[JayzTwoCents] R9 390 vs GTX970 - Claims 300 series is NOT a rebrand - R9 390 new mid tier king?

[TorqueS]

I saw the review a few hours ago and I was impressed, not by the performance(although..being on par or better than the 970 isn't too shabby), but the build quality of MSI's card.The heatsink is more suited for a Lightning branded card, rather than gaming series. Performance and OC.

 

As for the chip, I also do not agree with the term "rebrand". Jay said it when he mentioned OCing and the fact that his 390 reached 1200Mhz without too much effort, something uncommon on previous AMD cards? It might have been an issue with older cooler designs, not cooling VRM and memory(although the 290X matrix is there to contradict me).

 

MSI has really grown in my eyes with the last two generation mainstream coolers. I will gladly get a card from them, and I'm still thinking between 380 4GB and 390 8GB.

Since power consumption doesn't bother me(electricity costs little here and I also have a good 750W PSU) and the performance is better than 960 and 970 respectively, i do not see me going wrong with any of those.

I'm not claiming that the 390 would be better in any situation. God forbid. In my case, i think a 390 is better, but who knows, maybe some have lower quality PSUs, so a 970 would be better...anyways, I digress.

 

What I want to emphasize here is that we have to give AMD some credit for remaining competitive in the performance sector, even if, the efficiency is not beating Maxwell. With their low R&D budget and the struggles they've been through during the last months, I'm surprised they even managed to release a new lineup.

[HippY]

I do think the card is competetively priced here in UK

 

R9 390 cost here £260-270 on OCUK, HIS or MSI and other companies "Gaming Editions"

R9 290x Asus Matrix cost £290 and JayZ test shows that r9 390 is quicker OC-d, more RAM and what not

R9 290 starts at £250 on Amazon UK (there is an Asus at 225, I heard bad things about the cooler)  and up, that is respectable for a nearly 2 year old last gen card, that should be slower than 290x

There are used cards on Ebay from £180, although you must be careful, as they might have been abused before. I am not going to compare the price, as used market is totally different than new (like at cars, used  10 yo Ford focus cost here £2000, brand new one same/similar engine cost £20000, but have lower risk)

 

I do reckon it is fairly priced. 

 

Side not:

R9 390>= GX 970(performance and similar price)

R9 390X=GTX980

R9 Fury/Nano (probably same  chip?)=??? (maybe Titan X but then again if we talking about gaming not a big contender)

R9 Fury X=980TI

 

Where will Fury fit?

[Prysin]

to those arguing that the 300 series should be cheaper.

If you so wish that AMD want to make some actual money, why do you stubbornly refuse to let them make money?

AMD is a corporation, not a charity. Albeit the current price of the 200 series may suggest the latter.

[Nielips]

Aren't most of the refinements, from the manufactures not AMD?

[marldorthegreat]

The 970 has a few things going for it that will always continue to persuade consumers even if a 390 has better value. Power, Features, and Game support. Us techies may say, "Nvidia's gameworks is anti-competitive and an asshole move, therefore I'm buying AMD" but the viewpoint of mainstream consumers, it just looks like Nvidia is better because they don't have to deal with gameworks issues cutting their framerate in half.

 

Yeah the power is a good thing. However when overclocked the difference is much smaller. And for me. I want a 390x for my next upgrade. Or maybe the new fury non x cards. But I will not be doing a full upgrade (Cpu, mobo, gpu, storage) Until january of next year. I plan on getting skylake, with a sli capable motherboard and buying another 970 and getting a 1tb ssd. But now, I might grab a couple of these. 

[Kobz360]

to those arguing that the 300 series should be cheaper.

If you so wish that AMD want to make some actual money, why do you stubbornly refuse to let them make money?

AMD is a corporation, not a charity. Albeit the current price of the 200 series may suggest the latter.

AMD only sets the RRP, they don't set the current pricing of the cards. 200 Series cards were only so cheap recently because they were old and/or about to be replaced and the retailers needed to clear stock. As RRP's, the 290/X were $399 and $549 respectively and technically speaking, both of them have now taken a price cut

[harrynowl]

This video changed my opinion of the 300 series a bit.

