R9 390 performance.

[Chaotic0ne]

So far I'm pleased. Witcher 3 performance is very good. I'm using version 1.06, with catalyst 15.7 drivers.

Specs:

I5 2500k @ 4.0ghz
MSI R9 390 gaming 8G - OC'd to 1200 core/1600 memory (not bad)
16GBs DDR3 1600mhz
Windows 7 64 bit.

Witcher 3 - 1080p - full ultra - all post processing enabled.

Getting 45-55fps on average in most areas. If I turn hairworks off, and set foliage to high, I can up to 75-80fps with minimums above 60. I get FPS dips with Vsynch on, unfortunately.

With settings set to low, all post processing disabled I can get up to 135fps with the minimums in the 110fps range.

Compared to the benchmarks I'm seeing here:

http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/the-witcher-3-benchmarks.html

I think the R9 390 does very well. I'm averaging better FPS than the 980 listed and that benchmark had SSAO instead of HBAO+ and hairworks turned off. With both those off I'm in the 60fps range.

My conclusion, the R9 390 is a beast. Awesome buy for $320, and it smokes the GTX 970 in the same price range.

Can't wait to bios flash it to a 390x.


Dragon Age Inquisition on the other hand runs like complete crud. Its hardly even playable. It'll chug along at 60fps then bam, dips into the 9-15fps range; massive stutter, and it does it every now and then like its on a timer. Dunno wtf is up, but AMD needs to get that fixed. It runs so bad right now, that the game ran smoother on my old Radeon 6970. Again, its not the GPU, its Bioware's crap game, and AMD's crap drivers.

 

[Silverforce11]

Go to your CC and set Tessellation override at x16 or x8, you can now run HairWorks with less performance loss than NV GPUs. Congrats.

Run DA:I in Mantle mode?

 

[Chaotic0ne]

DAI runs like crud on Mantle or DX11. I looked at my GPU usage, and its spikes between low and high usage which happen to coincide with the erratic frame rates I'm getting in the game. For example a FPS dip down to 15fps happened at the same instant my GPU usage dropped to 15%. I don't think the CPU is the bottleneck either, because CPU usages don't coincide with the GPU usage dips. I should be able to max that game out @ 1080p no problem, seeing how its less demanding than Witcher 3 is. I was able to get 60fps on medium settings with crossfire 6970s, and I can't even do that with an R9 390. I'm even getting crummy performance on low settings.

 

[Chaotic0ne]

Ultra settings w/SSAO and hairworks off is over 60fps average. Standing right in Hierarch square I was @ 62fps, with a few spots dipping to 56-58.

I lowered the voltage to +60mv and core to 1170/1570 memory, when before it was +100mv and 1200/1600. 1170/1570 gave me about 4-5fps over 1040/1500, and this model ships with a factory overclock. I'll mess around more with overclocking and see if I can tweak core or memory up a bit more. Temps don't go above 75C, with the +60mv 1170/1570 OC and that's with the stock fan profile. +100mv ran a bit toastier, and got into the 83C range.

 

[Ime]

Dragon Age Inquisition on the other hand runs like complete crud. Its hardly even playable. It'll chug along at 60fps then bam, dips into the 9-15fps range; massive stutter, and it does it every now and then like its on a timer. Dunno wtf is up, but AMD needs to get that fixed. It runs so bad right now, that the game ran smoother on my old Radeon 6970. Again, its not the GPU, its Bioware's crap game, and AMD's crap drivers.

Aw man! I was going to buy an R9 390 specifically to play games likes DA:I.

How long do you think it'll take AMD to fix it?

 

[Lyfer]

Jayztwocents did an awesome video on the 390 vs 970. The 390 is indeed a great card, even faster than a stock 290x.

 

[Chaotic0ne]

Aw man! I was going to buy an R9 390 specifically to play games likes DA:I.

How long do you think it'll take AMD to fix it?

I did a google search and I haven't heard anyone talking about similar issues with the R9 390 and DAI, so it could be something else, and not the GPU. Most Bioware games typically run like trash, at least from my experience. They still haven't fixed the severe memory leak in DAO.

