new r9 390 faulty I believe

[EarthDog]

Vsync on causes my clocks to throttle a little bit also but that is to be expected.

Actually, that is UNexpected behavior when using Vsync. Typically, when you use Vsync, your FPS are limited and because they are limited, the card has to work less to reach that level of FPS. So therefore temps are lower and so is power use. Both items that tell the card when to throttle.

 

[Aquinus]

Actually, that is UNexpected behavior when using Vsync. Typically, when you use Vsync, your FPS are limited and because they are limited, the card has to work less to reach that level of FPS. So therefore temps are lower and so is power use. Both items that tell the card when to throttle.

WRONG! V-Sync being enabled will cause clocks to go down because the GPU isn't fully loaded. I've said this before and I'll say it again, when the 390 is not fully loaded, clocks scale to GPU load. A great example is Cities: Skylines on my machine. Having v-sync on will run the GPU at ~600-900Mhz in most cases. On the other hand when you turn off v-sync, it clocks up to full clocks (in my case, 1040Mhz stock.)

Simply put, it is normal behavior for clocks to throttle down when the GPU is not under full load and vsync naturally has the ability to keep GPUs from running full throttle. The only time the 390 should clock up to full speed is when the GPU is under near full load. It's simply a power saving measure.

 

[EarthDog]

Thanks for the correction Aquinus... I have NEVER seen this happen before on ANY of my cards (including a 390 I reviewed) hence, my post.

That may be because I use a higher res (2560x1440) and settings, therefore the stress level MY PC and games/settings is not causing it to do so. This held true across many titles... BF4, Dirt: Rally, SW: Battlefront, Ashes of the Singularity, Shadow of Mordor, Metro: LL, GTA V, Crysis 3...

This was also across a slew of NVIDIA and AMD cards.

 

[TechHands]

I just re-installed windows so I'm going to see if that helps or anything.

 

[PCGamerDR]

I just re-installed windows so I'm going to see if that helps or anything.

Download valley and bench the card when you can.

 

[TechHands]

Download valley and bench the card when you can.

I did benchmark it with heaven and scored 1400+

 

[Aquinus]

I did benchmark it with heaven and scored 1400+

It should be >2800, at stock I get ~3000 iirc if you're doing 1080p, ultra, 4x AA, and VSync disabled. That feels like either something is incorrectly configured or that something is throttling.
Edit: I see you did Heaven and not Valley. That's a normal score for a 390 in Heaven I think, there is a thread on TPU that has a bunch of scores. I suggest taking a peek there for comparisons.

Edit 2: This is my score when I clocked it at 1200/1610, if I ran it at stock, it would probably be closer to your score. I took this screenshot months ago (July '15 I think?) I'll download it again and run it at stock so you have a proper comparison.

 

[GLD]

I had a Sapphire Nitro R9 390 (w/backplate) for a very short time, only about 1 week. I had it powered by a brand new EVGA 600w psu. I gamed with it a couple of days and the last day I left my pc running for a couple of hours, just at desktop while I watched a movie on the TV. I came back to a bricked 390. There was no video, all I got was 8 beeps upon reboot. I even pulled the card and re-installed my 7850 and formatted Win 10 and put the 390 back in to no avail. Nothing but 8 beeps. I was able to send it back and replaced it with the Sapphire Nitro OC 380 (w/backplate). I wanted a 390, but settled for the 380 as I didn't want to roll the dice on another 390.

 

[Aquinus]

I get practically the same score at stock speeds:

 

[TechHands]

so you think if you was to remove your overclock on your GPU you score for heaven would be near 1400 like how mine was. I was wondering how much increase I could come to expect by overclocking and running heaven.

My 280x was scoring 1012 or so with it overclocked but now when I last checked it scored like 900 without any overclock :-/ I didn't really think by just removing the overclock it would drop down that much. I was thinking maybe it would score 970 or so without any over clock. To make sure things are correct I'm going to o/c it again and run heaven and see if I can get the 1000+ score I was getting before.

GLD did you get the change of the difference in the price back? So you got a 380 back instead? I assume the 380 is what took the place of a 280. I really would not have got a 380 if I was you.

