(Bottlenecked)R9 390 Review

[reapersivan]

Hello so I recently purchased an R9 390 from MSI that came with an OC
My Old GPU was a Sapphire R9 270
Specs:
AMD FX 6300 Stock
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo
Asus M5A97 R2.0 MObo
Crucial Ballistix 8gb DDR3 1600 Ram
Enermax Ostrog Case (ECA3253)
CORSAIR CX600M PSU
1Tb Seagate Barracuda
MSI R9 390 8gb GPU
 
So I was very aware of the bottleneck I would be facing, because of the FX 6300. I would've gotten an I5 4460, but I only had 350$ to spend, and if I got it, I wouldn't see much of a performance increase especially with the R9 270.  The card is huge! It is about 11 inches long! (MAKE SURE YOU HAVE ENOUGH SPACE TO FIT IT IN YOUR CASE) It comes with a backplate, which makes it easier to hold and insert. It was a light card in my opinion. I got the card up and running, deleted the old drivers from my previous card and got the newest drivers with Crimson and all that good stuff. I tried out Battlefield 4 on Ultra Settings on 1080p
BF4: My average frames were 70+fps (depending on the map)
 Tomb Raider: Ultimate preset, I got well over 130fps
Hitman Absolution: 55-75fps on the highest settings
CSGO: Easily ran by most cards. This was where I noticed the massive bottleneck with around 47% GPU Usage. I got 140-160 FPS, which was about the same as my R9 270.
The Witcher 3 Ultra settings with hairworks off easily got me  45-70fps
Alien Isolation: 100+fps maxed out, looks beautiful and also a great game. 
 
I will update this once I am able to get GTA V and other games.
 
Conclusion: Overall I was amazed on how this card performed, bringing in solid performance especially with the FX 6300. If you have an FX 6300, I believe it's well worth buying this card over a new CPU(Just make sure you upgrade later on). If you just want 60fps on almost every game on ultra on 1080p, this is the perfect card. I also recommend staying away from the FX series,(unless it's a low budget build) since they aren't that great for single cored usage for gaming. An I5 4460, 4590, or 4690k could easily use the R9 390 to its full potential, getting you more frames than a bottlenecked build like mine.   

[Lolzious]

*headache ensues* 

[App4that]

Strap on a Intel and let that poor thing breath!!! *joke sign*

[Thecrazyswede]

Really liking the 390/390x, seem to be preforming pretty good overall. neat little review as well.

[reapersivan]

Strap on a Intel and let that poor thing breath!!! *joke sign*

I know right?! I was gonna switch instead of buying a new card, but I would rather gain better video settings that I want at the moment and upgrade later on

[reapersivan]

*headache ensues* 

Sorry about the color. Black just seemed to boring. I use FLUX, which doesn't make it look that bad

[App4that]

I know right?! I was gonna switch instead of buying a new card, but I would rather gain better video settings that I want at the moment and upgrade later on

You'll be fine, don't plan on setting any fps records in CPU bound games but there are plenty of games that won't cause a problem.

[reapersivan]

Really liking the 390/390x, seem to be preforming pretty good overall. neat little review as well.

Thanks. That 390x2 "doe"

[reapersivan]

You'll be fine, don't plan on setting any fps records in CPU bound games but there are plenty of games that won't cause a problem.

This shows that AMD isn't as really bad as it is said to be. It's still crappy, but not too crappy. If it couldn't get me the 60fps, which to me are playable, I would say it is crap

[Thecrazyswede]

Thanks. That 390x2 "doe"

 

Well, the gemini or whatever it will be called will be interesting to see, then again multi GPU cards have a hell to get some games to work

[byalexandr]

Hello so I recently purchased an R9 390 from MSI that came with an OC

My Old GPU was a Sapphire R9 270

Specs:

AMD FX 6300 Stock

Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo

Asus M5A97 R2.0 MObo

Crucial Ballistix 8gb DDR3 1600 Ram

Enermax Ostrog Case (ECA3253)

CORSAIR CX600M PSU

1Tb Seagate Barracuda

MSI R9 390 8gb GPU

 

