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290X or 390

F

fanboy

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jul 4, 2009
Messages
1,057
The prices are getting sweet .. $279 for a 290X or $329 for the 8Gb 390 or $359 for the 8Gb 290X..

Nvidia fanboys need not to reply..
 
If they're the same price, get the 290X.

The 390 seems to have some architectural improvements, but it pretty close to the 290X in terms of performance.
 
QDemon19 said:
If they're the same price, get the 290X.

The 390 seems to have some architectural improvements, but it pretty close to the 290X in terms of performance.
Click to expand...

No, there are no architectural improvements. The stock clock speed is mildly higher and that's it. Most retail cards are overclocked anyway. 290 = 390, 290x = 390x.

290x > 390.
 
Quix said:
No, there are no architectural improvements. The stock clock speed is mildly higher and that's it. Most retail cards are overclocked anyway. 290 = 390, 290x = 390x.

290x > 390.
Click to expand...

If I could upvote you, I would. There are no difference between 290 and 390 apart from a new BIOS, extra Vram and a 3 in the name. They're the same silicon and perform the same clock for clock.
 
harmattan said:
If I could upvote you, I would. There are no difference between 290 and 390 apart from a new BIOS, extra Vram and a 3 in the name. They're the same silicon and perform the same clock for clock.
Click to expand...
AMD (or MSI) sent out a golden sample to some popular YouTuber who claims it's faster & more bang-for-buck than the 970. As a result the 390 has skyrocketed in popularity. :rolleyes:
Meanwhile the 290 has existed this whole time and now all of a sudden it's popular?

Sheep mentality in full effect. "It sucks until Linus tells us it's good". Shit, man.
 
Well architectural improvements in terms of running cooler at the least, again I'm not making these arguments, just passing along what I've seen/heard from a plethora of reviews.

Clock to clock their performance is almost identical.
 
an interesting quandary, no? the price/performance position of the 390 is something i've wondered about since the [H] article pitting the 390x vs fury. performance is so close without the 390x's oc'ing capacity factored in. how close would the 2560 sp 390 be to the fury with oc'ing? the 4gb of extra vram may not mean a whole lot to people considering 390 vs 290x but i still play a lot of dying light.
 
rennyf77 said:
an interesting quandary, no? the price/performance position of the 390 is something i've wondered about since the [H] article pitting the 390x vs fury. performance is so close without the 390x's oc'ing capacity factored in. how close would the 2560 sp 390 be to the fury with oc'ing? the 4gb of extra vram may not mean a whole lot to people considering 390 vs 290x but i still play a lot of dying light.
Click to expand...
It's only a quandary if you isolate those specific cards. Looking at the "old cards", the 290/290X/970/980, there is no quandary.
The 390, 390X, and Fury are all obsoleted by their predecessors. There are tiny, miniscule, almost negligible reasons for buying the new stuff.
 
TaintedSquirrel said:
It's only a quandary if you isolate those specific cards. Looking at the "old cards", the 290/290X/970/980, there is no quandary.
The 390, 390X, and Fury are all obsoleted by their predecessors. There are tiny, miniscule, almost negligible reasons for buying the new stuff.
Click to expand...

i agree. switching to the 390s or fury is more of a want than a need. really makes me wish i hadn't unloaded my 290xs so soon. as i've already made the 4k jump, the 2560sp 390s in cf kind of tickles my fancy.
 
A lot of good points guys as I have owned a ref 290 when it first hit the streets back in 2013 but sold it when people was paying crazy prices because of bitcoin ..

I have a MSI 770GTX 4Gb card now and was thinking that 290X would be an upgrade and maybe I could sell the 770 and get some of the money back..
 
Ok.. I dropped the hammer on the 290x @$279 ..but while I was shopping a Fury X was for sale at $669 but I didn't buy it because the price is just to darn much..
 
The reviews I've seen show that the 390/x series has much better cooler design for the VRM's. Other than that and more vram, there aren't any differences though.
 
