Sapphire R9 390 Nitro 8 GB

[Jesus Castro]

4K and only 1 980 without problems at all ? are you sure ?

Im not talking about about averages, no gpu today can run 4k at comfortable frame rate. Im talking about people saying that if you pass the 4gig limit, the game will start to choke and freeze etc. I never had those problems with games like gta, bf4.

 

[Eroticus]

Im not talking about about averages, no gpu today can run 4k at comfortable frame rate. Im talking about people saying that if you pass the 4gig limit, the game will start to choke and freeze etc. I never had those problems with games like gta, bf4.

No one said that =P i think , not sure xD

we said that if you can get better performance and extra 4.5gb of vram, so why not ?

Performance Summary 390 100% - 970
900p - 3%
1080p - 7%
1440p - 11%
2160p - 14%

 

[Aquinus]

I only have problems with the multi monitor power draw. Yikes!

I'm have a concern about the validity of that measurement for a GPU at stock. When I have all 3 monitors my draw off the wall is slightly over 150 watts for the entire system. I just unplugged all but one of my displays and now it's ~148-watts. I wouldn't exactly call that consistent with what @W1zzard claims in the review unless he is doing something like forcing VRAM to clock up which very well might increase the draw but, just idle, sitting on the desktop, I can't confirm those numbers with my own card.

The only time I can confirm that it goes up that high is when I'm actively doing something like moving a window or something. Just sitting there at idle without being used is the same as a single monitor on my end.

No one said that =P i think , not sure xD

we said that if you can get better performance and extra 4.5gb of vram, so why not ?

Performance Summary 390 100% - 970
900p - 3%
1080p - 7%
1440p - 11%
2160p - 14%

Heat and power consumption are always a thing to consider. When I overclock my 390 the sucker runs pretty hot.

 

[Eroticus]

I'm have a concern about the validity of that measurement for a GPU at stock. When I have all 3 monitors my draw off the wall is slightly over 150 watts for the entire system. I just unplugged all but one of my displays and now it's ~148-watts. I wouldn't exactly call that consistent with what @W1zzard claims in the review unless he is doing something like forcing VRAM to clock up which very well might increase the draw but, just idle, sitting on the desktop, I can't confirm those numbers with my own card.

Heat and power consumption are always a thing to consider. When I overclock my 390 the sucker runs pretty hot.

I have 180~200w CPU, so i don't really care about power consumption haha =P

Nitro with OC and without OC has pretty awesome temps, only MSI GTX 970 has 3*c lower(TECHPOWERUP Reviews) , and Grenada can reach pretty high temps without any problems. =P.

any way i agree with you about both things =].

 

[Aquinus]

I have 180~200w CPU, so i don't really care about power consumption haha =P

Oh, me either. Us owners of SB-E chips need to stay together.

Also that Heaven run you screenshotted, how the heck did you get a score that high? At 1150/1700 I could only get within about 100 points of your score.
Edit: Oh, you clocked that sucker north of 1.2Ghz. That explains a lot. My 390 gets pretty unstable at 1200Mhz. I would probably need to ditch Afterburner and switch to Trixx to shove a little more voltage through it. Do you use Trixx for overclocking your GPU?

 

[Eroticus]

Oh, me either. Us owners of SB-E chips need to stay together.

Also that Heaven run you screenshotted, how the heck did you get a score that high? At 1150/1700 I could only get within about 100 points of your score.

1247 / 1666 - +50% Power, 200 mv on GPU.

 

[xkm1948]

Looking at those benchmarks I am just so glad I didn't buy 970 back in May. Loads of people here on TPU were nagging me to go 970...

 

[GhostRyder]

My point is that he is demonizing the 390 when it's honestly just as capable as the 970 in most instances (particularly at higher resolutions.) Benchmarks show that. The only real downside is power consumption and size. When I'm buying a GPU around 300 USD, I don't really care if I'm paying a 20 USD price premium for 8GB of VRAM that can clock a little higher. At worst, I lose out on 20 dollars. At best, I won't have to replace my GPU should I need more performance. I'm just annoyed with the slandering of a GPU that I find to be more than capable where benchmarks seem to concur.