So I was very aware of the bottleneck I would be facing, because of the FX 6300. I would've gotten an I5 4460, but I only had 350$ to spend, and if I got it, I wouldn't see much of a performance increase especially with the R9 270.  The card is huge! It is about 8 inches long! (MAKE SURE YOU HAVE ENOUGH SPACE TO FIT IT IN YOUR CASE) It comes with a backplate, which makes it easier to hold and insert. It was a light card in my opinion. I got the card up and running, deleted the old drivers from my previous card and got the newest drivers with Crimson and all that good stuff. I tried out Battlefield 4 on Ultra Settings on 1080p

BF4: My average frames were 70+fps (depending on the map)

 Tomb Raider: Ultimate preset, I got well over 130fps

Hitman Absolution: 55-75fps on the highest settings

CSGO: Easily ran by most cards. This was where I noticed the massive bottleneck with around 47% GPU Usage. I got 140-160 FPS, which was about the same as my R9 270.

The Witcher 3 Ultra settings with hairworks off easily got me  45-70fps

Alien Isolation: 100+fps maxed out, looks beautiful and also a great game. 

 

I will update this once I am able to get GTA V and other games.

 

Conclusion: Overall I was amazed on how this card performed, bringing in solid performance especially with the FX 6300. If you have an FX 6300, I believe it's well worth buying this card over a new CPU(Just make sure you upgrade later on). If you just want 60fps on almost every game on ultra on 1080p, this is the perfect card. I also recommend staying away from the FX series,(unless it's a low budget build) since they aren't that great for single cored usage for gaming. An I5 4460, 4590, or 4690k could easily use the R9 390 to its full potential, getting you more frames than a bottlenecked build like mine.   

The card is way longer than 8". It's almost 11" actually.

[App4that]

This shows that AMD isn't as really bad as it is said to be. It's still crappy, but not too crappy. If it couldn't get me the 60fps, which to me are playable, I would say it is crap

The problem is everyone looks to the same YouTubers to tell them what works, rather than listening to the people on this forum using the stuff in the really real world.

That GPU is good for years of gaming, get hit emits out of the rest of your set up you can.

[reapersivan]

The card is way longer than 8". It's almost 11" actually.

Sorry about that, I forgot to measure up the the brackets

[byalexandr]

Sorry about that, I forgot to measure up the the brackets

No, literally just the card is like 10.8" long or something.

[Notree]

This shows that AMD isn't as really bad as it is said to be. It's still crappy, but not too crappy. If it couldn't get me the 60fps, which to me are playable, I would say it is crap

 Basically people with 120hz/144hz monitors shouldn't ever consider amd cpu's.   But since your only looking for 60 fps yah they're not bad.. But we all know you'd see a huge frame rate boost in cpu bound games with intel.

[reapersivan]

The problem is everyone looks to the same YouTubers to tell them what works, rather than listening to the people on this forum using the stuff in the really real world.

That GPU is good for years of gaming, get hit emits out of the rest of your set up you can.

Reminds me of those, why AMD is better than Intel VIDS

[reapersivan]

 Basically people with 120hz/144hz monitors shouldn't ever consider amd cpu's.   But since your only looking for 60 fps yah they're not bad.. But we all know you'd see a huge frame rate boost in cpu bound games.

No point in going AMD if you expect over 100 fps. Even for CSGO. I5s are quite cheap, 4460 and mobo at Micro Center for like 260$

[AMDisTheBEST]

Hello so I recently purchased an R9 390 from MSI that came with an OC

My Old GPU was a Sapphire R9 270

Specs:

AMD FX 6300 Stock

Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo

Asus M5A97 R2.0 MObo

Crucial Ballistix 8gb DDR3 1600 Ram

Enermax Ostrog Case (ECA3253)

CORSAIR CX600M PSU

1Tb Seagate Barracuda

MSI R9 390 8gb GPU

 

So I was very aware of the bottleneck I would be facing, because of the FX 6300. I would've gotten an I5 4460, but I only had 350$ to spend, and if I got it, I wouldn't see much of a performance increase especially with the R9 270.  The card is huge! It is about 11 inches long! (MAKE SURE YOU HAVE ENOUGH SPACE TO FIT IT IN YOUR CASE) It comes with a backplate, which makes it easier to hold and insert. It was a light card in my opinion. I got the card up and running, deleted the old drivers from my previous card and got the newest drivers with Crimson and all that good stuff. I tried out Battlefield 4 on Ultra Settings on 1080p

BF4: My average frames were 70+fps (depending on the map)

 Tomb Raider: Ultimate preset, I got well over 130fps

Hitman Absolution: 55-75fps on the highest settings

CSGO: Easily ran by most cards. This was where I noticed the massive bottleneck with around 47% GPU Usage. I got 140-160 FPS, which was about the same as my R9 270.

