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MSI R9 390X GAMING 8G Video Card Review @ [H]
- Thread starter FrgMstr
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Ugh.... once again more of the same.
I have *never* kept a computer this long without a complete rebuild from the case up. Maybe it's me, maybe it's just time, but it's hard to keep the geek in me alive when there's nothing worth waking up for in years. At this point they're re-branding the re-brand.... ugh...
Thanks for review fellas.
I have *never* kept a computer this long without a complete rebuild from the case up. Maybe it's me, maybe it's just time, but it's hard to keep the geek in me alive when there's nothing worth waking up for in years. At this point they're re-branding the re-brand.... ugh...
Thanks for review fellas.
Modred189
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I've seen this same conversation happening in several places, and I find myself in the same boat (also with a 2500k, plus a 660ti boost). I want to upgrade (don't need to yet), but I would feel like a fool buying repackaged versions of last year's tech.
fuzzylogik
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I'm more curious about how the 390X and 290X will differ when it comes to Win 10 and DX12 with official drivers. Once we see that then we'll have a good idea as to how the two cards perform (especially as compared to the 980, 980ti and the Fury line). Looking at DX11 with the "next gen" cards almost feels a bit... premature?
thedocta45
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Yeah but in the [H] review they down clocked the 390X and it preformed on par with the 290X, this shows that its simply just an overclock.
Its a bit of a disappointing release if you were expecting something new, but for the consumers this should help drive the GPU prices down.
I might be building a system this summer so its good news for me, I don't care how old the architecture is provided it gives me a good cost to performance ratio.
This. Plus, the 380 uses GCN1.2 whereas the 390 uses GCN 1.1. I wonder if that will make a difference? Will GCN 1.2 be enough to make the 380 a better value than the 285?
That's incorrect, R9 285 does use GCN 1.2
There's literally no noteworthy changes in the GPU itself so I highly doubt it, unless AMD just wants to gimp the 200 series for the sake of promoting the newer line (Which I don't think they would do).
fuzzylogik
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Certainly remains to be seen. Though I do remember reading that there were some slight changes/improvements to how the cards work (along with those couple added features? like VSR or something like that? nothing ground breaking of course) but i'm thinking that these cards were designed with DX12 in mind.
So yeah, very interested to see if there's a bigger difference on Win 10 with DX12 on these cards as compared to DX11. (oh, and for the fact that 15.15 is a Beta driver
)
So yeah, very interested to see if there's a bigger difference on Win 10 with DX12 on these cards as compared to DX11. (oh, and for the fact that 15.15 is a Beta driver
)Err, that's what I wrote.
The 285 uses GCN 1.2. My understanding is that the 380/380X are based on the same core as the 285 and that the 380/380X therefore use GCN 1.2.
390/390X use GCN 1.1.
R9 390X v. R9 290X with the same settings much appreciated and the thing I most wanted to see compared. I can see why the MSI card drew more power just like you stated in the article. Twice the VRAM, higher clocks on both core and memory. Makes sense to me but the R9 290X was already a Jiffy Pop popcorn maker so that's not good. Great that the 390X narrowed the gap between it and the 980 for ~$70 less. Value is one of my main criteria in making my mind up about possible purchases. AMD isn't technologically behind as some would have us believe. Unfortunately, the Fury X is going to be way above MSRP and that is IF you can find one between release and 1st quarter next year.
Face it H'ers it's staring us right in the face. 2015 is the year of Nvidia/Intel and AMD has no chance to truly compete until 16 nm Finfet, HBM 2 and Zen comes out competing head to head with Skylake and the Maxwell 2 successor. That's pretty much it for me and 2015 because there is nothing coming out that is worth my hard earned money. Bought an i7 2600K a few weeks ago to replace my 2500K because I thought it was time and there would be good deals to be had and hyperthreading has always captivated me. I'll sell the 2500K and recoup most of that money so it wasn't hard to justify. Buying anything else this year, with the sole exception of Skylake, is just a very low value proposition. And Skylake is only interesting if it is at least 50% faster than Sandy Bridge clock for clock. Any less and why would I bother? And it has to be WAY faster to justify a new mobo and DDR 4 RAM. Can't recycle my LGA 1155/DDR3 can I? Yeah as far as I can tell from reading it looks like 2016 is going to shake up the PC market something fierce and I hope God lets me live long enough to see it. I would hate to die and miss all the fun that will occur about 12 months from now. LOL
Face it H'ers it's staring us right in the face. 2015 is the year of Nvidia/Intel and AMD has no chance to truly compete until 16 nm Finfet, HBM 2 and Zen comes out competing head to head with Skylake and the Maxwell 2 successor. That's pretty much it for me and 2015 because there is nothing coming out that is worth my hard earned money. Bought an i7 2600K a few weeks ago to replace my 2500K because I thought it was time and there would be good deals to be had and hyperthreading has always captivated me. I'll sell the 2500K and recoup most of that money so it wasn't hard to justify. Buying anything else this year, with the sole exception of Skylake, is just a very low value proposition. And Skylake is only interesting if it is at least 50% faster than Sandy Bridge clock for clock. Any less and why would I bother? And it has to be WAY faster to justify a new mobo and DDR 4 RAM. Can't recycle my LGA 1155/DDR3 can I? Yeah as far as I can tell from reading it looks like 2016 is going to shake up the PC market something fierce and I hope God lets me live long enough to see it. I would hate to die and miss all the fun that will occur about 12 months from now. LOL
GoodBoy
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Good review guys. The clock-for-clock was a great idea too. Msi made a good looking card. 3 slots wide tho? ouch. I don't think I would really mind that for a single card solution. But trying to crossfire that seems like too much effort (getting it to fit), too much power, too much heat. Better off just getting a 980ti. (Or lower the price). Smart to release at the price they chose tho, because people will buy it. Smarter people reading reviews like this will buy up all the old inventory. Both are good news for AMD.
