AMD 390X Review

Greebo · 18 Jun 2015 at 19:20

It would look like the new drivers are whats giving the big difference between a 390 and 290 then. I would expect in games not limited by memory to be similar fps but the 290 are getting insane fps in comparison.

Over on guru3d with the modded drivers on 290 cards people are seeing substantial gains in scores like 5% on 3dmark and 10 fps in witcher.

Downloading now to tey them

Greebo · 18 Jun 2015 at 19:22

ubersonic said:
I believe you, but why are the 15.15 drivers newer than the 15.5 drivers

Maybe the sites are using 15.5 because they sound newer /shrug.

Just naming convention on AMD part. If you look at the drivers in the 15.15 install they are dated June and are newer than the 15.5 drivers. AMD normally call their drivers the year plus the month. Clearly 15>5

I guess cause they are for new cards AMD didnt call them 15.6 like they would normally. A bit poor not to use the drivers on the disk provided though.

They should release them immediately for 290 cards though.........oh wait, that would mean the 390 cards werent any faster though

passey89 · 18 Jun 2015 at 19:23

ubersonic said:
I believe you, but why are the 15.15 drivers newer than the 15.5 drivers

Maybe the sites are using 15.5 because they sound newer /shrug.

because people at AMD don't know how to work out decimal points past 1 figure numbers

Gibbo · 18 Jun 2015 at 20:35

I have 15.15 driver for my Fury and this driver set is optimised for 300 series and Fury and is what reviewers should use.

Reviewers using the older 15.5 set will get odd results as there are changes to the 300 series, AMD did not just change the stickers.

r7slayer · 18 Jun 2015 at 20:44

D.P. said:
???

The 390X is the same architecture as the 290X, it is the same chip just gone though another spin. DX12 support is identical on both cards.

Well there you go even gibbo confirmed it. It's not the same if its been improved is it? If you take a stock car and improve it by modifying it. Is it still the same car as before or and improved model of the car? Thats exactly what the 390x is. You cannot simply flash the 390x bios into a 290x card unless you want instability etc.

Gibbo · 18 Jun 2015 at 20:47

r7slayer said:
Well there you go even gibbo confirmed it. It's not the same if its been improved is it? If you take a stock car and improve it by modifying it. Is it still the same car as before or and improved model of the car? Thats exactly what the 390x is. You cannot simply flash the 390x bios into a 290x card unless you want instability etc.

Flashing 290X could be risky as 390X using different specification of memory chips, higher density and tighter timings. Plus AMD have improve power efficiency of the core.

Still worth trying if your card is dual BIOS just make sure you also have 15.15 driver.

r7slayer · 18 Jun 2015 at 20:51

Gibbo said:
Flashing 290X could be risky as 390X using different specification of memory chips, higher density and tighter timings. Plus AMD have improve power efficiency of the core.

Still worth trying if your card is dual BIOS just make sure you also have 15.15 driver.

I wouldn't risk it personally. Much prefer going down the overclocking route and gaining performance that way. What people would be expecting to gain from flashing their 290x to a 390x other than bragging rights i'm not sure lol.

Greebo · 18 Jun 2015 at 20:51

15.20 driver is where its at now, keep up Gibbo

And looking forward to the 15.30 driver mentioned in it, more major gains to come

Greebo · 18 Jun 2015 at 20:53

Gibbo said:
I have 15.15 driver for my Fury and this driver set is optimised for 300 series and Fury and is what reviewers should use.

Reviewers using the older 15.5 set will get odd results as there are changes to the 300 series, AMD did not just change the stickers.

Massive boost using this driver with 290 cards though as well, up to 10% in 3dmark and people are reporting 10 fps (20% gain) in witcher with them too

pete910 · 18 Jun 2015 at 20:54

Gibbo said:
I have 15.15 driver for my Fury and this driver set is optimised for 300 series and Fury and is what reviewers should use.

Gibbo, could you please just check for me if the rumours are true that AMD are shiping linux drivers on the disk?

pete910 · 18 Jun 2015 at 20:57

Greebo said:
Massive boost using this driver with 290 cards though as well, up to 10% in 3dmark and people are reporting 10 fps (20% gain) in witcher with them too

I feel I must point out that the 15.5's for nix got a huge boost, it's also known that AMD have been doing a full rewrite on the drivers which is why we might be seeing the jump.

Gibbo · 18 Jun 2015 at 21:00

Greebo said:
15.20 driver is where its at now, keep up Gibbo And looking forward to the 15.30 driver mentioned in it, more major gains to come

I've got a Fury, AMD instruct me to use 15.15, maybe necessary for Fury.