[spartaman64]

It's close enough to a fucking rebrand that it doesnt matter: even his charts show some test with a 390x loosing to a 290x.

 

And no it doesn't matter if it is or it isn't a rebrand, what matters if that AMD jacked up the price for no good fucking reason whatsoever other than they can. There is no significant, consistent performance gains over the 290x yet the price does gains like 100 fucking bucks so fuck the 390x. Price cut or gtfo

it has 8GB of vram and a r9 290x with 8GB of vram is like 450 and this performs better and is cheaper 

[spartaman64]

the r9 390 has a r9 290 core right? how it in world did they get it running faster than a 290x 

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

the r9 390 has a r9 290 core right? how it in world did they get it running faster than a 290x 

 

Its all in da magics.

 

I too am suprised by this. Even in pcper's test with the 390 drivers on a 290, the 290 showed no improvement...

[Kobz360]

It's close enough to a fucking rebrand that it doesnt matter: even his charts show some test with a 390x loosing to a 290x.

 

And no it doesn't matter if it is or it isn't a rebrand, what matters if that AMD jacked up the price for no good fucking reason whatsoever other than they can. There is no significant, consistent performance gains over the 290x yet the price does gains like 100 fucking bucks so fuck the 390x. Price cut or gtfo

You're confused bro. The 390 is beating the 290X in his charts. I don't know where you even got a 390X from?

[carolkarine]

It's close enough to a fucking rebrand that it doesnt matter: even his charts show some test with a 390x loosing to a 290x.

And no it doesn't matter if it is or it isn't a rebrand, what matters if that AMD jacked up the price for no good fucking reason whatsoever other than they can. There is no significant, consistent performance gains over the 290x yet the price does gains like 100 fucking bucks so fuck the 390x. Price cut or gtfo

Ram costs something

[gilang01]

the r9 390 has a r9 290 core right? how it in world did they get it running faster than a 290x

Bios tweaks

[Pesmerga]

I got my 290x little over a week ago for $220~$240 (can't remember what the dollar was worth then)

 

And that's with an aftermarket cooler (Powercolor PCS+)

 

Second hand market is best market.

 

I've got my sapphire 290x tri-x for 329€ a few weeks ago, the 390 was way too pricey and right now it's 360€ :3

[MEC-777]

Current cheapest 290x 8Gb - http://pcpartpicker.com/part/xfx-video-card-r9290x8dfd

Current cheapest 390x 8Gb - http://pcpartpicker.com/part/msi-video-card-r9390xgaming8g

The only differences between the 200 series and 300 series are Price and HBM, neither of which affect performance in any way. There is also a driver tweak AMD did for the 300 series that improves some types of performance; users have already made it work on the 200 series.

 

The 390/x's do not have HBM. I've seen a few people get that mixed up and confused with the new Fury (Fiji) GPUs which are the only ones with HBM. The 390/x's still use GDDR5, but they are better quality modules that can run faster (1500mhz stock vs 1250mhz stock) perfectly stable, all day long. 

 

Also, did you not watch the video at all and see that nearly everything about the card aside from the GPU die itself is new/revised? Did you have the video on mute or something?

 

The drivers make little to no difference as PCper demonstrated and as I'll explain in a moment...

 

the r9 390 has a r9 290 core right? how it in world did they get it running faster than a 290x 

Its all in da magics.

 

I too am suprised by this. Even in pcper's test with the 390 drivers on a 290, the 290 showed no improvement...

 

How did they do it? Binned Hawaii GPUs, revised/improved power delivery components/design, revised PCB layouts, better/higher-quality and faster-running memory modules, improved/revised cooler designs, and...  

 

Bios tweaks

 

^This. 

 

I know this for a fact because I've flashed my own 290 with a 390x BIOS (modded to work with 4GB vram) and saw immediate improvement in performance per clock. 