Hoping their next card with hbm is much cooler running.
(Full disclosure, I just got a 980ti and i'm loving it so far)
Hoping their next card with hbm is much cooler running.
(Full disclosure, I just got a 980ti and i'm loving it so far)
If it matters to you ..what matters more to me is I have to buy another over priced 170watt 980GTX if I want to use SLi as a 970GTX will never work and something Nvidia has been lacking for many years but it may be by design .. I want choice myself without limits and Nvidia can not offer this.
I'm confused by this post. What is your problem exactly?
lord_emperor
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If I can keep playing new games without pouring more money into my PC that keeps me happy.
durquavian
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I think they are referencing the fact AMD allows different cards to CF like 290 and 290X or 7970 and 280X where Nvidia SLI must have identical cards.
Umm ok. How exactly is that relevant to your earlier comment about GPU architectures and how well they age?
No offense Brent, this article seemed poorly written. Were you in a rush? I noticed sometimes your pieces look as if they haven't been proof read.
Is Kyle not bothering any more? You're not PRng your own stuff now days are you?
In summary : AMD rebadged, the performance gains are not as they advertise and ignorant consumers will buy these in place of their 290 series and selling them for a cheap price on Ebay.
Well, at least someone out there will get a good deal.
Is Kyle not bothering any more? You're not PRng your own stuff now days are you?
In summary : AMD rebadged, the performance gains are not as they advertise and ignorant consumers will buy these in place of their 290 series and selling them for a cheap price on Ebay.
Well, at least someone out there will get a good deal.
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I guess since i have a 770GTX my architecture is at the EOL as it has notting to offer for DX 12 .. but my R9-280 will live on because of GCN which has had a longer life span of support from AMD and same can be said about Hawaii as it has scaled better then Femi with age as it keeps getting faster .
When you buy Nvidia it has a limited life span moving forward as it's by design to keep you buying newer products..
^This 100%
zero2dash
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Great review - you guys always seem to knock reviews out of the park with info and lack of bias.
Glad to see the card do very well and hopefully push some competitive juices over at nVidia.
Glad to see the card do very well and hopefully push some competitive juices over at nVidia.
Not sure what you mean. How has AMD supported Tahiti more than nVidia supports GK104?
Since GK104 nVidia has released 3 faster chips - GK110, GM204 and GM200. Since Tahiti AMD has only released Hawaii. Stagnation isn't the same thing as better support.
I never understood this idea that the card in your machine gets slower because something new comes out. It's still the same card and is just as fast as it always was.
Araxie
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not really, I know exactly what he mean as I have been monitoring the same Nvidia behavior since years ago, Nvidia tend to drop support for past generation of cards.. but to extend their idea, kepler had a good support of cards and driver improvements while they was active, once maxwell arrived those cards suddenly started to fall behind AMD offerings, when the GTX 680 was launched it was a superior product to the highest AMD offering the HD7970. in fact the GTX 670 was more comparable to the HD7970 than the GTX 680 itself.. actually if we compare the 280X vs GTX 770 (both rebranded versions of 680 and 7970ghz) we can find the 280X not only performing equal to a 770 but performing better even than overclocked 770... but not only that, is also comparable in some games to the GTX 780 or in games like far cry 4 is not only comparable but much better card than the GTX 780, nvidia tend to do that to keep their newer generations always more appealing to the consumer, forcing to upgrade to newer cards to enjoy max performance in games, with the R9 390X probably we will see the same behavior as Tahiti rebrand, in the future we will talk of how much better was the 980 against the R9 290X and how the 290X was obliterated by a GTX 970 but how the R9 390X was able to outperform the 980 overtime...
and yes im a strongly Nvidia user but also im not blind and im far of being a fanboy and I know very well how nvidia works with older cards and that's main reason I always tend to support AMD buying 2 or 3 of their cards..
I think they just mean that some of AMDs cards are 4 years old essentially and technically still competitive in their price bracket.
