Thursday, June 18th 2015
AMD Makes 4K UHD Gaming Affordable with the Radeon R9 390 Series
AMD wrapped up today's GPU launch marathon, with the Radeon R9 390 series; which includes the R9 390, and the R9 390X. The Radeon R9 390 is priced at US $329, and offers performance competitive to the GeForce GTX 970. The R9 390X, on the other hand, is starts at US $429, and offers performance that's between the GTX 970 and GTX 980, while being closer to the latter. Both are based on the 28 nm "Grenada" silicon, which is the "Hawaii" silicon re-hashed.
The R9 390 packs 2,560 stream processors, 160 TMUs, 64 ROPs; while the R9 390X offers 2,816 stream processors, 176 TMUs, and 64 ROPs. Both cards offer 8 GB of GDDR5 memory, across the chips' 512-bit wide memory interfaces. Both cards let you game at 1440p with settings maxed out; or 4K Ultra HD, with reasonably high eye-candy. The R9 390 features core clock speeds of 1000 MHz, while the R9 390X tops that with 1050 MHz core. The memory on both cards, is clocked at 6.00 GHz (GDDR5-effective), translating into a staggering 384 GB/s memory bandwidth.
The R9 390 packs 2,560 stream processors, 160 TMUs, 64 ROPs; while the R9 390X offers 2,816 stream processors, 176 TMUs, and 64 ROPs. Both cards offer 8 GB of GDDR5 memory, across the chips' 512-bit wide memory interfaces. Both cards let you game at 1440p with settings maxed out; or 4K Ultra HD, with reasonably high eye-candy. The R9 390 features core clock speeds of 1000 MHz, while the R9 390X tops that with 1050 MHz core. The memory on both cards, is clocked at 6.00 GHz (GDDR5-effective), translating into a staggering 384 GB/s memory bandwidth.
21 Comments on AMD Makes 4K UHD Gaming Affordable with the Radeon R9 390 Series
Ans. Reviews from 24th June; market-availability within the following 3 weeks.
FAQ #2: Why R9 390 series when you can R9 Nano?
Ans. that's why
Fury Nano might cost 450 if you follow the product line :confused: Hmmm not good :wtf:
And if the driver derived tech get's culled from the 290X cards, there ought to be freaking uproar.
Edit: Well, I suppose the mandatory 8GB makes a diff as do the 10% clock increases. Fairy nuff.
290X - 1250 MHz 5000 MHz effective @320 GB/s Bandwidth
390X - 1500 MHz 6000 MHz effective @384 GB/s Bandwidth (+16.6%) fixed
I still say AMD is unfortunately not assertive enough on price anywhere in their stack from the 390X down. But it would be tough to get into a war with Maxwell's, which work from smaller die's, and PCB's that work the lower memory bus and less heady power sections, unquestionably leading to better cost BoM’s. However the Granada being ~10% larger than a GM204, AMD isn't that far off in in this area of the contest. I imagine AMD will bring Nano and then perhaps then make 390/390X price corrections, as these MSRP’s can't be justified on the back of additional 4Gb and improved clocks that eat into the OC'n headroom which was part of a the 290/290X charisma.
The fallacy of giving a card that can barely run 4K double the memory it had (which was already decent) was a mistake. If they could have refined the power delivery to enhance clocks to make it run 10-15% faster through core alone, then that would have helped.
It's bullshit that they sell it as 4K when we know it's not powerful enough. Given a single 980 (non ti) isn't good enough for 4k, trying to pimp this as a solution is a bit weak.
Hell we know even a 980ti needs a nice overclock to be 'comfy' at 4k. Well, 6 more days and we get to laugh or cry at what Fury X can do.
To say you have been on a 1440p and something marginal now like say a 280X/7970/670/770 and think you should get this now to max out the 1440p. Then say less than a year from now thinking about 4K panel could be an acceptable move (as you say more just get a nice 290X cheap); although still costly and then there's Nano out there, and that's why it's not compelling to me...
16.66% is bump, to bad they couldn't have gone with 7000Mhz chips, now that could've offered a real bump and made the price there asking for these 8Gb have some merit.
And exactly... adding 4Gb of pretty much to same "hum-drum" memory and bump in clocks is not justification for a 43% price premium. Sorry where the 40% increase in performance? I'd say $370 MSRP is being generous, with OC'd customs hardly asking +$20, unless like super high-end. I mean press above $400 for any AIB's super high-end is crazy, most aren't sporting totally new deigned cooler that I've noticed, basically just new shrouds.
Also as a comparison:
Sapphire R9 290X Tri-X 8GB.....$375....1020MHz core/5500MHz mem (eff.)
Sapphire R9 390X Tri-X 8GB.....$430....1055MHz core/6000MHz mem (eff.)
In the reviews I've seen, this card chews up another 50 watts beyond the 290x, which is not caused by the vram increase. UNREAL!
Higher memory clocks and more memory, plus whatever ASIC quality will determine power use and voltage.
Do AMD and Nvidia use the same process node 28nm (HP) for Hawaii and GM204?
Do we know if either have a more "enhanced" method to sort and bin chips for ASIC quality?