 

[Chaotic0ne]

Jayztwocents did an awesome video on the 390 vs 970. The 390 is indeed a great card, even faster than a stock 290x.

The 390 is closer to the 980 than the 970, and its nearly $200 cheaper. For mid-high end range, its the best GPU for the money right now. The 970 is gimped by its low Vram, and only 3.5gbs of it is worth a damn. Its a no brainer which GPU is more future proof. And there is always the possibility in the future of being able to unlock a 390 to a 390x.

 

[Lyfer]

The 390 is closer to the 980 than the 970, and its nearly $200 cheaper. For mid-high end range, its the best GPU for the money right now. The 970 is gimped by its low Vram, and only 3.5gbs of it is worth a damn. Its a no brainer which GPU is more future proof. And there is always the possibility in the future of being able to unlock a 390 to a 390x.

Agreed.

 

[Chaotic0ne]

Aw man! I was going to buy an R9 390 specifically to play games likes DA:I.

How long do you think it'll take AMD to fix it?

The issue had absolutely nothing to do with AMD or the 390. Turns out it was Intel RST not getting along with DAI. I was getting really long load times, in some cases from opening the game up to being able to play took 3-5 minutes. Now it loads considerably quicker. Uninstalled it and the R9 390 chews the game to bits. I put all the other settings on ultra except for MSAA, turned off post processing (motion blur etc), and I'm pegged @ 60fps in most areas of the game. Places with tons of people do give FPS dips. Those spots are few and far between though.

 

[Ime]

The issue had absolutely nothing to do with AMD or the 390. Turns out it was Intel RST not getting along with DAI. Uninstalled it and the R9 390 chews the game to bits. I put all the other settings on ultra except for MSAA, turned off post processing (motion blur etc), and I'm pegged @ 60fps in most areas of the game. Places with tons of people do give FPS dips. Those spots are few and far between though.

Appreciate the followup!

 

[Silverforce11]

That Intel boatware! Thanks for the heads-up, I'll uninstall mine (left it on default install last time).

 

[flopper]

The issue had absolutely nothing to do with AMD or the 390. Turns out it was Intel RST not getting along with DAI. I was getting really long load times, in some cases from opening the game up to being able to play took 3-5 minutes. Now it loads considerably quicker. Uninstalled it and the R9 390 chews the game to bits. I put all the other settings on ultra except for MSAA, turned off post processing (motion blur etc), and I'm pegged @ 60fps in most areas of the game. Places with tons of people do give FPS dips. Those spots are few and far between though.

The first post didnt make sense as I never saw that when I played the game.
good

 

[casiofx]

Not surprised, R9 390 is indeed the price performance king in $330 range.

Not even a heavily OCed GTX970 can overtake it. Check Jaystwocents video on that. (Same 1200Mhz OC on R9 390 as Op)

 

[Chaotic0ne]

That Intel boatware! Thanks for the heads-up, I'll uninstall mine (left it on default install last time).

Actually, its Denuvo DRM with DAI that is the problem, not Intel RST. The game is constantly decrypting itself while you're playing. There is a software conflict with Intel RST. But that's 100% on Bioware for using a DRM like that.

My SSD went bad last year, so I didn't have much of a need for RST anymore.

 

[Chaotic0ne]

Not surprised, R9 390 is indeed the price performance king in $330 range.

Not even a heavily OCed GTX970 can overtake it. Check Jaystwocents video on that. (Same 1200Mhz OC on R9 390 as Op)

When I was looking into buying a 390, I heard legions of people who didn't have a clue what they were talking about say the 290x was better. Of course, I didn't believe them, and knew that the 390 was a newer GPU, with newer features, and was more future proof.

And of course that price performance value is going to go up even more when people start unlocking them to 390xs. A bios flash will probably give the GPU a slight performance increase, like 5%.

