AMD has now announced their new graphics cards, and reviews of the R9 300 Series are permitted, but we have to wait a bit longer for Fiji reviews. The MSI R9 390X Gaming we are reviewing today is based on a re-brand of the R9 290X. The clock speeds have been increased a little bit, but the GPU itself is the same, offering the same features, such as shader count, ROPs, and texture units. Only memory size has been doubled to 8 GB, a capacity that has been available on some R9 290X cards before.

MSI's custom-design R9 390X Gaming comes with an additional overclock out of the box on both the GPU and memory for a 2% performance improvement, which is not much, though it helps it catch up to the GTX 980. The MSI R9 390X Gaming roughly matches GTX 980 performance in 4K and 1440p when averaged over all our benchmarks. At lower resolutions like 1080p though, it is only as fast as the GTX 970. Once you start looking at individual benchmarks, you see huge differences between AMD and NVIDIA, though, so which game you plan on playing matters.
AMD has been recommending the R9 390X for 4K, but in my opinion, it simply doesn't have enough horsepower for that. I'd recommend the R9 390X for 1440p gaming.

The Radeon R9 290X has been notorious for its high power consumption and the R9 390X is no exception. MSI's R9 390X Gaming actually consumes much more power than the R9 290X, requiring around 350 W during typical gaming, with peaks at up to 370 W. The only card requiring more power is the R9 295X2. But not only gaming power consumption is high as multi-monitor and Blu-ray power consumption are increased too. Those two scenarios have been an issue on AMD cards for a long time, and things are even worse now. 98 W GPU power consumption just to playback a Blu-ray is simply insane. NVIDIA does the job with around 10 W, so there is no way a R9 390X should go into your media PC. Overall, the MSI R9 390X Gaming has one of the worst performance-per-watt ratings, worse than the R9 295X2. NVIDIA's GTX 980 is over twice as power efficient!

MSI has put a mighty triple-slot dual-fan cooler on their card, which is a smart choice. Fan noise in idle is awesome because the fans turn off while the card is below 60°C, just like recently released NVIDIA cards. However, due to the card's high power consumption, even simple things like multi-monitor desktop and Blu-ray playback will have the card run its fans actively. Gaming noise is acceptable with 40 dBA, but far from what we've seen on custom-design GTX 980 cards which are almost inaudible during even full-on gaming. Yet I do feel as though MSI has done as much as they could to quieten down the card given it runs at 80°C during gaming, which is a good target temperature for the R9 290/390, so there is not much further potential to optimize any fan settings. MSI is using a very nice backplate that is actually one of the prettiest I've seen in a long time. Good job, MSI!
GPU overclocking potential is similar to previous Hawaii cards, with memory overclocking slightly better, but it's held back by the BIOS, not by the actual frequency that the chips could run.

AMD's reference design pricing for the R9 390X is $430, and MSI claims the R9 390X Gaming to retail $10 below that. We'll see, I guess. Either way, the R9 390X is too expensive at that price point. While it does offer better price/performance than the GTX 980 at higher resolutions, I feel its power/heat/noise issues will drive many potential customers to the green camp. I'm also puzzled by AMD's decision to only offer an 8 GB variant. When looking at our benchmark results, there is no visible improvement between 8 GB vs. 4 GB of VRAM on the R9 290X. While this may change in the future, I don't think it can justify the increased cost. My recommendation, especially when on a budget, is to look for a R9 290X with 4 GB because it can be had for around $300. Overclock it some and boom, you have R9 390X 8 GB performance levels at a fraction of the price. If you are a 1080p gamer, my recommendation would be a GTX 970 as it offers similar performance, but runs much cooler and quieter thanks to its reduced power draw. I think it would be a smart choice for AMD to release a R9 390X 4 GB version in the very near future (before everyone buys a GTX 970/980), priced at around or even below $300.
I do have to admit I'm excited for the Radeon Fury X which should bring some well-needed performance and efficiency improvements—more info on it next week!