | 5,1 TFLOPS | |||
| Performance FP64 (double) | 640 GFLOPS | |||
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TMUs: texture mapping units. This unit was a physical processor separated from the main graphics processing units. It is able to distort a bitmap image, and also to resize it, to rotate it and to place it as a texture onto a plane of a specific 3D model.
ROPs: render output units. The other name of this unit is raster operations pipeline. This hadware component is taking pixel and texel information, and processing it through vector and matrix operations. The result will be a depth value or a final pixel. It is able to control antialiasing with the merge of several sample into one pixel.
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Performances :
Performance comparison between this graphics card and those of equivalent power, for this we consider the results generated on benchmark softwares and rendering performances.
Pixel fillrate performance comparison for this graphics card:
| Pixel fillrate performance in GPixels/s | |
|---|---|
|
AMD Radeon Pro W6400 |
74,59 |
|
Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 6400 |
74,27 |
|
Nvidia Tesla P4 |
71,3 |
|
Intel Arc A380 |
65,6 |
|
AMD Radeon R9 390 |
64 |
|
AMD Radeon RX 6400 |
64 |
|
EVGA GeForce GTX 1650 XC Ultra Gaming |
60 |
|
Nvidia Quadro P2200 |
59,72 |
|
EVGA GeForce GTX 1650 SC Ultra Gaming |
59,52 |
|
EVGA GeForce GTX 1650 XC Gaming |
59,52 |
Note: Commissions may be earned from the links above.
These scores are only an
average of the performances got with these graphics cards, you may get different results.
The term pixel fillrate is refering to the number of pixels that the video card is able to generate every second. This performance is achieved by multiplying the raster output units (ROPs) by the clock frequency of the graphics processor unit (GPU).
Texture fillrate performance comparison for this graphics card:
| Texture fillrate performance in GTexels/s | |
|---|---|
|
MSI Radeon RX 570 Armor OC |
162,3 |
|
MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Super Gaming X |
161 |
|
EVGA GeForce GTX 1660 XC Gaming |
161 |
|
EVGA GeForce GTX 1660 Super SC Ultra |
161 |
|
EVGA GeForce GTX 1660 SC Ultra Gaming |
161 |
|
AMD Radeon R9 390 |
160 |
|
MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Super Ventus XS OC |
159,7 |
|
MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Super Aero ITX OC |
159,7 |
|
MSI Radeon RX 570 Armor |
159,2 |
|
MSI Radeon RX 570 Armor 8G |
159,2 |
Note: Commissions may be earned from the links above.
These scores are only an
average of the performances got with these graphics cards, you may get different results.
The term texture fillrate refers to the number of map texture elements (texels) that the GPU is capable of generating per second. This performance is achieved by multiplying the texture mapping units (TMUs) by the clock frequency of the graphics processor unit.
FP32 performance comparison (single precision; float; floating-point 32) for this graphics card:
| FP32 Performance in GFLOPS | |
|---|---|
|
MSI Radeon RX 570 Armor OC |
5.194 |
|
MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Super Gaming X |
5.153 |
|
EVGA GeForce GTX 1660 XC Gaming |
5.153 |
|
EVGA GeForce GTX 1660 Super SC Ultra |
5.  153 |
|
EVGA GeForce GTX 1660 SC Ultra Gaming |
5.153 |
|
AMD Radeon R9 390 |
5.120 |
|
MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Super Ventus XS OC |
5.111 |
|
MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Super Aero ITX OC |
5.111 |
|
MSI Radeon RX 570 Armor |
5.095 |
|
MSI Radeon RX 570 Armor 8G |
5.095 |
Note: Commissions may be earned from the links above. These scores are only an
average of the performances got with these graphics cards, you may get different results.
Single precision floating point format, also known as FP32, is a computer number format that typically occupies 32 bits in PC memory.
This represents a wide dynamic range of numeric values that employs a floating point.