This feels like a "anything you can do, I can do better," mentality and it needs to stop IMHO. Both are good GPUs.

I agree with you, I was just pointing it out because I felt there was going to be a comment about it later on down the line.
I agree with you, I was just pointing it out because I felt there was going to be a comment about it later on down the line.

I have a 980 and never saw 4k as an issue. Yes, i dont see the 8gb useful on the 390. The card will be long irrelevant before those 8gbs are used, unless, of course youre going for a cfx setup. Amd basically overclocked the 390 from the 290 stock 947 to whatever these manufacturer want, say, 1040 like what sapphire did. So theres even less overclock headroom. Meanwhile the 970 you can just put +200 on the core and call it a day. People seem to underestimate the overclock potential of maxwell cards since reviewers nowadays simply overclock the card they are reviewing i stead of the whole suit of cards they are comparing it to. Only one site i have ever seen them do that and it is overclockersclub

For example in this 390x review: http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/xfx_r9_390x/3.htm

You see the whole picture when you see all cards overclocked.

But if i had to pick between the 970 or 390, i would pick whichever is cheaper. Or flip a coin.

Yea but remember, numbers are just number when it comes to the clocks. Its how much performance you pull when overclocked that matters.

1247 / 1666 - +50% Power, 200 mv on GPU.

WTF, did you get a golden sample 290X???

I'm have a concern about the validity of that measurement for a GPU at stock. When I have all 3 monitors my draw off the wall is slightly over 150 watts for the entire system. I just unplugged all but one of my displays and now it's ~148-watts. I wouldn't exactly call that consistent with what @W1zzard claims in the review unless he is doing something like forcing VRAM to clock up which very well might increase the draw but, just idle, sitting on the desktop, I can't confirm those numbers with my own card.

The only time I can confirm that it goes up that high is when I'm actively doing something like moving a window or something. Just sitting there at idle without being used is the same as a single monitor on my end.

Heat and power consumption are always a thing to consider. When I overclock my 390 the sucker runs pretty hot.

I think it matters, how ever many people blow it out of proportion the power usage numbers like the 390 will cause the lights to dim in your house when its on

 

[rtwjunkie]

The card will be long irrelevant before those 8gbs are used,

I'm going to paraphrase @Aquinus here because it's perfectly valid: It's not about being able to use all 8GB of VRAM, it's about the freedom to use more than 4 without a performance hit. If people are paying attention, more and more games are coming close to 4GB usage...and that's at "just" 1080p!

 

[Jesus Castro]

I'm going to paraphrase @Aquinus here because it's perfectly valid: It's not about being able to use all 8GB of VRAM, it's about the freedom to use more than 4 without a performance hit. If people are paying attention, more and more games are coming close to 4GB usage...and that's at "just" 1080p!

Funny thing is, there is almost no performance hit.

http://www.tweaktown.com/tweakipedia/68/amd-radeon-r9-290x-4gb-vs-8gb-4k-maxed-settings/index.html

Beside tomb raider, theres isnt any benefit to having those extra 4gb of ram. If there is a difference, its a small margin at best. The only way they saw a benefit to having 8gb was when they pushed shadow of mordor to 8k, 200% resolution scale on top of 4k. Where the 8gb cards got an average 23fps while 4gb tanked to 9fps. If you run a game then it passes the magical 4096mb limit, the fps wont just tank all of the sudden. You need substantially more "vram usage" than 4gb to actually get noticeable performance drop on a 4gb card.

 

[bentan77]

No Crimson?

 

[Aquinus]

Funny thing is, there is almost no performance hit.

http://www.tweaktown.com/tweakipedia/68/amd-radeon-r9-290x-4gb-vs-8gb-4k-maxed-settings/index.html

Beside tomb raider, theres isnt any benefit to having those extra 4gb of ram. If there is a difference, its a small margin at best. The only way they saw a benefit to having 8gb was when they pushed shadow of mordor to 8k, 200% resolution scale on top of 4k. Where the 8gb cards got an average 23fps while 4gb tanked to 9fps. If you run a game then it passes the magical 4096mb limit, the fps wont just tank all of the sudden. You need substantially more "vram usage" than 4gb to actually get noticeable performance drop on a 4gb card.

