We shall overclock the 390X to compare it with the GTX 980, the R9 Fury X, the GTX 980 Ti, and even with the GALAX GTX 970 EXOC to determine the new card’s value. There will be some delay after submitting a comment. Devices with a HDMI or mini HDMI port can transfer high definition video and audio to a display. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1750 MHz on this card. Overclocking won't be tested until the review. There are two primary scenarios where SLI or CrossFire are used: A later upgrade when half the configuration is already owned and a day-one, brand new build. Average FPS, 1% low, and 0.1% low times are measured. The width represents the horizontal dimension of the product. 5.91 TFLOPS vs 3.4 TFLOPS This game is one where Nvidia's GeForce GTX 970 outperforms the R9 390, matching the Devil at its factory clock rates. Editorial & Testing: Steve “Lelldorianx” BurkeVideo & Video Editing: Keegan “HornetSting” Gallick, Steve started GamersNexus back when it was just a cool name, and now it's grown into an expansive website with an overwhelming amount of features. Additionally the R9 390 sports a minimum of 8GB of VRAM versus 4GB on the R9 … Even though the GTX 970 beats the 980 in terms of value, the 980 still destroys previous generation cards. Before displaying results, remember that … ~170W is certainly a noticeable difference and … Do note that running two R9 390s will draw substantially more power than two 970s (and more still than a single Fury X or 980 Ti). We moderate comments on a ~24~48 hour cycle. In these situations, disabling one of the two GPUs (but leaving the GPU physically installed) will reduce or eliminate micro-stutter, but then you're only getting half the investment outputting – certainly an unwanted situation. The PCS Dual R9 390 card puts the peak system load up to 582.73W, compared against the SLI GTX 970 power draw of 411.72W. GamersNexus.net is Owned, Operated, & Maintained by GamersNexus, LLC. 4K punishes the GTX 970s in the 0.1% low department, something we saw reflected across two re-tests (nine total test passes) for validation. SLI 970 noticeably better at 1080. Both cards share the same GPU but the R9 390 is factory overclocked. 1440p is, again, 1FPS different (1.13% delta). Once a failure was provoked or instability found -- either through flickering / artifacts or through a driver failure -- we stepped-down the OC and ran a 30-minute endurance test using 3DMark's FireStrike Extreme on loop (GFX test 2). These measurements are outside of margin of error and were a combination of multiple test passes, validated as accurate. The R9 390X is faster than the overclocked 290X or aftermarket 290Xes which trade blows with the factory overclocked GTX 970. We've done extensive testing with Black Ops III, including a graphics optimization guide for performance tuning. Thermals, power, and overclocking were all conducted on the Z97 bench above. of a single GTX 980 Ti versus two GTX 970s in SLI. This allows others to replicate our results by studying our bench courses. Performance analysis is accompanied by power draw and thermal tests, though a proper, full review on the Devil 13 card will follow this content in short order. At all three resolutions, performance is close enough to be inconsequential and unnoticeable to the end-user. We'll also work toward answering the question of whether CrossFire and SLI are worth it in this particular scenario, as opposed to investing in a single, more expensive GPU. GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon R9 390X 8G. In the event of the first scenario – where the user already owns one GTX 970 and is considering a second – the value considerations are different and will be discussed only in the conclusion. Micro-sutter is observable as a result of disparate frame-time gaps, where the time between frame renders is inconsistent enough that the user can perceive a jarring difference – e.g. Overclocks were applied and tested for five minutes at a time and, if the test passed, would be incremented to the next step. CF scaling does not seem to work with the 2x390 Devil 13. Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) is a high-speed interface standard for connecting components, such as graphics cards and SSDs, to a motherboard. The 2x R9 390s run a bit worse. 