R9 390 or wait for Fury Nano?

[kozad]

First post, in years, with a new account. Old account's password isn't working and I'm too lazy to fix it. -_-

I want to upgrade my graphics to something a little more modern, what with DX12 here and Fallout 4 around the corner.

Currently, I rock a pair of 7970s - which I just sold and will be pulling from my rig later today.

Playing GTAV with everything maxed out induces stutter on my Crossfired 7970s - idk the fps offhand, but the game does remain playable - Even default settings, there's page tearing... One 7970 chokes on GW2 if there's a lot of other players around/nearby. (GW2 does not support Crossfire for reasons I don't really understand).

Long story short, the Nano is supposed to be faster than a 290X, yes? But how would that compare with a 390? And what is the expected price of the Nano? An air cooled Fury didn't look that much better for 1080p than the 390, and I will be staying on 1080p for a long while yet. I want to replace both cards with one card, and maybe add a second later on down the road.

 

[NC37]

Nano is to be out this month. Might as well wait and see. Although the price of it...dunno. Suspect it'll be more. Question comes in regarding clockability. Nano might clock a lot more than the 390 and provide more value.

Performance I've heard is around 290X with 2x performance per watt. Some sites seem to be thinking its 2x the performance of a 290X but I think they're just misreading rumors.

I'm kinda waiting to see how it goes but I'm not getting hopes up. Might just hold out till holiday and see what promos AMD runs. Both ARK and Star Citizen are properly using SLI now which was my sole reasons for upgrading. So, I can wait.

 

[Luka KLLP]

I'd go for Nano, it should bring Fiji (which is a big step in the right direction for AMD) to the performance level you want.

 

[RejZoR]

Nano is to be out this month. Might as well wait and see. Although the price of it...dunno. Suspect it'll be more. Question comes in regarding clockability. Nano might clock a lot more than the 390 and provide more value.

Performance I've heard is around 290X with 2x performance per watt. Some sites seem to be thinking its 2x the performance of a 290X but I think they're just misreading rumors.

I'm kinda waiting to see how it goes but I'm not getting hopes up. Might just hold out till holiday and see what promos AMD runs. Both ARK and Star Citizen are properly using SLI now which was my sole reasons for upgrading. So, I can wait.

If it was 2x performance of 290X, it would be as fast as Fiji XT which doesn't make any sense...

 

[Aquinus]

The 390 is a huge card. The nano is not. As everyone has said already, I would wait to see how it gets placed because despite claims I have a very strange feeling that they're not going to cannibalize their own sales. I think it's probably realistic to assume that Nano will take the place that would be a 380x which currently doesn't exist. The 390 isn't a bad choice for the cost but, if you're willing to pay a price premium for new tech, then Nano might make sense. Until it's released it is going to be a crap shoot, so I'll just recommend a 390 because I have one and I know it works well. However that isn't to say either of these options are faster than your 7970s in CFX. I upgraded from two 6870s because it offered more performance than my CFX setup, that won't be the case for your setup unless CFX is just driving you up a wall.

I would add a third option to wait which is really what I would recommend.

Side note: I would get the 390 if you think you'll get a second and do CFX again in the future because you'll get longevity out of the 8GB of VRAM. Once you run out of VRAM, performance tanks really quick.

 

[64K]

As others have said we don't know for sure where the Nano will sit in AMD's product stack yet. Lisa Su has made the following claims

Notice it says up to 2X performance per watt. We won't know what that means until reviews roll out.

 

[RejZoR]

Don't confuse 2x performance density with 2x performace increase. Not the same thing. If it was, the R9 Nano would be a significantly enhanced Fiji chip which I very much doubt it is...

 

[Aquinus]

As others have said we don't know for sure where the Nano will sit in AMD's product stack yet. Lisa Su has made the following claims

Notice it says up to 2X performance per watt. We won't know what that means until reviews roll out.

What concerns me is that all the other Fiji chips aren't up to 2x PPW. If you also consider how small the heat sink is on that card and how massive it is on the 290 and 390 series, I have some reservations about it being placed above the 290x with respect to performance. People might just be hoping for the best but, this really feels like something between the 380 and the 390. If you consider the size of the card, the size of the heat sink, and a single PCI-E power connector, it's probably a good reason to be skeptical.

Also, why would this be right under regular Fury when it's also a hot running card? It doesn't make sense, 380x positioning does.

Lisa Su hypes up everything up using the PR game. I don't like it.

 

[rooivalk]

My guess it'll be only slightly better than 390x while priced higher. IMHO 390x price/performance ratio is relatively bad, so Nano won't be much better.

I'd say 390.

 

[Vayra86]

First post, in years, with a new account. Old account's password isn't working and I'm too lazy to fix it. -_-

I want to upgrade my graphics to something a little more modern, what with DX12 here and Fallout 4 around the corner.