His point is that 4GB is going to get exceeded in 1080p soon. I already pass it now in surround with some games occasionally. Elite Dangerous normally sits between 3-4.5GB, I've rarely seen it get almost as high at 5GB. You're right though, texture streaming doesn't kill performance until you start getting north of 500MB, that was what I experienced with my 6870s before I upgraded.

Example:

 

[Fluffmeister]

The performance is fine... always have been, but those bottom lines are suffering hard in comparison to the competition.

 

[Jesus Castro]

His point is that 4GB is going to get exceeded in 1080p soon. I already pass it now in surround with some games occasionally. Elite Dangerous normally sits between 3-4.5GB, I've rarely seen it get almost as high at 5GB.

Example:
View attachment 71332
View attachment 71333

Yes, even if you "pass" your vram limit, there wont be a difference with someone else below the the usage. Like in your example, i expect a person with a 4gb card to run fine, despite it coming close to 5gb. But a person with a 3gb card, i do expect their fps to tank using the same settings that you have there.

 

[Aquinus]

Yes, even if you "pass" your vram limit, there wont be a difference with someone else below the the usage. Like in your example, i expect a person with a 4gb card to run fine, despite it coming close to 5gb. But a person with a 3gb card, i do expect their fps to tank using the same settings as you did there.

By the time my 6870s were 600MB over, the GPU's couldn't go faster than 40-50% GPU usage. I suspect if someone is using 1GB over what they have, they will most definitely see a performance hit. Gradually as you use more, the GPU usage will simply go down because there's nothing for the GPU to do but wait for the data to get streamed from main memory, over the PCI-E bus, and into the GPU and depending on how often those textures are used, it could be a small hit or a huge hit. It really depends on the game and if all that is required to render the current frames but, you'll get more dips in performance every time it has to stream textures. The more it streams, the more you'll scream.

Also consider SLI and CFX. If you run out you'll need to stream that data to both GPUs which is a lot more intensive on a computer than just streaming to a single GPU.

 

[Fluffmeister]

wow that power consumption is crazy... i think it's still better and cheaper in the long run to buy a gtx 970 !!

Indeed.

http://www.techspot.com/review/1114-vram-comparison-test/

 

[nem]

wow that power consumption is crazy... i think it's still better and cheaper in the long run to buy a gtx 970 !!

i dunno , no async compute.. only 3.5Gb fast.. not be sure about have specials drivers of nvidia than manage the data than be used less to the slow 0.5Gb slow.. i think the NITRO will have much more lifetime..

 

[newtekie1]

You're whining about a tiny price premium for something that might get used in the future and make the argument every time there is a 390 review. I would call that whining and blowing the thing out of proportion.

Also saying shit like this isn't exactly appropriate:

See, this is why I wrote that. You can't handle anyone saying anything remotely negative about your precious AMD can you? I said one statement and one statement only, 8GB is not beneficial. It says that RIGHT IN THE REVIEW!!! And your response is that I'm demonizing the card and whining about a price premium(when I never even mentioned anything about price). See, I removed that comment, but now you've proven I was right in stating it. You can not even begin to handle anyone saying anything remotely negative about AMD and the 390, and you fly off the handle if they do, and you've done so here.

Go yell at W1z about why he is demonizing the 390 and whining about the price premium, because he said the same thing I did.

I already pass it now in surround with some games occasionally.

Yeah, but your surround is 3x1080p. So saying that you get close, or go slightly over the 4GB barrier with surround isn't evidence that we are getting close at 1080p. I play everything now at 1440p, and never come close to the 4GB point unless I'm using high levels of MSAA. But you shouldn't be using, and don't need to use, high levels of MSAA at high resolutions. I'll use MSAAx2 on 1440p, but there is no need to go any higher, and no MSAA is needed at 4k. At 4k TXAA or FXAA is all I use.

we said that if you can get better performance and extra 4.5gb of vram, so why not ?