My 280x was a mistake sense I thought it was better then a 290 only because the 280x's seem to have 3 fans wile the 290 only had 2 from the models I was looking at when I 1st built this system. So I just assumed a 280x was better sense it had an "x" too. Any I've had it for over year and used it good while also dealing with what I thought it bad FPS. I figured the 390 would just correct my long lost mistake of getting the 280x.

Edit: Thanks for showing that heaven score without your overclock

Edit: When I ran Heaven and scored 1400+ like your score I assumed the card was fine but is it normal for the gpu usage to just drop down to 0% every micro second or so? Does your 390 do that? What about Vsync would having that turned on cause any gpu to just drop it's load to 0%? Please look back in this post and look at my gpu z pics if you have not already.

 

[EarthDog]

I get practically the same score at stock speeds:
View attachment 70071

That is a shocking small difference! Particularly considering the HUGE average FPS difference...

EDIT: Wait.. the first score is 1750, the second is 1415. That is a big difference... and makes a lot more sense.

 

[Aquinus]

That is a shocking small difference! Particularly considering the HUGE average FPS difference...

EDIT: Wait.. the first score is 1750, the second is 1415. That is a big difference... and makes a lot more sense.

The second was overclocked on the core 1040 -> 1200 and memory 1500 -> 1620. It's a bit over a 15% improvement... and people say the 390 has no "umfph" behind it.

Edit: When I ran Heaven and scored 1400+ like your score I assumed the card was fine but is it normal for the gpu usage to just drop down to 0% every micro second or so? Does your 390 do that? What about Vsync would having that turned on cause any gpu to just drop it's load to 0%? Please look back in this post and look at my gpu z pics if you have not already.

Yes, clocks tend to drop between scene changes. It's arguably one of the worst things about unigine engine benchmarks. Stalls between scene changes skew minimum FPS numbers.

 

[TechHands]

What I'm trying to say is that the GPU load % on the r9 390 that I have will drop to 0% like every second whenever I play fallout 4 or GTA V or devilian.

The GPU load would drop to 0% with everything that I tried besides the "heaven benchmark" and the "actual test that gpu z can do" and also "FFXIV".

Edit: gpu load for me would drop to 0% on every single game I tried besides "ffxiv"

That score of heaven though helps me know more. I was assuming a 390 would score 1500 or 1600 maybe at stock. When mine scored 1400+ I did not think anything was wrong with it.

I really assumed my RM850 would do the trick by replacing my RM650. I've seen on the internet that a 280x could draw 56, 58, or 60 amps my rm 650 would only put out 54amps for that hook up. My rm850 is like 70amps or so on that rail if that's what it is called. My RM650 was a mistake sense I just assumed it would be enough but I later found out that sapphire recommends a 750W.

 

[EarthDog]

@Aquinas, you are 100% right it clocks down between the scenes in some cases, however the minimum is typically found in that stupid 'hitch' in the first scene...

... assuming that the 'normal' version does it (I only use the Hwbot version with the wrapper).

Please correct me if I am wrong.

 

[justmythoughts]

Is it normal for a 12V rail to drop to 11,75Volts? Maybe the rails of you psu are split in two...
Therefor having power problems??-Correct me if I am wrong

 

[Aquinus]

@Aquinas, you are 100% right it clocks down between the scenes in some cases, however the minimum is typically found in that stupid 'hitch' in the first scene...

I've found that will go away after the first pass on my machine.

I think an example of the 390 down-clocking when the GPU isn't fully loaded is in order. This is what I see when I run Cities: Skylines with vsync on. I turned it off about 2/3s into the run but, as you can see, it still doesn't max out the GPU because it's CPU bound. I just thought that an example would help clarify things. The following screenshot is what I would consider normal behavior when the GPU isn't the bottleneck. The big key is how GPU utilization is based on the current clock speed, not maximum possible. I personally think that this is a rather slick feature on the 390 as its light years ahead of my 6870s in terms of "smart" power saving. Back then, it was either 2D clocks, UVD, or 3D, that was it... no dynamic magic like the 390 has.

 

[EarthDog]

11.75v is not out of spec. Spec is 5%.