1440p saw a 6.1% AVG FPS delta that favored the 970s, but severely low 0.1% output (8FPS) on the 2x 390s prohibited smooth play. FPS benchmarks look at performance of 2x CrossFire R9 390s vs. 2x SLI GTX 970s, including supporting data from a GTX 980 Ti, 980, and R9 390X. 980 Ti loses ground as resolution increases. Parity of overclocks was checked using GPU-Z. Allows you to connect to a display using DisplayPort. No, though 4K begins to enter this territory. A small form factor allows more transistors to fit on a chip, therefore increasing its performance. When we compare the $429 MSI 390X Gaming 8G against the $479 GTX 980, it does OK at 3840×2160 but the gap widens further in favor of the GeForce below 4K resolutions. It was ugly. Copyright © 2020 GamersNexus, LLC. 64 points. The short answer, as we declared in the “SLI 970s or 980 Ti?” article, is “it depends.” It is still safer to trend towards similarly-priced single-GPU configurations; such a purchase avoids buyer's remorse in situations like those generated by Just Cause 3, where scalability may as well not exist. DirectX is used in games, with newer versions supporting better graphics. It is 8% percent faster that its predecessor the RX 480. Allows you to connect to a display using mini-DisplayPort. The GTX 970 and the 290X have been natural competitors with the GTX 970 holding its own against the aftermarket 290Xes, so a faster 390X should be a slightly slower competitor to the GTX 980 at around $450-499 . Thermals are measured using AIDA64. For today, the focus is on this head-to-head comparison. NVidia SLI setups fully support G-Sync. GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon R9 390X 8G. SLI overclocking is being done in one of our next tests and has been reserved for that content. It has higher clock speed compare to its predecessor the R9 290X. It features 1664 SPUs along with 104 Texture Address Units and 64 Rasterization Operator Units. Abigail Torrez. Radeon R9 390X competes with GTX 980 performance. Parity is checked with GPU-Z. Allows you to connect to a display using DVI. Like all R9 390X cards, the MSI R9 390X GAMING is equipped with 8 GB of video memory. Again, not hugely noticeable. As for frametimes, 0.1% metrics run poor on both the SLI and CrossFire configurations when compared against neighboring single-card alternatives. This is reflected abysmally in low frametimes for some tests, depending on whether or not the issue was reproduced during the test period. Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 $ 289. PowerColor goes heavy on the metals for this card, and that's something that we'll look at more closely in the forthcoming, standalone review – sag is definitely a concern. OpenGL is used in games, with newer versions supporting better graphics. It's within 'unpleasant' territory when operating at full-tilt. The weight primarily comes from a rigid backplate for structural support, opposed by a thick alloy heatsink under the faceplate. The SLI 970 configuration handily stomps the CF 390 FPS by 36.5%, which seems to be a result of non-existent CrossFire scaling in Fallout 4. As such, both the 390X and even a theoretically price-matched GTX 980 are both bad leaps upward and should be … First world problems, Steve. Here's where we start seeing differentiating stats. Adjust PSU purchases appropriately. Poor 0.1% low frametimes on CF390 (and SLI, though not as bad). Over in Asia a handful of benchmarks leaked. The memory clock speed is one aspect that determines the memory bandwidth. It made sense to just leave it as 'Gamers.'". The number of textured pixels that can be rendered to the screen every second. Unsurprisingly Nvidia are discontinuing the 780 Ti as it's now largely redundant. More noticeable is the 0.1% low metric at 77.3FPS vs. 34.7FPS for the 2x R9 390s. Comparing the GTX 980 and GTX 970 shows that the 970 only lags by around 17% in terms of performance but it's priced nearly 40% lower making the GTX 970 far better value for money card. Bad low frametimes on CF 390 (102% worse than SLI 970). Our last head-to-head GPU comparison benchmarked the performance of a single GTX 980 Ti versus two GTX 970s in SLI. Thanks to the overclock out of the box, the card matches GTX 980 performance at 1440p and beyond. Based on 664,692 user benchmarks for the AMD R9 390X and the Nvidia GTX 970, we rank them both on effective speed and value for money against the best 652 GPUs. Chipsets with a higher number of transistors, semiconductor components of electronic devices, offer more computational power. ... Small semiconductors provide better performance and reduced power consumption. Adaptive synchronization technologies have helped to mitigate this phenomenon. This page is currently only available in English. ~170W is certainly a noticeable difference and will impact PSU selection. Granted, that's the same as you'd find for most dual-card configurations, it just looks impressive on one card. It's almost always better to buy a newer, single card once that happens, as the spiked prices are hardly sane or good value. Sniper Elite 4 Benchmark – R9 290X 2019 vs. RTX 2070, 2060, GTX 970, RX 590. QHD is where the Radeon R9 390X really shines, though. GPUs render alternating frames when using the AFR technique; more explicitly, GPU A will render all odd frames (1, 3, 5, 7) while GPU B renders all even frames (0, 2, 4, 6). AMD Radeon R9 