AMD Radeon R9 390X Review

The latest card from AMD isn’t the flagship of its new range--that distinction is reserved for the Radeon Fury X--but the R9 390X is just as important for the graphics card manufacturer. It’s a more affordable proposition, and it’s designed to play games at 1440p, which is a sweet-spot that bridges the gap between 1080p and 4k.

It’s also designed and priced to go head-on with Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 980. That’s one of the most popular and versatile cards around right now, so AMD’s hardware has got its work cut out.

In our review of the AMD R9 390X, we made performance comparisons against the R9 290X, as well as Nvidia's GeForce GTX 980 and 970, across a range of tests at 1080p, 1440p, and the 4K resolution. Overall, the card achieves most of AMD's ambitions for it, but it's not without its caveats.

AMD R9 390X Specs

Although the R9 390X is a new graphics card, its internal components are derived from old hardware. It's based around AMD's Grenada core, which is a tweaked version of the older Hawaii chip that drives R9 290X. That means it uses the Graphics Core Next architecture that’s been around since 2011.

That doesn’t necessarily mean AMD has rested on its laurels. The core inside the R9 390X still has 2,816 stream processors inside four Compute Units, and the clock speed has been increased from 1,000MHz to 1,050MHz. AMD has tweaked the circuitry inside to lower the card’s power requirement--so, despite that extra speed, by our measurements the R9 390X has a top power demand of 290W.

One area where AMD has made a significant leap is the memory. There’s 8GB of GDDR5 on board, which is twice as much as the older card and Nvidia’s GTX 980. The memory runs at 6,000MHz, too, which is faster than last year’s AMD chip. The GTX 980 has higher speeds, though, and there’s no sign of the High Bandwidth Memory that debuted on the range-topping Radeon Fury X.

"R9 390X can easily handle any game at 1440p--and it’s just about better than the GeForce card, too."

The improved memory configuration means the R9 390X has a memory bandwidth of 384GB/s, which is higher than every rival. That’s not the only area where this card’s theoretical figures impress; its total single-precision processing power of 5,914 GFLOPs is far better than the GTX 980’s 4,612 GFLOP figure.

The R9 390X has impressive performance on paper, but it’s not without its shortcomings. Its TDP might have dropped since the last generation of AMD cards, now at 275W, but it’s still far higher than the competition--the GTX 980 peaks at just 165W.

The power-hungry hardware also means this card needs at least an eight-pin and six-pin connector to work, with some editions requiring two eight-pin plugs. It also means our reference board is a mighty 300mm long, so check your PSU and case before you plug and play.

Our R9 390X came with a HDMI 1.4a and a DisplayPort 1.2a port. That’s generally fine, but be warned about the older HDMI standard; it means the Radeon doesn’t support a 4K resolution at 60Hz over HDMI. Elsewhere, it’s business as usual, with support for AMD’s Mantle and Vulcan APIs as well as DirectX 12. There’s also a new feature that turns off the card’s fans when the GPU is idling.

The Radeon is generally cheaper than its big Nvidia rival. Basic versions start at $329 and overclocked versions cost about $100 more, with those models having minor clock boosts (the biggest we’ve seen takes the 1,050MHz core and runs it at 1,100MHz). Nvidia’s GTX 980 starts at $499 and scales up to beyond $700. That’s a huge difference, but there are far more versions of the GTX 980 on the market and they come with bigger overclocks. One card, for instance, takes the 1,126MHz core and tweaks it to beyond 1,300MHz.

Specs: Radeon R9 390x vs 290x vs GeForce GTX

1080p Performance: Radeon R9 390x vs 290x vs GeForce GTX

1440p Performance: Radeon R9 390x vs 290x vs GeForce GTX

4K Performance: Radeon R9 390x vs 290x vs GeForce GTX

Editor’s note: The Radeon R9 290X and GeForce GTX 970 benchmarks are based on previous tests which did not account for Tomb Raider, Shadow of Mordor, Grand Theft Auto V.

The R9 390X is designed to compete with the GTX 980, and it’s a very close battle. The AMD began with inconsistent theoretical results, with a 1080p victory in 3D Mark Fire Strike but a loss in Unigine Heaven.

The two cards continued to compete at 1080p, but it was AMD’s hardware that emerged victorious. Its best performance came in Tomb Raider, where its average of 164fps was seven frames ahead of the Nvidia card, and it managed to get beyond 100fps in Bioshock, Metro: Last Light and Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor.

At 1080p, the AMD card led the way in five of our games, with the GTX 980 responding with better averages in three titles. That’s a decent victory for the R9 390X and, aside from the competition, it’s clear that this card can handle any game at 1,920 x 1,080--its poorest average was 75fps in Tomb Raider.

Gallery

AMD’s hardware followed the 1080p blueprint when we upped the resolution to 2,560 x 1,440. In Crysis 3, its 54fps average was eight frames beyond the GTX 980, and the R9 380X pulled out similar leads in Tomb Raider, Metro: Last Light and Middle Earth.

Nvidia’s card won at 1440p in Batman and Grand Theft Auto V, and the GTX 980 was marginally quicker in both theoretical tests. It’s close, as ever, but the R9 390X can easily handle any game at 1440p--and it’s just about better than the GeForce card, too.

The R9 390X continued to perform well at 4K: it was a little ahead in both theoretical tests, and it beat the GTX 980 in five of our eight test games. That’s impressive, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. While the Radeon will be able to play most games at this mammoth resolution, its 26fps and 29fps averages in Crysis 3 and Battlefield 4 suggests that it’s barely able to cope with top titles at their most demanding settings--and minimum framerates of 18fps and 23fps in those games mean you’ll certainly see stuttering in demanding games.

"26fps and 29fps averages in Crysis 3 and Battlefield 4 suggests that the 390X is barely able to cope with top titles at their most demanding settings"

The R9 390X can cope with 4K playback, but don’t expect it to be a smooth experience unless you tone done some of the graphical options.

There are other considerations aside from the R9 390X’s benchmark results, too. The older Graphics Core Next architecture just can’t compete with Nvidia Maxwell when it comes to efficiency, and that really shows in power consumption tests. Our rig with the GTX 980 installed drew a maximum of 273W, but the same machine with an R9 390X installed required a mighty 410W at peak. That’s even higher than our machine with a Fury X locked and loaded.

Those higher figures won’t just put a few pounds on your electricity bill. They mean the Radeon’s core runs hotter than the GTX 980’s silicon, and that means that AMD cards will generally need larger heatsinks and more fans to keep them chilled. That makes it trickier to produce smaller, more compact versions of the card. Overclocking is limited too, as there’s less headroom for AMD’s board partners to produce tweaked versions of the chip.

Verdict

AMD’s latest Radeon is designed to nail 1440p gameplay and outpace the GTX 980, and it does well on both counts: every game played smoothly at 2,560 x 1,440, and it opened up a modest lead on Nvidia’s card in the majority of our benchmarks. It’s enough to help the R9 390X take the performance crown, but it’s not enough to unlock more resolutions or quality levels when compared to the Nvidia hardware.

That speed comes with downsides, though. It’s hotter and consumes more power than the Nvidia card, and it’s got less versatility when it comes to its architecture and board partner models.

The GTX 980’s well-rounded specification means it’s a more balanced option than the Radeon, but it’s also more expensive. The R9 390X is the winner when it comes to pure performance.