Currently, I rock a pair of 7970s - which I just sold and will be pulling from my rig later today.

Playing GTAV with everything maxed out induces stutter on my Crossfired 7970s - idk the fps offhand, but the game does remain playable - Even default settings, there's page tearing... One 7970 chokes on GW2 if there's a lot of other players around/nearby. (GW2 does not support Crossfire for reasons I don't really understand).

Long story short, the Nano is supposed to be faster than a 290X, yes? But how would that compare with a 390? And what is the expected price of the Nano? An air cooled Fury didn't look that much better for 1080p than the 390, and I will be staying on 1080p for a long while yet. I want to replace both cards with one card, and maybe add a second later on down the road.

What you are describing here doesn't sound like you are running into a GPU bottleneck *at all*. These are different issues and I recognize both of them.

- GTA V and stutter on Crossfire. Crossfire is more susceptible to stutter, yes. But if you have 'torn' images that just means you need to enable Vsync. This will eliminate stutter but cause a bit of input lag, something that won't really be an issue in a non-competitive game like this. Tearing is not caused by frame dips but because your monitor refresh rate and fps are not perfectly aligned. Also, crossfire 7970 is a huge amount of GPU horsepower. If you play on 1080p, it will easily manage GTA V and even 1440p should not be an issue. You have 3 GB VRAM and sufficient gpu to drive it.

- GW2 slows down not because your 7970 chokes on it. It slows down because there are many players in the scene and your CPU can't keep up. GW2 is notorious for this issue as it still runs on a single thread. I ran GW2 on a 3570k and any and all frame dips are 100% CPU related. Most notably in Lion's Arch (or other player hubs) and in WvWvW. GW2 is not very gpu bound, even running the game in supersampled mode (ingame setting) would probably give you the same fps as running at low settings. Test that, and you know it is a cpu bottleneck, which means upgrading GPU won't give you more frames. You can also try reducing the Model complexity (not sure what the option is called exactly in GW2, been awhile) so that player models are simplified to a single, gray model. This will drastically improve FPS in busy areas.

Consider these points carefully before you buy into an upgrade that is pretty marginal. 2x 7970 versus a single R9 390 isn't a massive difference, but it does cost money.

 

[RejZoR]

What concerns me is that all the other Fiji chips aren't up to 2x PPW. If you also consider how small the heat sink is on that card and how massive it is on the 290 and 390 series, I have some reservations about it being placed above the 290x with respect to performance. People might just be hoping for the best but, this really feels like something between the 380 and the 390. If you consider the size of the card, the size of the heat sink, and a single PCI-E power connector, it's probably a good reason to be skeptical.

Also, why would this be right under regular Fury when it's also a hot running card? It doesn't make sense, 380x positioning does.

Lisa Su hypes up everything up using the PR game. I don't like it.

Well, R9 Nano might be what we were hoping for R9-390X to be in the beginning based on rumors back then. R9-290X configuration based on top of a Fiji core. Same number of all units, similar clocks, just transferred to the new Fiji core. Fiji certainly is more effective than Hawaii so that would kinda make sense. HBM also helps a bit with consumption and thermals. That would seem like a feasible thing. Can't see it happening any other way really...

 

[AsRock]

As others have said we don't know for sure where the Nano will sit in AMD's product stack yet. Lisa Su has made the following claims

Notice it says up to 2X performance per watt. We won't know what that means until reviews roll out.

All so notice **

I would still wait though should be a dam good card either way and do believe it be in the performance range of the 390 if not a little more.


To the OP, are you running a SSD or HDD ?, with a SSD your performance will be much smoother in GTA5

 

[Aquinus]

My guess it'll be only slightly better than 390x while priced higher.

What do you think the regular Fury is? It's just that. There is no way they're going to place this inbetween the two and why do we suddenly think that AMD made a super power friendly chip using Fiji when the other's haven't? There is no way this is going to be placed there. It just simply doesn't add up.

Well, R9 Nano might be what we were hoping for R9-390X to be in the beginning based on rumors back then. R9-290X configuration based on top of a Fiji core. Same number of all units, similar clocks, just transferred to the new Fiji core. Fiji certainly is more effective than Hawaii so that would kinda make sense. HBM also helps a bit with consumption and thermals. That would seem like a feasible thing. Can't see it happening any other way really...

Do we have a short memory on how Fury performed and how Fury was over the 390x in terms of performance?

If you consider performance numbers, you can see a gap in the market between the 390/290 and the 280x/380. I just don't see how a card with a single PCI-E connector, a cooler that small, and on the same kind of core as Fury, to be over 390x performance when the R9 Fury already fills that slot and is a lot bigger and uses two PCI-E power connectors. Simply put, expecting 390x performance out of this is a pipedream. Fiji is just like every one of AMD's latest GPU cores. It runs hot when you push it and this card neither have the cooling capacity or power delivery ability to do what you suggest which is why I don't think it's targeting that segment of the market.