390X. The number of GPUs supported when using a multi-GPU configuration. Random-access memory (RAM) is a form of volatile memory used to store working data and machine code currently in use. Our test courses, in the event manual testing is executed, are also uploaded within that content. AMD Radeon R9 390X. Micro-stutter can be so extreme in some games and driver sets that SLI becomes undesirable, even if average FPS is improved over single-card configurations. Monitors supporting G-Sync and FreeSync are of particular importance for consideration when running SLI or CrossFire. The thermal design power (TDP) is the maximum amount of power the cooling system needs to dissipate. Instead, we take an average of the lowest 1% of results (1% low) to show real-world, noticeable dips; we then take an average of the lowest 0.1% of results for severe spikes. Some apps use OpenCL to apply the power of the graphics processing unit (GPU) for non-graphical computing. The 390x is an overclocked 290x with faster/more RAM. The results in the tables are averages of these three runs. A higher transistor count generally indicates a newer, more powerful processor. The Witcher 3 benefits SLI GTX 970s, producing a large 22.2% advantage at 1440p and 40% advantage at 4K resolution. The card runs for $600 – similarly priced to dual-GTX 970s (ranging from ~$620-$660) – but has a pretty massive $100 MIR right now. Overclocking was performed incrementally using MSI Afterburner. Our thanks to supporting hardware vendors for supplying some of the test components. We've already ruled that Just Cause 3 has poor multi-GPU scaling – twice, actually – but there's no harm in re-testing. Each game was tested for 30 seconds in an identical scenario, then repeated three times for parity. At 1080p, the SLI 970s are advantaged by a noticeable 17.86% (122FPS vs. 102FPS AVG). The 390X, for reference, now performs slightly better than the GTX 970 single card, whereas initial launch had the GTX 970 ahead of the R9 390X. The cards operate about 1C apart – but that's pretty useless for shoppers of CrossFire configurations, since the thermals will hinge entirely upon which two cards you buy. AMD Radeon R9 390X vs Nvidia Geforce GTX 1660 Super. nVidia has clocked the core frequency at 1050 MHz. As with the previous test, 4K produces a slightly furthered lead for the AMD solution (8% – 61FPS vs. 56.3FPS AVG). We tested these two graphic cards on these following games: Counter Strike Global Offensive, Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds, Grand Theft Auto V, League of Legends, Overwatch, … The GTX 970s have superior 1% lows, but the gap between 65.3 and 72 1% low FPS is effectively imperceptible at the end of the day. Even the 1% low and 0.1% low frametimes are respectable across the board here – respectable, but inconsequential for comparative purposes. Following some astute reader suggestions, we've acquired a PowerColor Devil 13 dual-core R9 390 – two GPUs on one card – to test as a CrossFire stand-in against SLI GTX 970s. Almost every time a card exits official production, prices spike on retailers and second-hand markets. If you get 2.25x times the frame rate at 720p vs 1080p then the GPU is performing .... 28 Mar 2017 ... Mass Effect: Andromeda 4K Benchmark: 1080 Ti vs. GTX 1080 ... Andromeda . To be fair, performance tuning on the 970s could produce a similar FPS – but for maxed settings, the 390s punch a bit higher. Yes - pushes into 144Hz range, desirable for competitive FPS. We have reached-out to appropriate parties and are researching this issue. Game settings were manually controlled for the DUT. The benchmark specifically uses MSI R9 390X Gaming 8G and MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G cards vs. 2x GTX 970s, 1x GTX 970, and 1x R9 390X for baseline comparisons. Comparing performance between the 1070 and legendary GTX 970 shows that the newer 1070 wins by a whopping 50%. This is similar to what we've seen on most of AMD's cards, which is generally an upward performance trend as resolution increases. Our advice is to look over the charts relevant to your gaming, read the accompanying text, and determine what's best for you. 970 has better low frametimes at lower resolutions, but falls hard at 4K. Floating-point performance is a measurement of the raw processing power of the GPU. AMD Radeon R9 390X vs Nvidia GeForce GTX 970, 2.51 TFLOPS higher floating-point performance, 1012MHz higher effective memory clock speed, XFX Radeon RX 580 GTS XXX Edition 1386MHz OC+, 8GB GDDR5, VR Ready, Dual BIOS, 3xDP HDMI DVI, AMD Graphics Card (RX-580P8DFD6), XFX Radeon RX 570 RS XXX Edition 1286MHz, 8gb GDDR5, DX12 VR Ready, Dual BIOS, 3xDP HDMI DVI, AMD Graphics Card (RX-570P8DFD6), XFX Radeon RX 580 GTS Black Edition 1425MHz OC+, 8GB GDDR5, VR Ready, Dual BIOS, 3xDP HDMI DVI, AMD Graphics Card (RX-580P8DBD6), AMD