Well if the 390 and the 290X are literally the same price then I'd go with the 390 for more ram, higher clocked ram and the updated board design. At the prices you mention I'd probably get the 290X.
 
fanboy said:
A lot of good points guys as I have owned a ref 290 when it first hit the streets back in 2013 but sold it when people was paying crazy prices because of bitcoin ..

I have a MSI 770GTX 4Gb card now and was thinking that 290X would be an upgrade and maybe I could sell the 770 and get some of the money back..
Click to expand...

Sounds like you got a good deal. about the only thing that cards missing of any value is a backplate...again probably more mental than truly important...let us know how it overclocks;)
 
That Sapphire Tri X 290X 4L seems to be the ice breaker for the better 390X boards .

SAPPHIRE R9 290X Tri-X 4GB OC is built on a SAPPHIRE original pcb design with the power upgraded to a 6-phase VDDC power design. Two 8-pin power connectors ensure adequate system power is available (up to 375 Watts total including PCI-Express power).

As most report very cool running VDDC 1 and 2 as they have there own heat sinks and the board has Samsung memory..
 
Those Tri X cards are very good. we used to get huge overclocks out of them back in the mining days. They are champs.
 
Quix said:
No, there are no architectural improvements. The stock clock speed is mildly higher and that's it. Most retail cards are overclocked anyway. 290 = 390, 290x = 390x.

290x > 390.
Click to expand...

Actually, it has been shown that the 390 is faster than the R9 290x. I would go with the R9 390 8GB card for sure. If you want proof, go check out the R9 390 owners club thread over at overclock.net.
 
ManofGod said:
Actually, it has been shown that the 390 is faster than the R9 290x. I would go with the R9 390 8GB card for sure. If you want proof, go check out the R9 390 owners club thread over at overclock.net.
Click to expand...
As far as I can tell from reading that, the difference seems to come from a combination of:

1) Higher clocks
2) Better binning process/supply built up over the past year and a half
3) Comparing old reviews where 290(x)s were reference to 390(x)s that are mostly released in non-reference form + newer drivers

Some people also say they got about the same performance by flashing their 290(x)s to 390(x) BIOS.

I think power delivery's the only thing that got cleaned up (275 vs 300, supposedly), but even that might be from tightened bins and lower-leakage chips.

tl;dr they're the same card with a VRAM boost
 
martinmsj said:
Why superfluous?
Click to expand...

Because unless you're gaming at 4k, it makes no difference. Same goes for more than 2GB at 1080p :D

The reason for most of the performance improvement on the 390/390x is the 20% higher memory clock. Hawaii has always been a memory-starved architecture, so it's not surprising that you see:

A 5% improvement without touching the core clock (comparing 390 versus 290X, which have the same core clock), and

A roughly 10% improvement of 390 over the 290, which combines a 6% core clock increase with the same improved memory bandwidth = 10% total increase!

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Powercolor/R9_390_PCS_Plus/30.html

That extra memory bandwidth is also important for keeping the 390X fed at the 1050 MHz clock.
 
Last edited:
martinmsj said:
Why superfluous?
Click to expand...

Because he's correct with some exceptions...Only way the 8gb of vram could even remotely be of help is running crossfire for one, and even then most likely only in certain games running 4k displays. If you only plan to ever use one card for whatever reasons it's common sense the card is not powerful enough to even make use of the extra vram, at least at an acceptable fps. It doesn't necessarily make it a bad card but you have to buy 2 to be of any help (extra vram). Funny thing is ever since fury came out i have noticed lower vram usage in the newer drivers going by gpu-z...lol i wonder why
 
I think vram is more of a factor in Eyefinity since moving from 2Gb on the 5870 to 3Gb on the 7970 and 4Gb on the 290X as Eyefinity was always the reason for the need of more vram pushing three 1080p displays just to get some AA going as did AMD ever manage to max out 5760 x 1080 yet from a single card as last I remember just get to High settings was not easy ?
 
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