The Witcher 3 Ultra settings with hairworks off easily got me  45-70fps

Alien Isolation: 100+fps maxed out, looks beautiful and also a great game. 

 

I will update this once I am able to get GTA V and other games.

 

Conclusion: Overall I was amazed on how this card performed, bringing in solid performance especially with the FX 6300. If you have an FX 6300, I believe it's well worth buying this card over a new CPU(Just make sure you upgrade later on). If you just want 60fps on almost every game on ultra on 1080p, this is the perfect card. I also recommend staying away from the FX series,(unless it's a low budget build) since they aren't that great for single cored usage for gaming. An I5 4460, 4590, or 4690k could easily use the R9 390 to its full potential, getting you more frames than a bottlenecked build like mine.   

thats defiantly low. my r9 380 gets 70 fps on ultra 900p. Try overclocking your chip to 4.2 ghz. 

[reapersivan]

thats defiantly low. my r9 380 gets 70 fps on ultra 900p. Try overclocking your chip to 4.2 ghz.

900p, I play on 1080p. It is a big difference in FPS. When I had my R9 270, on medium settings, it was like 35-40 fps while at full screen 1080p. I changed to resolution to 900p and I instantly got 45-60fps

[AMDisTheBEST]

No point in going AMD if you expect over 100 fps. Even for CSGO. I5s are quite cheap, 4460 and mobo at Micro Center for like 260$

or you can get a 8320E, OC the hell out of it and get i5 4460 performance for half the price

[AMDisTheBEST]

900p

yeah i know. It is just a bit below 1080p, shouldnt be that much a performance different right?

[reapersivan]

or you can get a 8320E, OC the hell out of it and get i5 4460 performance for half the price

A beefy cooler too! And for those who don't know how to OC might mess up

[boboman342]

I did the opposite. I upgraded my fx 6350 (4.8Ghz 1.455v) to an i7 4790k (stock then) and still kept my 7870. The only game I vividly recall exact numbers on was in BF4. Like you, I got 70fps+ (high preset 2x msaa), although I never had dips below 60fps with my shiny new cpu. Before it was 45-70 every game. That was the reason I got upgraded my cpu first. In any other game there was the normal range of ~20fps difference between max/min, but I could, and would, adjust the graphics settings to get that magic 60fps minimum. 

 

I couldn't stand that no matter the settings, the minimum fps with my overclocked fx 6350 was trash.

[reapersivan]

I did the opposite. I upgraded my fx 6350 (4.8Ghz 1.455v) to an i7 4790k (stock then) and still kept my 7870. The only game I vividly recall exact numbers on was in BF4. Like you, I got 70fps+ (high preset 2x msaa), although I never had dips below 60fps with my shiny new cpu. Before it was 45-70 every game. That was the reason I got upgraded my cpu first. In any other game there was the normal range of ~20fps difference between max/min, but I could, and would, adjust the graphics settings to get that magic 60fps minimum. 

 

I couldn't stand that no matter the settings, the minimum fps with my overclocked fx 6350 was trash.

I WOULD OC BUT THE CX BANDWAGON POSTS VIDS ABOUT THEM BLOWING UP

[Notree]

or you can get a 8320E, OC the hell out of it and get i5 4460 performance for half the price

You could overclock all you want. In cpu bound games an i5 4460 beats the fx 9590.Even an i3 beats a 9590 in cpu bound games. You cant get around the fact that amd cpu's have about 40% less IPC then intel. Overclocking will not make up for that.

 

No point in going AMD if you expect over 100 fps. Even for CSGO. I5s are quite cheap, 4460 and mobo at Micro Center for like 260$

Yeah damn you Americans and microcenter