Digital X · 18 Jun 2015 at 21:03

Greebo, are the 15.15 drivers safe to use with a 290? or is yours flashed.

rolypolyman · 18 Jun 2015 at 21:13

I certainly wont be buying a 390(X) as I already have one, well nearly really. Bit disappointed to be honest and was expecting more and not still gcn 1.1 Anyway not looking good for an upgrade really for 4K gaming as I am NOT doing xfire. Also feel they are £50 more than they should be if they want to dent the 980/970 sales though that applies more to the 390X. 8GB not really relevant unless using 2 or 3 cards at 4K which I would not want to do.

Nutella33 · 18 Jun 2015 at 21:16

rolypolyman said:
I certainly wont be buying a 390(X) as I already have one, well nearly really. Bit disappointed to be honest and was expecting more and not still gcn 1.1 Anyway not looking good for an upgrade really for 4K gaming as I am NOT doing xfire. Also feel they are £50 more than they should be if they want to dent the 980/970 sales though that applies more to the 390X. 8GB not really relevant unless using 2 or 3 cards at 4K which I would not want to do.

It doesnt seem to be GCN 1.1

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2015/06/18/msi_r9_390x_gaming_8g_video_card_review/3#.VYMmMlVVhBf

Hardocp reporting the large tessellation performance of the GCN 1.2. I suspect Drivers are the cause of its middling performance so far. Not enough to swap from a 290x but it seems like more of a refresh than a straight rebrand to me.

Greebo · 18 Jun 2015 at 21:31

digitalx said:
Greebo, are the 15.15 drivers safe to use with a 290? or is yours flashed.

Im using the 15.20 drivers and no card not flashed, the inf is just modded.

Just run 3dmark firestrike. Total score went from 14109 to 14599 but more importantly the gfx score went from 21735 to 22792, a 9.1% increase!

I suspect a lot of the positive gains from the 3 series cards in reviews over their equivalent 2 series is purely down to the new drivers.

There is even better to come with the 15.30 drivers so AMD claim!

If i can get a 9% increase in games as well then all is good. I am beating some titan tx which are overclocked now in the ocuk 3dmark database! :eek:

Greebo · 18 Jun 2015 at 21:33

Gibbo said:
I've got a Fury, AMD instruct me to use 15.15, maybe necessary for Fury.

Fury is listed in the inf for the 15.20 drivers. To be fair if you compare them, the 15.15 are slightly older but may have more bugs/issues fixed in them than the 15.20.

Peopel are reporting a much better performance over the 15.15 though which are already a majot step up from the 15.5 ones

LtMatt · 18 Jun 2015 at 21:34

Gibbo said:
I've got a Fury, AMD instruct me to use 15.15, maybe necessary for Fury.

Yes, 15.15 are specially designed for R7 and R9 300 series and the Fury X.

Greebo · 18 Jun 2015 at 21:39

AMDMatt said:
Yes, 15.15 are specially designed for R7 and R9 300 series and the Fury X.

But surely the 15.20 which have the fury in the inf and are dated 3 days newer are also specifically designed too?

rolypolyman · 18 Jun 2015 at 21:42

Nutella33 said:
It doesnt seem to be GCN 1.1

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2015/06/18/msi_r9_390x_gaming_8g_video_card_review/3#.VYMmMlVVhBf

Hardocp reporting the large tessellation performance of the GCN 1.2. I suspect Drivers are the cause of its middling performance so far. Not enough to swap from a 290x but it seems like more of a refresh than a straight rebrand to me.

http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/msi-radeon-r9-390x-gaming-8g-oc-review,1.html

'When the AMD Radeon R9 290X was released, it finally had architectural improvements over the 7970 that increased the GCN version a bit. However, that was back in 2013 that the AMD Radeon R9 290X codenamed (Hawaii) was released. So here we are two years later, and basically we are getting a re-brand of Hawaii with the R9 390 and 390X. This time, no architectural improvements.

What does that mean as far as performance and specs go? Well if you look above at the specifications for the AMD Radeon R9 390X above (the one we are reviewing today) you will note it shares all the same specifications with the AMD Radeon R9 290X. Both the AMD Radeon R9 290X and AMD Radeon R9 390X are built at 28nm, have 2816 Streaming Processors, 176 texture units, 64 ROPs and 44 Compute Units. Both utilize 512-bit memory busses with GDDR5.

There are only three things that separates the R9 390X from the R9 290X. The first thing is a higher default stock GPU clock speed of 1050MHz versus 1000MHz on the R9 290X. The second is that the memory is clocked a lot higher this time around at 6GHz versus 5GHz on the AMD Radeon R9 290X. This brings the memory bandwidth up to 384GB/sec versus 320GB/sec. Finally, the R9 390X will come standard with 8GB of VRAM versus 4GB on the R9 290X.'

So 4GB Vram and an overclock..........