Radeon RX 480 8GB GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 Gaming Graphics Card - OEM, Fit for XFX R9 390 8GB Graphics Cards AMD Radeon R9390 8GB Video Card GPU Board Desktop PC Computer Game Video Graphics Card, MSI Gaming Radeon RX 580 256-bit 4GB GDRR5 DirectX 12 VR Ready CFX Graphcis Card (RX 580 ARMOR 4G OC) (Renewed), Gigabyte Geforce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB GDDR5 128 Bit PCI-E Graphic Card (GV-N105TD5-4GD), Gigabyte GV-N1030OC-2GI Nvidia GeForce GT 1030 OC 2G Graphics Card, Asus GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GB Phoenix Fan Edition DVI-D HDMI DP 1.4 Gaming Graphics Card (PH-GTX1050TI-4G) Graphic Cards, GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1660 Ti OC 6G 192-bit GDDR6 DisplayPort 1.4 HDMI 2.0B with Windforce 2X Cooling System Graphic Cards- Gv-N166TOC-6GD, Gigabyte Gv-N1660OC-6GD GeForce GTX 1660 OC 6G Graphics Card, 2X Windforce Fans, 6GB 192-Bit GDDR5, Video Card. A wider bus width means that it can carry more data per cycle. The GTX 970 having 169 better shader performance is not particularly notable, as altogether the R9 390X performs better when taking into account other relevant data. Comparing the GTX 970 and 780 Ti shows that the two cards offer comparable performance yet the new GTX 970 costs nearly half as much! The 8% delta begins to enter a realm of possible detection by users, but isn't quite there yet. We tested using our 2015 multi-GPU test bench. The game has since released major patches which affected performance on nVidia and AMD devices, but most heavily on the AMD side. The CF 390s finally pull ahead in Shadow of Mordor, leading the SLI 970s by 4.7% at 1080 (130 vs. 124FPS AVG) and 4.1% at 1440p (100FPS vs. 96FPS AVG). This is especially true for the 390s, where performance seems to indicate that there's no CF scaling at all with the Devil 13. Also in that scenario, we'd always recommend buying that second card (if truly desired) before it exits production. Intro The GeForce GTX 970 uses a 28 nm design. This is the maximum rate that data can be read from or stored into memory. He recalls his first difficult decision with GN's direction: "I didn't know whether or not I wanted 'Gamers' to have a possessive apostrophe -- I mean, grammatically it should, but I didn't like it in the name. Even as SLI scaling has improved, the delta against a single card is small enough that it'd be a waste to run two cards rather than a single, more powerful one. We do not measure maximum or minimum FPS results as we consider these numbers to be pure outliers. Newer versions of GDDR memory offer improvements such as higher transfer rates that give increased performance. The graphics processing unit (GPU) has a higher clock speed. This issue presents itself to some degree in a few other games, but is most notable in Fallout 4. Sniper Elite 4 will start us out. The latest AMD drivers (15.12) were used for testing. AMD CrossFire setups, as of driver version 15.7 from July 2015, also fully support FreeSync. We disable brand-supported technologies in games, like The Witcher 3's HairWorks and HBAO. At 1440p, the CrossFire R9 390s win-out over the SLI GTX 970s by a measurable 10.24% (154FPS vs. 139FPS). This is another point that could potentially favor a single, higher-end GPU, but recent optimizations made to drivers and games may reduce the impact to manageable territory – we'll look at that below. Thermals and power draw were both measured using our secondary test bench, which we reserve for this purpose. 3DMark FireStrike Extreme (GFX test 2) is executed on loop for 25 minutes and logged. Allows you to view in 3D (if you have a 3D display and glasses). Small semiconductors provide better performance and reduced power consumption. First world problems. Newer versions can support more bandwidth and deliver better performance. Intro The GeForce GTX 970 has a GPU core speed of 1050 MHz, and the 4096 MB of GDDR5 memory is set to run at 1750 MHz through a 256-bit bus. NVidia's 361.43 drivers were used for testing the latest games. Our experience with Just Cause 3 has been disappointing for multi-card setups. At 4K, the R9 390 setup pulls ahead by 3.51% (58FPS vs. 56FPS AVG on the 970s). 51.3FPS 0.1% low against an average throughput of 130FPS (1080p) will be detected as the occasional 'dip,' 'stutter,' or 'lag' (or other colloquialism) on rare occasion. Even factoring in overclocking, the R9 390 has just enough headroom to stay ahead of the overclocked GTX 970. Using more than one GPU in parallel can give increased performance. Shading units (or stream processors) are small processors within the graphics card that are responsible for processing different aspects of the image. MSI's Radeon R9 390X GAMING comes with a massive triple-slot, dual-fan cooler that turns its fans off completely when the card idles.