I agree. If I was buying right now, today, I'd buy a 390. They're the same price as the 970 and the performance difference between the two is close enough to say they are even. Power consumption isn't too much of a concern for me(come on, I used to own GTX470s and GTX480s and the HD2900 was my favorite card, those flames on the cooler shroud!).

 

[darkangel0504]

nice review!

 

[Aquinus]

Go yell at W1z about why he is demonizing the 390 and whining about the price premium, because he said the same thing I did.

W1zz calls the 8GB a pro and a con. Pro is that it has 8GB, con is that it's not useful with current games from his testing. He also said that there are 390 models you can get for as low as 290 USD so hardly call that demonizing.

Yeah, but your surround is 3x1080p. So saying that you get close, or go slightly over the 4GB barrier with surround isn't evidence that we are getting close at 1080p. I play everything now at 1440p, and never come close to the 4GB point unless I'm using high levels of MSAA. But you shouldn't be using, and don't need to use, high levels of MSAA at high resolutions. I'll use MSAAx2 on 1440p, but there is no need to go any higher, and no MSAA is needed at 4k. At 4k TXAA or FXAA is all I use.

That 4.4GB used screenshot was only with FXAA. I don't use AA much at all in surround because there is too much of a performance hit with only a single 390. AA is not one of AMD's strong points either (more pixel level operations, faster ROPs make nVidia a better option for things like AA.) My point is that it's possible to use more than 4GB, that's all and that the trend (as it always has been,) is that time goes on, more will get used. If that wasn't the case, my 6870s with 1GB would still be fine.

I agree. If I was buying right now, today, I'd buy a 390. They're the same price as the 970 and the performance difference between the two is close enough to say they are even. Power consumption isn't too much of a concern for me(come on, I used to own GTX470s and GTX480s and the HD2900 was my favorite card, those flames on the cooler shroud!).

I'm not looking for a concession. I respect your decision for getting what you did and after overclocking, I have no doubt that it's faster. Once again, I never said that the 970 is bad. I'm just saying that we might be seeing more than 4GB used before you know it.

Just remember the times when at full settings 1GB was enough, then it wasn't, then 2GB was enough, and now it's not. 4GB is no different. It might be enough now, but we don't know when it won't. That's all I'm getting at.

I never said the 390 was perfect. I'm, pretty sure I said it's a power whore that makes a lot of heat. I'm more pissed off at the attack on 8GB as if it will never be useful in the future. That's the only thing that's irritating me because this isn't the first time you've made that argument and you sound like a broken record every time you do it. I know that 4GB is enough now, the question is when will it not. Nothing more, nothing less. For someone like me who held on to his 6870 for 6 years and got a second after 3, 8GB very well might do me good should I decide to CFX it in a couple years down the road but, we'll have to see where the market is.

I got a second 6870 because it was the most cost effective upgrade. If that's the case when I upgrade again, then I'll do the same thing again. If it's not, I'll replace it but, I would rather have it for the future than not have it and limit my options.

Heat and power consumption are always a thing to consider. When I overclock my 390 the sucker runs pretty hot.

Now can we stop arguing about this? It's rather pointless.

 

[newtekie1]

W1zz calls the 8GB a pro and a con. Pro is that it has 8GB, con is that it's not useful with current games from his testing. He also said that there are 390 models you can get for as low as 290 USD so hardly call that demonizing.

His exact words were "provides no tangible benefit", my exact words were "provide no benefit". You flew off the wall saying I was demonizing the card. So you must also think he is demonizing the card. Go yell at him.

That 4.4GB used screenshot was only with FXAA. I don't use AA much at all in surround because there is too much of a performance hit with only a single 390. AA is not one of AMD's strong points either (more pixel level operations, faster ROPs make nVidia a better option for things like AA.) My point is that it's possible to use more than 4GB, that's all and that the trend (as it always has been,) is that time goes on, more will get used. If that wasn't the case, my 6870s with 1GB would still be fine.

Yes, but you were making that point to back up that you can use more than 4GB at 1080p. Saying your surround setup uses more than 4GB of RAM doesn't support that 1080p will use that much.

I'm not looking for a concession. I respect your decision for getting what you did and after overclocking, I have no doubt that it's faster. Once again, I never said that the 970 is bad. I'm just saying that we might be seeing more than 4GB used before you know it.

