ASUS R9 390X STRIX DirectCU III 8G OC Review @ [H]

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FrgMstr

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ASUS R9 390X STRIX DirectCU III 8G OC Review - We've got the brand new ASUS R9 390X STRIX DirectCU III OC 8G video card to evaluate today. This video card features new DirectCU III cooling technology from ASUS and is based on the new AMD R9 390X GPU with 8GB of VRAM. We'll be comparing this video card to the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 to find the best value.
 
Wow, AMD has made some seriously great driver improvements to the this architecture over the last two years. Impressive stuff.
 
Yeah.. I was shocked when the 390x actually gave the same gameplay experience as the 980. Awesome! Now I miss my 290x :p (not the heat it generates though)
 
"ASUS recommends a 750W or greater power supply to ensure it works properly to the best of its abilities."

Wow
 
Digital Viper-X- said:
Yeah.. I was shocked when the 390x actually gave the same gameplay experience as the 980. Awesome! Now I miss my 290x :p (not the heat it generates though)
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Daeyx said:
Wow, AMD has made some seriously great driver improvements to the this architecture over the last two years. Impressive stuff.
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AMD is stepping it up. This also means that R9 290x with exact same gpu architecture undoubtedly also increased in relative performance.
 
Great, thorough review as always!

I don't suppose someone at the [H] could provide a BIOS dump from the Asus card, for science? (OK it's for flashing on my 290)
 
Breezed through it and this card looks very good on the Max OC. Would love to see frame variance, but would have no problem recommending this card to friends when I build for them, especially to save a few bucks for a processor since it's trading blows with the 980 for less money!
 
What the heck is going on here? I'm amazed at how well the 390x performed. I had to look at the graphs over and over to be sure -- I'm also blurry eyed from fatigue. Crazy!
 
Trades blows with a 980 gtx while OCd? I dunno it seemed faster across the board and plain in higher tier in some of the biggest gpu killers. That being said the damn thing needs 8GB and the energy of a foundry to do so :p
 
This is Hawaii polished to near perfection. The only thing that hurts it is the power consumption. Not so much the hippie aspect of it, but the fact that extra planning is needed for anyone even thinking of crossfire. A 1200W Pt/Ti power supply would be the minimum and those get pricey.

Thanks for the great analysis and comparison to the GTX 980.

edit: The 390x is a good deal, but I just saw a review of the 8 GB 390 (non-x) which costs $330. Now that is a GREAT deal. Two of them are about the same price as a GTX 980ti. The standard HD 390 also seems to have a much lower power consumption as long as you don't monkey with the clocks
 
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I consider this card a generation behind 980GTX , it draws an insane amount of power and only marginally faster sometimes than the 980, and the price difference isn't high enough to justify this.

I really hope Nvidia will bring out some refresh for 900 series before pascal next year, the 980 is already a year old.
 
T_A said:
I consider this card a generation behind 980GTX , it draws an insane amount of power and only marginally faster sometimes than the 980, and the price difference isn't high enough to justify this.

I really hope Nvidia will bring out some refresh for 900 series before pascal next year, the 980 is already a year old.
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~$100 less for an aftermarket card that, okay, does suck down a bit more power, but is still competitive? I find it pretty cool.
 
With the reduced anti-aliasing settings we are reducing the stress on the VRAM which allowed the performance to increase tremendously. The ASUS R9 390X STRIX DC3 8G performed at 69 FPS which is 9.7% faster than using 2X MSAA compared to 4X MSAA. The max overclock improved the ASUS R9 390X STRIX DC3 8G’s performance by 9.4% with these settings to 75.5 FPS. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 averaged 75.1 FPS.
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How is it stressing 8GB of VRAM?

Also its quite a bit cheaper but silver reward?
 
Add another $100-$200 savings by going Freesync instead of Gsync if you want VRR tear free gaming.
 
I'd be interested in seeing crossfire results with that much ram.
 