Aquinas, thanks for the pic. I wonder if it is just that title? I never heard of that game.. is it gpu intensive? You mention it's cpu bound so I expect not?

Yes, the hitch is mitigated after the first run, correct.

 

[Aquinus]

11.75v is not out of spec. Spec is 5%.

Then you have to consider the sensor. I have multiple different sensors that claim different readings for +12v but, they all tend to be ~0.25v within each other.

 

[EarthDog]

We know sensors need confirmed by a mm.

 

[Aquinus]

Aquinas, thanks for the pic. I wonder if it is just that title? I never heard of that game.. is it gpu intensive? You mention it's cpu bound so I expect not?

It's a simulation with a relatively large city. If I did a new city with nothing in it, it would be a lot higher. Also if you haven't heard of Cities: Skylines, it's like Sim City, except on crack. I highly recommend it.

I've found that most titles behave this way when the GPU isn't fully loaded. Since I just reinstalled Windows, I would have to find a game worth while to install to give another example. Either that or I would need to drop settings on Heaven and force VSync on to show it there as well. If you're willing to take my word for it, behavior between titles in this situation tend to be the same. At least that has been my observation since I got the 390 in the middle of the summer.

Believe it or not, very often the 390 is not running at full tilt to do 1080p when vsync or a frame rate cap is turned on. I see it more often than I don't.

 

[EarthDog]

I'll take your word on that title, no doubt. I never saw it before on many cards and the titles I listed however.

It's not a big deal. At this point, i would expect it to vary by title and settings anyway. I also expect amd and nvidia to be different. I know with an absolute fact my 295x2 never did that in all of those titles sans battlefront.

Oh well. Thanks ks for the info! :₩

 

[Aquinus]

It's not a big deal. At this point, i would expect it to vary by title and settings anyway.

Sure, how it behaves will be different but, the 390 will still dynamically adjust from 300Mhz up to whatever the core is set at unless the power limit is exceeded or it starts thermal throttling.

The op could just try maxing out the power limiter without overclocking. If the situation gets better, it could be tuned for lower power consumption than my MSI 390 GAMING. I bought this particular GPU as it seemed to be the most capable out of the box compared to the other 390s. It also had some of the higher clocks OOTB.

 

[TechHands]

I have not touched the 390 in any way such as overclocking or anything like that. I don't even go into amd overdrive or do stuff like that.

With my 280x I flashed the bios and that's how I overclocked it and all but right now I have my factory bios flashed on it sense really for no reason other then just swapping it out maybe to never return to my case again so if that happens I'll have my factory bios already flashed on it.

Edit: do gpu's not come in an anti static bag any more? the 390 I got was not in one and the seal on the box looked like it had ben tugged on or snagged. It wasn't much of a seal anyway I can show you or ya'll if you like.

 

[Aquinus]

It's not a big deal. At this point, i would expect it to vary by title and settings anyway. I also expect amd and nvidia to be different. I know with an absolute fact my 295x2 never did that in all of those titles sans battlefront.

I think the clock scaling was added with 300-series and Fury-series cards but, don't take my word on that.

I have not touched the 390 in any way such as overclocking or anything like that. I don't even go into amd overdrive or do stuff like that.

With my 280x I flashed the bios and that's how I overclocked it and all but right now I have my factory bios flashed on it sense really for no reason other then just swapping it out maybe to never return to my case again so if that happens I'll have my factory bios already flashed on it.

Edit: do gpu's not come in an anti static bag any more? the 390 I got was not in one and the seal on the box looked like it had ben tugged on or snagged. It wasn't much of a seal anyway I can show you or ya'll if you like.

I would install Afterburner and try raising the power limit. If that smooths out performance, it could be how the card was tuned. As I said earlier though, it sounds like a CPU bottleneck might be occasionally cropping up. Some testing is in order but, I don't think there is anything wrong with your 390.

 

[EarthDog]

The 3 series is the 2 series with clockspeed and ram changes. I have e a 380x (Tonga core with full shader compliment) laying around. If I can spare some time (buried in reviews, ugh), I can test it out.

Ill report back here for public knowledge, but may take this to PM to spare the OP of this aside.