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Today we take a look at one of the latest graphics cards from Sapphire – the new R9 390X featuring the latest version of their Tri-X cooling system. This top level graphics card ships in an overclocked state and features a custom triple cooler – shipping with 3x 90mm dual ball bearing fans. This card is designed to target the 4K market – priced at £349.99 inc vat in the UK.
It is not always possible for AMD or NVIDIA to release completely ‘fresh' new hardware running on brand new architecture. My colleague Anton has detailed the new range of cards, alongside the previous 200 generation and you can recap on this, over HERE.
| GPU | R9 390X | R9 290X | R9 390 | R9 290 | R9 380 | R9 285 |
| Launch | June 2015 | Oct 2013 | June 2015 | Nov 2013 | June 2015 | Sep 2014 |
| DX Support | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 |
| Process (nm) | 28 | 28 | 28 | 28 | 28 | 28 |
| Processors | 2816 | 2816 | 2560 | 2560 | 1792 | 1792 |
| Texture Units | 176 | 176 | 160 | 160 | 112 | 112 |
| ROP's | 64 | 64 | 64 | 64 | 32 | 32 |
| Boost CPU Clock | 1050 | 1000 | 1000 | 947 | 970 | 918 |
| Peak GFLOPS (SP) | 5914 | 5632 | 5120 | 4849 | 3476 | 3290 |
| Memory Clock | 6000 | 5000 | 6000 | 5000 | 5700 | 5500 |
| Memory Bus (bits) | 512 | 512 | 512 | 512 | 256 | 256 |
| Max Bandwidth (GB/s) | 384 | 320 | 384 | 320 | 182.4 | 176 |
| Memory Size (MB) | 8192 | 4096 | 8192 | 4096 | 4096 | 2048 |
| Transistors (mn) | 6200 | 6200 | 6200 | 6200 | 5000 | 5000 |
| TDP (watts) | 275 | 290 | 275 | 275 | 190 | 190 |
The 300 series launch around 18 months after the 200 series has meant that AMD have been able to enhance the ASIC design by implementing microcode enhancements and the manufacturing processes have improved. We can consider the 390X an ‘improved 290X' – with the added bonus of double the memory – an increase from 4GB to 8GB.
Well, this is not completely true, as Sapphire have been releasing 8GB 290X's for some time now. We were even able to test Sapphire's 8GB VaporX cards in Crossfire, way back in November 2014.
So what do I have in store for you today? For the last week I have been running a series of tests at both 1440p and Ultra HD 4K resolutions – with the latest AMD and NVIDIA drivers – to keep everything on a completely even footing. It is time consuming, but worth it, especially with the release of the new ‘tweaked' hardware. All AMD video cards are tested with the 15.6 Catalyst Beta, and all Nvidia cards the Forceware 353.30 driver.
The R9 390X has been released to specifically target Nvidia's GTX980 so it will be interesting to see how that battle shapes up – as well as being able to take a look at the new card within a broader selection of hardware. Our Fury X review is coming soon, we have had it for some time now.
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Nice picture at the end. Fury X review coming soon?
In Metro Last Light Redux already has reduced tessellation used because Normal tessellation instead of very high?
yes on the way
980Ti Gaming , dominating without the FuryX in the scene , waiting your review for the FuryX. lets see where that 980Ti will be in these leaderboards.
would’ve been nice to have a 970 in the charts
Is there any chance of someone being able to give me a rough idea of how this performs in applications like Premiere? I’m undecided on a new graphics card for both gaming and production in Premiere. I’ve heard AMD cards have caught up with NV’s CUDA and I will notice no difference when scrubbing through a timeline with effects on.. is it true? I can’t find any factual information on this, especially regarding graphics cards from the past year or so.
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Our GTX970 sample died last week, and while another is now with us, due to tight time constraints it did not make this particular review. We are reviewing the new Sapphire R9 290 Nitro very soon and those results will make it into that review.
The 970 GTX is a direct competitor to this product and therefore very relevant to this review
Actually the direct competitor to the 970 is the 390, not the 390X (but I get your point). If you still wanna know how they compare, you should check out JayzTwoCents’ video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9cKZiJw6Pk