 

[Chaotic0ne]

Here's the model I got: MSI R9 390 Gaming 8G

Once word of mouth goes around, people are gonna be snatching them up. Most people are waiting due to all the misinformation out there such as troglodytes calling it a rebrand, and saying the 290x is better, etc.

The fans on this GPU don't spin at 0% load, so its idle temps are higher than usual, again the troglodytes complain about the GPU idling at 60C, when that's just a number that won't hurt the GPU at all. And you can always make a custom fan profile if you don't like it.

You don't want to crossfire 2 of these particular models. Ideally, you want GPUs that push air out the back (reference design coolers do that) of the case for crossfire, and the type of cooler on this GPU doesn't do that. The guy in the review above who bought a pair of these for crossfire is a complete noob.

 

[Face2Face]

So far I'm pleased. Witcher 3 performance is very good. I'm using version 1.06, with catalyst 15.7 drivers.

Specs:

I5 2500k @ 4.0ghz
MSI R9 390 gaming 8G - OC'd to 1200 core/1600 memory (not bad)
16GBs DDR3 1600mhz
Windows 7 64 bit.

Witcher 3 - 1080p - full ultra - all post processing enabled.

Getting 45-55fps on average in most areas. If I turn hairworks off, and set foliage to high, I can up to 75-80fps with minimums above 60. I get FPS dips with Vsynch on, unfortunately.

With settings set to low, all post processing disabled I can get up to 135fps with the minimums in the 110fps range.

Compared to the benchmarks I'm seeing here:

http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/the-witcher-3-benchmarks.html

I think the R9 390 does very well. I'm averaging better FPS than the 980 listed and that benchmark had SSAO instead of HBAO+ and hairworks turned off. With both those off I'm in the 60fps range.

My conclusion, the R9 390 is a beast. Awesome buy for $320, and it smokes the GTX 970 in the same price range.

Can't wait to bios flash it to a 390x.

Very nice card. I will say it's hard to compare your results directly with the benches shown on Guru3D because you don't know where they did their testing. For what it's worth, I'm getting similar frame rates with my overclocked GTX 780 with the same settings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43PY5G26DTg

 

[Chaotic0ne]

Very nice card. I will say it's hard to compare your results directly with the benches shown on Guru3D because you don't know where they did their testing. For what it's worth, I'm getting similar frame rates with my overclocked GTX 780 with the same settings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43PY5G26DTg

I just did a benchmark run through Novigrad.

Settings:

Full ultra except for hairworks which is off, all post processing settings turned on/maxed. Vsynch off, FPS unlimited. No modifications to the Witcher 3 profile in CCC. 1080p resolution.

This bench was done @ 1170/1570 which is a mild overclock because its 1040/1500 stock.

Here is the route I took. I started at glory gate, took a right, and circled around through Hierarch square, and then back to Glory gate. I looked straight forward the entire time while using full sprint till I ran out of stamina, let the bar recover to full, then full sprint, repeat. I never opened the menu once, nor picked up any items, nor talked to any people, nor did I fight any mobs.

Here are my results with Fraps for the above run:


Frames, Time (ms), Min, Max, Avg
6781, 110604, 49, 71, 61.309

And that's running through some of the most demanding spots in the game. Outdoors, away from cities, I get considerably higher FPS.

My CPU did bottleneck in a few spots, so that has to be taken into consideration, particularly with regards to the minimum FPS. But the bottleneck is minimal, and it only occasionally hits 100% usage, while most of the time its hovering in the 80-90% usage range. Its safe to say a 4.5ghz overclock on an I5 2500k would eliminate any bottleneck in Witcher 3. Unfortunately for me, my CPU is a dud and it won't OC past 4.0ghz. DX12 is supposed to be more efficient with regards to CPU usage, so its unlikely I'll have to worry about bottlenecks in DX12 games on the CPU side in the near future. At least, I hope.

I dunno, 61.3fps average running through Novigrad with full ultra except for hairworks is pretty damn good for a $329 GPU. This is a new card, and the drivers are only going to improve with time, so there is lots of potential for the R9 390.