I never said anything about the 970 other than to confirm that they play 4k just fine without memory issues. That is the thing, I'm not assuming you are attacking the 970.

What you have to realize is that I bought my 970s all the way back in 2014, upgrading from a pair of 670s. The 390 wasn't even on the radar back then, the Titan X and 980Ti were sill just rumors. And for a little over $600 in 2014 I got performance that beats the 980Ti, beats the Titan X, beats the Fury X all at any resolution, and not just by a small margin either by 15-20%. I've never not been happy with my decision. You also have to realize that my 670s were the 4GB models. I bought them thinking that mabye 2GB wouldn't be enough. We went through the 700 series, and on to the 900 series, and there was never a time when the extra 2GB helped, all the way up until they were replaced. The reason? Even in SLI, the GPUs themselves were too weak to drive the resolutions that would make the 4GB useful. So I'm very well aware of the cram more memory on the card gimmick.

I'm more pissed off at the attack on 8GB as if it will never be useful in the future. That's the only thing that's irritating me because this isn't the first time you've made that argument and you sound like a broken record every time you do it.

Again, I'm not the only one saying it. Every review of these cards says the exact same thing. I'm sorry, but that is just the reality, 8GB has no benefit, and likely won't in the future. Is there a chance that will change? Sure, but it isn't likely, and every reviewer acknowledges that. It isn't an attack on the 390, it is just stating the facts that the reviewer is also stating. If you can mange to get the reviewers to stop saying it, I'll stop saying it.

 

[Charcharo]

Hello people!
This is my first post here as I just wanted to throw in my 2 cents here. I hope to become a regular poster here ! But I do want to explain how I view this 8 GB thing.

1) 8GB of VRAM is not an advantage in most situations EVEN at 4k. That is true. However, it can ammount to something in Crossfire support. Or people that mod their games heavily CAN see it being used up. Modding is a huge thing for me, absolutely superior to graphical fidelity and even frame rate for me. One of the major reasons why I am a PC Gamer even (after backwards compatibility and cheaper long term costs, before emulation).

The other reason is that some people do not upgrade every year or two or three... or four. The ability for your card to allow you to max two of the most important Visual Quality aspects ( Texture Quality and Model Quality) even in future titles, is great. EVEN if you have to turn down some other things, this means that for us, the R9 390 has this advantage.

My last GPU lasted me 6 years. The ATI 5770.
If I had listened to people saying back in the day that the 1 Gigabyte model is somewhat pointless... well it would have bit me in the backside. That 1 GB of VRAM allowed it to play even games like Witcher 3. This is the same thing here. I am certain that 2-3-4 years from now there will be games whose texture and model quality sliders would benefit from more than 4 GB of VRAM. And for those that upgrade like me, even more slowly, at 5 or 6 years... it will be a godsend. We DO exist.

Being a PC Gamer means I should be able to choose the best performance/quality settings. So no, it wont struggle at all in 2 years at 1440P... most options would still be on Ultra or High (though not all, I admit). I can manage though, as long as the heavy hitters can be done well on my card. And my 1 GB ATI 5770 allowed just that. So I guess... the 8GB R9 390 will manage too.

2) Power Consumption is not so simple. The first thing is Idle Draw or draw under not very punishing scenarios is good on the R9 390. Another thing is that FRTC (frame rate target control) does exist and can be used to great effect in many of the most popular titles of today and yesterday.

Meaning it will exist... but it wont be a major difference to the pocket.

Just my opinion as a person who upgrades much more rarely than most of you

 

[chr0nos]

some people don't understand how costly hardware can be outside of USA or UK.

I have been jumping from IGP's since my HD4870 died

 

[D1RTYD1Z619]

Techpowerup needs to add Battlefront 2015 to the video card reviews.

 

[Jism]

8GB of memory comes in handy when going crossfire. You wont have that limitation of 4GB only with 2x4GB cards, but rather 8GB with 2 cards. Imagine this would kick-ass in 4K. When you have the money, just go for it. OC'ing seems low, but without voltage adjustments i see.