PowerColor Radeon R9 390 PCS+ Review

1. Introduction2. PowerColor Radeon R9 390 PCS+3. Overclocking4. High Res Gallery5. Testing Methodology6. 3DMark 117. 3DMark8. Unigine Heaven Benchmark9. Grid AutoSport (1440p)10. Grid AutoSport (Ultra HD 4K)11. Tomb Raider (1440p)12. Tomb Raider (Ultra HD 4K)13. Grand Theft Auto V (1440p)14. Grand Theft Auto V (Ultra HD 4K)15. Metro 2033 Redux (1440p)16. Metro 2033 Redux (Ultra HD 4K)17. Ashes Of The Singularity (Ultra HD 4K)18. Thermal Dynamics/IR Thermometer Readings19. Acoustics Performance20. Power Consumption21. Closing Thoughts22. View All Pages

If you are in the market for a powerful sub £300 graphics card AMD's R9 390 still bears serious consideration. Right now there are some partner cards available at very competitive price points – the PowerColor R9 390 PCS+ that we look at today for instance, is currently available at only £250 inc vat. This card is supplied in an overclocked state and it ships with a proprietary triple fan, custom cooling solution. Is it worth a shortlist for a pre-Christmas upgrade?

We do like to see more graphics companies adopting high grade coolers because it can not only help reduce operating thermals, but it will ensure that overclocking potential is maximised. With the R9 390, we feel this is rather important. AMD's R9 390 has been a great buy since launch as when pushed hard it can often keep up with the significantly more expensive R9 390X.

Bearing this in mind, today we test the PowerColor Radeon R9 390 PCS+ at reference clocks and when pushed manually to the limits, via software.

GPU	R9 390X	R9 290X	R9 390	R9 290	R9 380	R9 285	Fury X	Fury
Launch	June 2015	Oct 2013	June 2015	Nov 2013	June 2015	Sep 2014	June 2015	June 2015
DX Support	12	12	12	12	12	12	12	12
Process (nm)	28	28	28	28	28	28	28	28
Processors	2816	2816	2560	2560	1792	1792	4096	3584
Texture Units	176	176	160	160	112	112	256	224
ROP’s	64	64	64	64	32	32	64	64
Boost CPU Clock	1050	1000	1000	947	970	918	1050	1000
Memory Clock	6000	5000	6000	5000	5700	5500	500	500
Memory Bus (bits)	512	512	512	512	256	256	4096	4096
Max Bandwidth (GB/s)	384	320	384	320	182.4	176	512	512
Memory Size (MB)	8192	4096	8192	4096	4096	2048	4096	4096
Transistors (mn)	6200	6200	6200	6200	5000	5000	8900	8900
TDP (watts)	275	290	275	275	190	190	275	275

For the last 10 days we have been retesting many graphics cards with the latest AMD and Nvidia drivers and have made the switch to the 64 bit Windows 10 operating system as well. We compare the PowerColor Radeon R9 390 PCS+ against a myriad of high end solutions, including the AMD Fury X, Nvidia Titan X, Nvidia Titan Z, AMD R9 295X2, Nvidia GTX980 Ti, GTX980, GTX970, AMD R9 390X and AMD R9 390.

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