 

[LTC8K6]

Here's the model I got: MSI R9 390 Gaming 8G

Once word of mouth goes around, people are gonna be snatching them up. Most people are waiting due to all the misinformation out there such as troglodytes calling it a rebrand, and saying the 290x is better, etc.

Why wouldn't the 290X be faster than the 390, though, it has more of everything except VRAM, doesn't it?

I would expect this to be the general performance order for these 290/390 series cards, 290>390>290X>390X.

In the rare circumstance where 8gb of VRAM matters, the 390 should have an advantage.

But there are 290X cards with 8gb of VRAM as well.

 

[Chaotic0ne]

Why wouldn't the 290X be faster than the 390, though, it has more of everything except VRAM, doesn't it?

I would expect this to be the general performance order for these 290/390 series cards, 290>390>290X>390X.

But there are 290X cards with 8gb of VRAM as well.

The 390 is only minimally weaker than a 390x. Its a newer card with newer features, and with future driver updates its gonna be comfortably ahead of the 290x. And there is always the possibility of flashing a 390 to a 390x in the future. From what I've seen, the 390 is a slightly better overclocking card, and it runs a little cooler.

Now if you got a 290x already, there is no point in upgrading to a 390 or 390x, but if you're someone looking to upgrade from an older GPU, the R9 390 is more future proof.

R9 290x 8GB models are in the $350+ price range on newegg, while you can get an R9 390 for $329.99. The later has a better price to performance ratio, and potential for increased performance in the future. Assuming we'll use the argument that they're the same GPU, which they're not, then the R9 390 is just a cheaper/newer version of the same card that runs cooler and OCs better.

 

[LTC8K6]

The 390 is only minimally weaker than a 390x. Its a newer card with newer features, and with future driver updates its gonna be comfortably ahead of the 290x. And there is always the possibility of flashing a 390 to a 390x in the future. From what I've seen, the 390 is a slightly better overclocking card, and it runs a little cooler.

Now if you got a 290x already, there is no point in upgrading to a 390 or 390x, but if you're someone looking to upgrade from an older GPU, the R9 390 is more future proof.

R9 290x 8GB models are in the $350+ price range on newegg, while you can get an R9 390 for $329.99. The later has a better price to performance ratio, and potential for increased performance in the future. Assuming we'll use the argument that they're the same GPU, which they're not, then the R9 390 is just a cheaper/newer version of the same card that runs cooler and OCs better.

Specification wise, the 290 and 390 are the same as far as SP/TMU/ROP.
The 290X and 390X would also have the same specs.
So you can see that it would be a little hard to believe that a 390 beats a 290X clock for clock.

Yes, if we were arguing, I would argue that they are all the same GPU. :biggrin:

You will supposedly be able to crossfire them, so holders of 290 and 290X cards may just need to buy the 390 versions for crossfire.

 

[Face2Face]

SNIP

Nice run. I'd do a comparison, but I haven't reached that part of the game yet...need to find more time to game

If you own any games with a built in benchmarks, I'd love to do some comparisons - i.e. - GTA V, Metro LL, Shadow of Mordor, Tomb Raider..

Also -

From Ryan's article -

Last but certainly not least however, we want to talk a bit more about the performance optimizations AMD has been working on for the 390 series. While we’re still tracking down more details on just what changes AMD has made, AMD had told us that there are a number of small changes from the 290 series to the 390 series that should improve performance by several percent on a clock-for-clock, apples-to-apples basis. That means along with the 20% memory clockspeed increase and 5% GPU clockspeed increase, we should see further performance improvements from these lower-level changes, which is also why we can’t just overclock a 290X and call it a 390X

However, I did see this [H] comparison though, and the performance gains are negligible...currently.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2015/06/18/msi_r9_390x_gaming_8g_video_card_review/9#.VaaA5vlVhBc

 

[LTC8K6]

The Fury advantage, which is a pig in a poke at the moment, is GCN1.2.

 

[crisium]

290 series should not be able to match the 390 on memory clocks. Max OC the 390 series will be faster because of this, unless you have a model with poor core overclocking for some reason.