 

 

To all of you saying "the only difference between the 290 and 390 series is price and extra Vram", this is simply false. There are plenty of articles, reviews, videos and detailed analysis showing otherwise.

[ivan134]

Nvidia bumped the cards down 1 tier, they didn't keep them as the same damn spot among the next 'generation' of cards. (Eg. GXT 680, GTX 770).

People are still grasping at this straw (even though it doesn't make any sense)? They could have called the Fury x an R5 350 for all I care and I would still buy it if I could afford because the performance is what matters, not the fucking name.

 

2nd, they did move them down a tier. 290x was the flagship then. The new flagship is the Fury X. You're seriously complaining that they didn't call the Fury X a 390x and call the refreshed card a 380x. If straw grasping was an olympic sport, you'd be a gold medalist.

[sgloux3470]

Jay's 970 Clockspeeds is quite low actually for a 970. 1200 on a 390 is massive, but 1447 on a 970? That's a bit low for an overclock.

I want to see how the 390 gaming performs against the 970 gaming (both are from MSI and the 970 gaming boosts much higher than EVGA's SSC)

 

 

My guess is he wanted to keep it somewhat conservative to try and use something he was sure most 970 owners could achieve.

 

Most 970's won't get much past 1500 MHz on air.  So it's really not that low, although some can hit 1600 ish if they're really lucky.

[MEC-777]

My guess is he wanted to keep it somewhat conservative to try and use something he was sure most 970 owners could achieve.

 

Most 970's won't get much past 1500 MHz on air.  So it's really not that low, although some can hit 1600 ish if they're really lucky.

 

Yep. He even stated he used 1200 on the 390 instead of 1250 so it would better reflect a clock speed the majority of users could actually achieve (plus it wasn't completely stable at 1250 ). Same thing with the 970 I'm sure. 

[gilang01]

My guess is he wanted to keep it somewhat conservative to try and use something he was sure most 970 owners could achieve.

 

Most 970's won't get much past 1500 MHz on air.  So it's really not that low, although some can hit 1600 ish if they're really lucky.

hmmm true... though all my friends' 970 can reach +1500 on air

[RagnarokDel]

Pretty good showing for the 390.I would still buy the 970 over it though

there's arguably no advantage to nvidia unless you have a gsync monitor.

[RagnarokDel]

Second hand market is best market.

Until you buy a graphic card that runs fine on desktop but glitches the fuck out in games.

[Spoonfull]

Parts of the R9 300 series are straight up rebrands, while other parts are just a refresh.

 

Really half-assed way to do things by AMD. Looks like they really wanted to get HBM out as fast as possible before pascal, and sacrificed their low end consumers in order to pump out high tech 400+ dollar gear

[harrynowl]

Yes Nvidia bumped down GK104 (680) a notch when they rebranded it as 770...

 

That's because both companies had a faster card on the lineup so it didn't make sense to keep GK104 as a x80 class product, whereas the refined Grenada chips AMD produce do still perform like high end cards. With the 390 performing close to its similarly priced Nvidia counterpart (970), and the 390x being priced slightly lower and performance slightly worse than the 980, why would AMD knock them down a tier if they are still relevant cards at that tier?

[ivan134]

Parts of the R9 300 series are straight up rebrands, while other parts are just a refresh.

 

Really half-assed way to do things by AMD. Looks like they really wanted to get HBM out as fast as possible before pascal, and sacrificed their low end consumers in order to pump out high tech 400+ dollar gear

Like I told some other people in the Tri-X Fury thread, don't worry about your Nvidia stocks. Nvidia is still doing fine.

[PillowSmoke]

Parts of the R9 300 series are straight up rebrands, while other parts are just a refresh.

 

Really half-assed way to do things by AMD. Looks like they really wanted to get HBM out as fast as possible before pascal, and sacrificed their low end consumers in order to pump out high tech 400+ dollar gear

 

That's because you have to consider the type of situation they're in. They are not in a financial state where they can produce new cards with a new architecture every year.