You can think of it this way if you want to describe what market each probably is trying to fit into. If they're slowly trying to move everything over to HBM, then this would make sense.
390x/290x -> Fury X
390/290 -> Fury
380/280x -> Fury Nano

However, this is all speculation and we will know for fact what it is and what it can do soon.

 

[EarthDog]

Do we have a short memory on how Fury performed and how Fury was over the 390x in terms of performance?

There is a 7% gap at 1080p, and a 10% gap at 2560x1440. There is plenty of room for it to slide right in there. AMD and NVIDIA have done that before.

AMD also said, and I suppose a grain of salt or a few is warranted, that the Nano is "Significantly Faster" than a 290x. Since the 290x and 390x are the same card but with more vram and overclocks, I would bet the Nano lands with the 390x or slightly faster. From a market standpoint, you have a 390x at 8GB and the Nano at 4GB so both can live happily with each other and not steal each other's thunder.

 

[Aquinus]

There is a 7% gap at 1080p, and a 10% gap at 2560x1440. There is plenty of room for it to slide right in there. AMD and NVIDIA have done that before.

Yet there is a huge gap between the 380 and 390. You can't ignore that and we've heard AMD make some pretty outlandish claims in the past. You know what happened the last time AMD said one of their GPUs was faster than another... I'm trying to base a conclusion on what they've done already, not what their PR is telling us because the hype thing is getting really old and isn't living up to scrutiny.

Either way, we'll find out soon enough now won't we.

 

[EarthDog]

I didn't ignore that point, I addressed it head on... and I wait with bated breath as do you.

This wont be slower than a 290x, particularly at higher resolutions. I would bet good money on that. IMO, worst case is between the 290x and 390x.

 

[RejZoR]

When you slash off half the shaders, take into account HBM and potentially use lower clocks and volts, you can make it even with such tiny cooler. No one ever said it'll be dead silent though one would expect it to be considering its dimensions "purpose".

 

[Aquinus]

This wont be slower than a 290x, particularly at higher resolutions.

Where are you getting this information from other than PR campaigns though? I see no evidence to suggest that to be true. So while I want to believe, I can't find the information to back it up.

When you slash off half the shaders, take into account HBM and potentially use lower clocks and volts, you can make it even with such tiny cooler. No one ever said it'll be dead silent though one would expect it to be considering its dimensions "purpose".

Shoving more into a small space needs more cooling capacity. You can't simply make the cooler smaller because it's all crammed into one spot. Fury is a premier example of this. Once again, I have serious reservations about Nano being faster than the 390x at stock.

Can either of you tell me where (other than PR,) is indicating how this card is going to perform, because I feel like these claims are coming out of nowhere.

 

[EarthDog]

The card hasn't been released yet, so there isn't any empirical evidence available at this time. I am taking into account their statement from the release and my deep dive with Joe Marci while attending the AMD event for the release. I am hoping it will match/slighty beat the 390x... but think it will be no slower than a 290x.

 

[Aquinus]

The card hasn't been released yet, so there isn't any empirical evidence available at this time. I am taking into account their statement from the release and my deep dive with Joe Marci while attending the AMD event for the release. I am hoping it will match/slighty beat the 390x... but think it will be no slower than a 290x.

So in reality, it's all wishful thinking.

 

[EarthDog]

Yes, however, not a huge leap of faith. I have tempered my expectations from historical performance and hype. If it is slower than the 290x... AMD's marketing department should off themselves and stop misleading consumers by only using their cherry picked and 'not so realistic' benchmark settings to make statements like that.

 

[The Mac]

Gibbo over at OCUK has postulated it will be full fat, lower clocks and perform in between the 390x and the Fury pro and priced accordingly.

Since he sells the Fury, and the Fury X, and is UKs largest partner, id give his opinion more weight than most.

 

[kozad]

All so notice **

I would still wait though should be a dam good card either way and do believe it be in the performance range of the 390 if not a little more.


To the OP, are you running a SSD or HDD ?, with a SSD your performance will be much smoother in GTA5

HDD atm, I'm moving from a 1TB HDD to a 256 GB SSD (Samsung Pro 850) this weekend, or early next week. My OS, apps, and GW2 will be on the SSD, my other games will all sit on the 1 TB.

 

[AsRock]

Well if i was you i would put GTA5 on there too as it will help with the loading during playing, hope it solves your issue

 

[kozad]

Well, I'm on a 7750 for now, until pricing and benchmarks for the Nano drop. I assume we will know much more next week. Looking at pricing tiers...

Fury X = $669.99

Fury = $569.99

Fury Nano = $469.99?

390X = $429.99

390 = $329.99

380 =$239.99

...I think $469.99 is the most logical price point. Thoughts?