List of comparisons:
AMDAMD RadeonAMD Radeon GraphicsAMD Radeon HDAMD Radeon HD 6000AMD Radeon HD 7000AMD Radeon HD 7800AMD Radeon HD 8000AMD Radeon MobileAMD Radeon ProAMD Radeon Pro MobileAMD Radeon R2AMD Radeon R4AMD Radeon R5AMD Radeon R6AMD Radeon R7AMD Radeon R7 200AMD Radeon R9AMD Radeon R9 200AMD Radeon RXAMD Radeon RX 300AMD Radeon RX 400AMD Radeon RX 500AMD Radeon RX 5000AMD Radeon RX 5000 MobileAMD Radeon RX 6000AMD Radeon RX 6000 MobileAMD Radeon RX 7000AMD Radeon RX VegaAMD Radeon VegaAMD Radeon Vega 11AMD Radeon Vega 3AMD Radeon Vega 6AMD Radeon Vega 8AMD Radeon Vega MobileAppleARMARM MaliARM Mali-400ARM Mali-450ARM Mali-470ARM Mali-G31ARM Mali-G51ARM Mali-G52ARM Mali-G57ARM Mali-G610ARM Mali-G68ARM Mali-G71ARM Mali-G710ARM Mali-G72ARM Mali-G76ARM Mali-G77ARM Mali-G78ARM Mali-T720ARM Mali-T760ARM Mali-T764ARM Mali-T820ARM Mali-T830ARM Mali-T860ARM Mali-T880ASRockAsusAsus GeForce 4000ATIATI Radeon HDATI Radeon HD 3000ATI Radeon HD 4000ATI Radeon HD 5000BFGBroadcomBroadcom VideoCoreColorfulColorful GeForce 4000DellDMPEVGAEVGA GeForce 1000EVGA GeForce 1600EVGA GeForce 2000EVGA GeForce 3000GainwardGainward GeForce 4000GigabyteGigabyte GeForce 4000ImaginationImagination PowerVRImagination PowerVR SGX543Imagination PowerVR SGX544IntelIntel ArcIntel Arctic SoundIntel HD GraphicsIntel Iris GraphicsIntel Iris Plus GraphicsIntel Iris Xe Graphics G7Intel Iris Xe Graphics MobileIntel UHD GraphicsIntel UHD Graphics 610Intel UHD Graphics 620Intel UHD Graphics 630Intel UHD Graphics 730Intel UHD Graphics 770Intel Xe GraphicsLeadtekMicrosoftMicrosoft XboxMSIMSI GeForce 3000MSI GeForce 4000NintendoNvidiaNvidia GeForceNvidia GeForce 1000Nvidia GeForce 1000 MobileNvidia GeForce 1600Nvidia GeForce 1600 MobileNvidia GeForce 2000Nvidia GeForce 2000 MobileNvidia GeForce 3000Nvidia GeForce 3000 MobileNvidia GeForce 400Nvidia GeForce 4000Nvidia GeForce 500Nvidia GeForce 600Nvidia GeForce 600MNvidia GeForce 700Nvidia GeForce 700MNvidia GeForce 800M seriesNvidia GeForce 900Nvidia GeForce 900MNvidia GeForce GTNvidia GeForce GT 1000Nvidia GeForce GTXNvidia GeForce GTX 1000Nvidia GeForce GTX 1000 MobileNvidia GeForce GTX 1600Nvidia GeForce GTX 1600 MobileNvidia GeForce GTX 400Nvidia GeForce GTX 500Nvidia GeForce GTX 600Nvidia GeForce GTX 600 MobileNvidia GeForce GTX 700Nvidia GeForce GTX 700 MobileNvidia GeForce GTX 800 MobileNvidia GeForce GTX 900Nvidia GeForce GTX 900 MobileNvidia GeForce MXNvidia GeForce RTXNvidia GeForce RTX 2000Nvidia GeForce RTX 2000 MobileNvidia GeForce RTX 3000Nvidia GeForce RTX 3000 MobileNvidia GeForce RTX 4000Nvidia GeForce RTX 4000 MobileNvidia GM20BNvidia Quadro seriesNvidia TeslaNvidia VoltaPalitPalit GeForce 4000PNYQualcommQualcomm AdrenoSamsungSaplosSapphireSonySony PlayStationValveVeinedaVivanteXFXYestonZotacZotac GeForce 4000Graphics cards groups
List of benchmarks:
FP32 performance
See also:
AMD Radeon R9 390 X2AMD Radeon R9 390X
Equivalence:
AMD Radeon R9 390 Nvidia equivalent
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Information:
We do not assume any responsibility for the data displayed on our website. Please use at your own risk. Some or all of this data may be out of date or incomplete, please refer to the technical page on the respective manufacturer’s website to find the latest up-to-date information regarding the specifics of these products.
Radeon R9 390 [in 3 benchmarks]
Radeon R9 390
- PCIe 3.0 x16 interface
- Core frequency 0
- Video memory size 0
- Memory type GDDR5
- Memory frequency 1000
- Maximum resolution
Description
AMD Starts Radeon R9 39 Sales0 June 18, 2015 at a suggested price of $329.
This is a desktop video card based on the GCN 2.0 architecture and 28 nm manufacturing process, primarily aimed at gamers. It has 0 MB of GDDR5 memory at 1000 GHz, and coupled with a 512-bit interface, this creates a bandwidth of 384 Gb / s.