T_A said:
I consider this card a generation behind 980GTX , it draws an insane amount of power and only marginally faster sometimes than the 980, and the price difference isn't high enough to justify this.

I really hope Nvidia will bring out some refresh for 900 series before pascal next year, the 980 is already a year old.
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I don't see how you can claim the AMD GPU is a generation behind when both cards fully support DX12, have essentially the same feature sets, and offer similar performance. The AMD card is cheaper and has more RAM but the NVIDIA card draws less power.

Seems to me an ideal situation. If power consumption is important to you, that option is available. If not, you can save yourself some money and get a card that performs the same or better.
 
This is good. Competition is always great. . I wouldn't probably get it though. He'll my psu would die. Only sporting a 850 and 650 here so crossfire would not even be am option.
 
Nihilus1 said:
A 1200W Pt/Ti power supply would be the minimum and those get pricey.
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Reading fail on my part. [H] shows total power consumption, so going double the cards does not equal double the watts needed. The HD 390 draws only 330 watts max, which is only 10 watts more than the GTX 980. The 390x cards are about 420 watts with even a factory overclock - higher than even the 290x.

Still, you could probably get away with 1000 watt Gold PSU in crossfire ,which are not to expensive so long as you don't monkey with o/c.

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Powercolor/R9_390_PCS_Plus/28.html

This card deserved the silver. Should [H] test the 390, that will probably get the gold.
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/7296/radeon-r9-390-iceq-x2-oc-8gb-video-card-review/index12.html
 
Nihilus1 said:
This is Hawaii polished to near perfection. The only thing that hurts it is the power consumption. Not so much the hippie aspect of it, but the fact that extra planning is needed for anyone even thinking of crossfire. A 1200W Pt/Ti power supply would be the minimum and those get pricey.
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My 4.5 4770, triple hard disk, double 290 OC build uses about 700 watts at the wall during BF4.
 
gaming doesnt max out a graphics card, but that is still good for a modern game.
 
I'm impressed overall. Considering a 290X "was" slower than the 780Ti, this is quite an achievement by AMD IMHO. Almost makes me wish I had gone with 290's way back hehe...
 
There are 290x's that would be close to this 390x in PCB design as there is some changes that are unseen as the phase power design was upgraded to 6 phase and Hawaii seems to love it .. so you want 290x's that have 2 x 8 pin connectors and then with the better power design we get cooler running VRM 1 and 2 .. MSI Lighting and Sapphire Tri X New Edition are two such cards with massive cooling and the main change that is going on with Hawaii now is no more throttle issues and the clocks are staying higher which allows Hawaii to run as it should.

The Sapphire Tri X NE also states on the box 750 watt power supply and 375 watt allowed power draw and that card was on sale for $259 recent and comes clocked at 1020/1375 and the power hog issue most Nvidia fans point out really means little after seeing DX 12 performance of Hawaii taking on the 980Ti..

Silver award seems light after all AMD has done to keep Hawaii fighting.
 
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Got this installed in my rig and I LOVE IT. Fans still ramp up big time when it's under heavy load but at least it's not as irritating of a sound as my old 6950.

Edit:

I'm more curious as to why the card received a silver award. Not that I'm contesting it but it just seems that in the conclusions there was no real drawback or am I missing something?
 
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soulesschild said:
Got this installed in my rig and I LOVE IT. Fans still ramp up big time when it's under heavy load but at least it's not as irritating of a sound as my old 6950.

Edit:

I'm more curious as to why the card received a silver award. Not that I'm contesting it but it just seems that in the conclusions there was no real drawback or am I missing something?
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Souless: I just installed mine yesterday & I'm pleased with it. Scored a solid price NG BF deal. Using a Seasonic X-750 PSU & no problems to report. It's really not loud @ all IMHO. Works great with 1440P games I tested so far.

I have no clue either as to why the "Silver" award. Replaced my beloved 2GB XFX 7870. That was a good video card. When the $30.00 rebate card finds it's way to my mailbox, then I'll be truly happy. Never been burned by a rebate before.
 
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