On that note I'm honestly interested to see how a 580 or 680 would compare to a 3xx series....whichever 3xx is the 7970 equivalent? Actually...is there one? Tonga isn't quite the same but occupies that slot now. I'm still interested nonetheless
You're making a lot of claims with no evidence. The 7970 Ghz edition (same as 280x) was not comparable to the 670 at launch. It was slightly ahead of the 680. The reason it got panned is because it was late and power hungry and could only compete with nvidia's "mainstream" chip.
http://www.techpowerup.com/mobile/reviews/AMD/HD_7970_GHz_Edition/28.html
http://www.hardware.fr/articles/869-18/recapitulatif-performances.html
Again you're just making claims with no evidence. You can cherry pick far cry 4 results but there are many other recent games that show continued parity between the 280x and gtx 770.
http://www.techspot.com/review/979-battlefield-hardline-benchmarks/page3.html
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/gigabyte_geforce_gtx_960_g1_gaming_4gb_review,19.html
http://www.techpowerup.com/mobile/reviews/MSI/R9_280X_Gaming/26.html
Seems nVidia is supporting its cards just fine.
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Closest thing to the 7970 in the 3xx series is probably the Tonga based 380 (formerly 285). Old stuff is still competitive because AMD prices dropped over time. It isn't magic
It's positioned against the gtx 960 which is a bit slower than a gtx 770.
Yakk
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I'll +1 this also.
Glad I went AMD with my 7950 & 280x cards. They've aged amazingly, amazingly well. The Hawaii cards look like they are getting the same great continued support from AMD.
I don't even need to upgrade yet really and had decided to skip another generation. But that Fury X is looking just so damn good...
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GoodBoy
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Going to have to disagree.
AMD you can crossfire different cards, from different families? such as the chip out now + a hawaii? Interesting, but would you really want to? One is DX11 (probably stay there), the other will likely be DX12. How is that a good pairing? I take it the argument is that you can keep using the older card, buy a newer, and crossfire.
You can get the same thing with nvidia. You buy a card now. in 2 years when you want to upgrade, just buy another of the older card, and do SLI. by this time its 1/2 to 1/3 the price, cheap way to get about 80% more performance. They don't need to be the same brand, just the same GPU.
nvidia just does it in reverse. buy a card now. in a year buy another at half price, 80% more performance. amd, buy one card, in a year buy a newer card. you bought both at full price... (lol) You could buy another of the older card, likely cheaper, and do it the way nvidia owners do, but then your point is meaningless.
No qualms whatsoever with the gpus needing to be the same.
Araxie
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LoL Thanks for the Links and for corroborate my Post.. =).. First lesson of the day.. HD7970 GHZ edition was launched to compete against the 680 because the 670 was at much lower Price and performed better most of the cases.. First Link you posted provide: compare HD7970vs670.. in the same picture below can be seen how the vanilla HD7970 was also slower than the GTX 680..
months later guess what.: =)..
griff30
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Brent,
Great review.
This is where I am looking first for my info on the FuryX.
I do hope there is a crossfired bench test on Fury but I am being a little optimistic that you guys scored two of them.
Will the FuryX review have a Batman Arkham Knight bench, seeing as it releases the 23rd ?
Great review.
This is where I am looking first for my info on the FuryX.
I do hope there is a crossfired bench test on Fury but I am being a little optimistic that you guys scored two of them.
Will the FuryX review have a Batman Arkham Knight bench, seeing as it releases the 23rd ?
I honestly have no idea what you're trying to say. I showed you where the delta between Tahiti and GK104 hasn't changed over time. You replied with something incoherent about the original 7970.
I'll ask one last time. What's your evidence that nVidia has abandoned Kepler?
BloodyIron
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This is one of the most lackluster releases from AMD I've seen in years. The real tragedy is that we had to wait so long to get let down. It would have been worthwhile for them to just not release this series, ffs.
KickAssCop
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Meh card is meh. Wake me up when Fury benches are in.
SamiiRoss
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Really? 970 is a the real meh card and you still using it... i sold my sli 3 days after i purshased them. They sttuter really bad in som.
KickAssCop
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I play Shadows of Mordor fine on my 970 SLi.
I was referring to the rebrand and increased pricing compared to a 290X.
I was referring to the rebrand and increased pricing compared to a 290X.
funkydmunky
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For starters the 670/680 were launched AFTER 7950/70. Not the other way around.
And your choice to ignore how AMD over time has put its cards in positions to age better then Nvidia (more RAM, larger bus, GCN(Mantle/DX12)) is laughable.
The 7970/280x will continue to soldier on in DX12 games while lowly Kelper is all but relegated to the dust bin. All architectures bellow Maxwell are done. Not so with any GCN card. This will only be amplified in the future with GCN consoles being such big players in game development.
Sorry but that's pure nonsense. Chips dating back to Fermi will all benefit from the low overhead of the DX12 API. With respect to new features requiring hardware support GCN 1.0 is barely better off than Kepler (see link below). You won't be soldiering on in advanced DX12 titles on Tahiti.
I assume your indignation about Hawaii's lack of support for conservative rasterization and raster order views is equally passionate
http://mobile.extremetech.com/lates...intel-and-nvidia-do-and-dont-deliver?origref=
The response to Fury's support (or lack thereof) of those two key features will be interesting to watch.
funkydmunky
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[H] will be benching some new DX12 titles in the future and would hope they include a fairly deep line-up of GPU's in doing so, at least initially, so we can examine this debate further.
I guess we will see then.
Can't wait
I guess we will see then.
Can't wait
Daroller
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Y A W N !