In terms of compatibility, this is a dual-slot PCIe 3.0 x16 card. The length of the reference version is 275 mm. An additional 1 x 6-pin, 1 x 8-pin power cable is required for connection, and the power consumption is 275W. nine0005
It provides poor performance in tests and games at the level of
23.10%
from the leader, which is NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090.
GeForce RTX
4090
Compare
General information
Information about the type (desktop or laptop) and architecture of Radeon R9 390, as well as when sales started and cost at the time.
nine0003 Value for money
To obtain an index, we compare the characteristics of video cards and their cost, taking into account the cost of other cards.
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Features
Radeon R9 390’s general performance parameters such as number of shaders, GPU core clock, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. They indirectly talk about Radeon R9 performance0041
Compatibility and dimensions
Information on Radeon R9 390 compatibility with other computer components. Useful for example when choosing the configuration of a future computer or to upgrade an existing one. For desktop video cards, these are the interface and connection bus (compatibility with the motherboard), the physical dimensions of the video card (compatibility with the motherboard and case), additional power connectors (compatibility with the power supply).
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RAM
Parameters of the memory installed on Radeon R9 390 — type, size, bus, frequency and bandwidth. For video cards built into the processor that do not have their own memory, a shared part of the RAM is used.
| Memory type | GDDR5 | |
| memory capacity | 384 GB/s | of 14400 (Radeon R7 M260) |
Types and number of video connectors present on Radeon R9 390. As a rule, this section is relevant only for desktop reference video cards, since for laptop ones the availability of certain video outputs depends on the laptop model.
| Video connectors | 9390 technological solutions and APIs. You will need this information if your graphics card is required to support specific technologies.
Tests in benchmarks
These are the results of Radeon R9 390 rendering performance tests in non-gaming benchmarks. The overall score is set from 0 to 100, where 100 corresponds to the fastest video card at the moment. Overall benchmark performanceThis is our overall performance rating. We regularly improve our algorithms, but if you find any inconsistencies, feel free to speak up in the comments section, we usually fix problems quickly. nine0005
R9 390
PassmarkThis is a very common benchmark included in the Passmark PerformanceTest package. He gives the card a thorough evaluation, running four separate tests for Direct3D versions 9, 10, 11, and 12 (the latter being done at 4K resolution whenever possible), and a few more tests using DirectCompute. nine0005 Benchmark coverage: 25%
R9 390 3DMark Fire Strike Graphics Fire Strike is a DirectX 11 benchmark for gaming PCs. It features two separate tests showing a fight between a humanoid and a fiery creature that appears to be made of lava. Benchmark coverage: 13%
R9 390 Unigine Heaven 4.0This is an old DirectX 11 based benchmark, a newer version of Unigine 3.0 with relatively minor differences. It depicts a medieval fantasy city spread over several floating islands. The benchmark is still occasionally used despite its significant age, and it was released back in 2013. Benchmark coverage: 1%
nine0003 R9 390 Mining hashratesRadeon R9 390 performance in cryptocurrency mining. Usually the result is measured in mhash / s — the number of millions of solutions generated by the video card in one second.
Is the Radeon R9 390 good for gaming?FPS in popular games on Radeon R9390, as well as compliance with system requirements. Remember that the official requirements of the developers do not always match the data of real tests. Relative capacityRadeon R9 390 overall performance compared to its closest competitors in desktop graphics cards.
AMD Radeon RX 6500XT
AMD Radeon RX 5500XT
NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN Z
AMD Radeon R9 390
NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK
AMD Radeon RX 580
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 5 GB Competitor from NVIDIAWe believe that the nearest equivalent to Radeon R9 390 from NVIDIA is GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK, which is approximately equal in speed and lower by 1 position in our rating. Compare Here are some of NVIDIA’s closest competitors to the Radeon R9 390:
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3 GB
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti
NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN Z
AMD Radeon R9 390
NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN BLACK
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 5 GB
NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN Other video cardsHere we recommend a few video cards that are more or less similar in performance to the reviewed one. Compare Compare Compare Compare Compare Compare Recommended Processors According to our statistics, these processors are most often used with the Radeon R9 390. 2.9% 2.8% 2.5% 2.1% 2% 1.9% 1.9% nine0038 1.9% 1.6% 1.5% User rating
Here you can see the rating of the video card by users, as well as put your own rating. |
Using a resolution of 1920×1080, Fire Strike demonstrates fairly realistic graphics and is quite demanding on hardware. 
26 Mh/s 
48
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