As with the previous test, 4K produces a slightly furthered lead for the AMD solution (8% – 61FPS vs. 56.3FPS AVG). Devices with a HDMI or mini HDMI port can transfer high definition video and audio to a display. Also in that scenario, we'd always recommend buying that second card (if truly desired) before it exits production. AMD Radeon R9 390X vs Nvidia Geforce GTX 1660 Super. Our advice is to look over the charts relevant to your gaming, read the accompanying text, and determine what's best for you. Even though the GTX 970 beats the 980 in terms of value, the 980 still destroys previous generation cards. Granted, that's the same as you'd find for most dual-card configurations, it just looks impressive on one card. Our thanks to supporting hardware vendors for supplying some of the test components. We disable brand-supported technologies in games, like The Witcher 3's HairWorks and HBAO. 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. Again, not hugely noticeable. We've already ruled that Just Cause 3 has poor multi-GPU scaling – twice, actually – but there's no harm in re-testing. For today, the focus is on this head-to-head comparison. QHD is where the Radeon R9 390X really shines, though. At all three resolutions, performance is close enough to be inconsequential and unnoticeable to the end-user. 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. Both cards share the same GPU but the R9 390 is factory overclocked. It's within 'unpleasant' territory when operating at full-tilt. Almost every time a card exits official production, prices spike on retailers and second-hand markets. The thermal design power (TDP) is the maximum amount of power the cooling system needs to dissipate. 2.51 TFLOPS higher floating-point performance? No overclocking was applied during these tests, which does mean that the slower of the two cards (the 970 Hybrid, at 1140MHz) will marginally impact the overall performance. 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. Newer versions of GDDR memory offer improvements such as higher transfer rates that give increased performance. Chipsets with a higher number of transistors, semiconductor components of electronic devices, offer more computational power. 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). Newer versions introduce more functionality and better performance. Overclocks were applied and tested for five minutes at a time and, if the test passed, would be incremented to the next step. We've done extensive testing with Black Ops III, including a graphics optimization guide for performance tuning. SLI overclocking is being done in one of our next tests and has been reserved for that content. All rights reserved. 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. At 1440p, the CrossFire R9 390s win-out over the SLI GTX 970s by a measurable 10.24% (154FPS vs. 139FPS). Overclocking won't be tested until the review. At 1080p, the SLI 970s are advantaged by a noticeable 17.86% (122FPS vs. 102FPS AVG). Small semiconductors provide better performance and reduced power consumption. Parity is checked with GPU-Z. Following some astute reader suggestions, we've acquired a, – two GPUs on one card – to test as a CrossFire stand-in against SLI. 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. At its stock speeds, the Devil 13 runs a core clock of 1100MHz and memory clock of 1350MHz. To be fair, performance tuning on the 970s could produce a similar FPS – but for maxed settings, the 390s punch a bit higher. 980 Ti loses ground as resolution increases. As fake as can be likely as the source shows results of the AMD R9 390X, Nvidia GTX 980 Ti and Titan X. No reasonable SLI or CF scaling in JC3 at this time. Nvidia Geforce GTX 1660 Super. The average user will not detect the FPS difference between these two solutions. Why is AMD Radeon R9 390X better than Nvidia GeForce GTX 970? Allows you to view in 3D (if you have a 3D display and glasses). 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. Here's where we start seeing differentiating stats. The Witcher 3 benefits SLI GTX 970s, producing a large 22.2% advantage at 1440p and 40% advantage at 4K resolution. 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. The number of pixels that can be rendered to the screen every second. Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) is a high-speed interface standard for connecting components, such as graphics cards and SSDs, to a motherboard. Thermals, power, and overclocking were all conducted on the Z97 bench above. 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. OpenGL is used in games, with newer versions supporting better graphics. At the lower two resolutions – 1080p and 1440p – the SLI GTX 970s marginally outperform the dual R9 390 configuration. 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! Sniper Elite 4 Benchmark – R9 290X 2019 vs. RTX 2070, 2060, GTX 970, RX 590. Yes - pushes into 144Hz range, desirable for competitive FPS. It's a single-card solution branded as “dual-core,” pursuant to the existence of two R9 390 GPUs on the PCB. 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. The memory clock speed is one aspect that determines the memory bandwidth. The results in the tables are averages of these three runs. NVidia SLI setups fully support G-Sync. Thermals are measured using AIDA64. We mostly saw differences centered around the 1.87% to 2.5% area. The number of GPUs supported when using a multi-GPU configuration. The 390x is an overclocked 290x with faster/more RAM. Another performance consideration for multi-GPU cards – in a similar vein to micro-stutter – 1% and 0.1% low frame performance can sometimes be worse than single-card setups. It is a quick-access, temporary virtual storage that can be read and changed in any order, thus enabling fast data processing. No, though 4K begins to enter this territory. Disparity vanishes as resolution increases. This allows you to configure multiple monitors in order to create a more immersive gaming experience, such as having a wider field of view. This chart and data will be discussed more heavily in our future review of the card, since thermals are more heavily impacted by coolers and AIB partners in multi-GPU situations. AMD Radeon R9 390X. 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, … Gtx 970 or R9 390X ... By setting the performance to maximum in the power settings, and some sane gfx settings, I can get around 20-30fps without major sacrifices to ARK's presentation. 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. Overclocking was performed incrementally using MSI Afterburner. 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. 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. 1080p fronts a ~1FPS difference, or 0.87% delta. The GDDR5 RAM runs at a frequency of 1750 MHz on this card. 64 points. ... Small semiconductors provide better performance and reduced power consumption. 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 experience with Just Cause 3 has been disappointing for multi-card setups. Random-access memory (RAM) is a form of volatile memory used to store working data and machine code currently in use. 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. jumping from a 16ms render to a 30ms or 40ms render time (or worse). Abigail Torrez. All games were run at presets defined in their respective charts. It's almost always better to buy a newer, single card once that happens, as the spiked prices are hardly sane or good value. The new AMD R9 390 is the direct successor to the R9 290. The effective memory clock speed is calculated from the size and data rate of the memory. The data was included above because it was confidently collected, but from a user standpoint, ACS would have been unplayable in our tested configuration for the Devil 13. It has higher clock speed compare to its predecessor the R9 290X. The power block is the most impressive – 32 pins of power (4x8-pin headers). Home > Graphics card comparison > AMD Radeon R9 390X vs Nvidia GeForce GTX 960. Even the 1% low and 0.1% low frametimes are respectable across the board here – respectable, but inconsequential for comparative purposes. The Devil 13 uses a three-fan array for cooling, each using a five-fin scoop design. Edit: Also, I'd like to add that the 390X seems like a good deal when compared to the GTX 980, but the 390/970 are just plain better price-performers than their bigger brothers anyhow. First world problems. Below we can see the performance of a yet unreleased GTX 96* class GPU, likely to be the GTX … The card runs for $600 – similarly priced to dual-GTX 970s (ranging from ~$620-$660) – but has a pretty massive $100 MIR right now. Chipsets with a higher number of transistors, semiconductor components of electronic devices, offer more computational power. ... Thats what I get with an i5 3570K and an Asus Strix GTX 970 Yeah thats pure BS! The width represents the horizontal dimension of the product. 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. A higher transistor count generally indicates a newer, more powerful processor. We execute an in-house automated script to ensure identical start and end times for the test. 5.91 TFLOPS vs 3.4 TFLOPS 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. We don't objectively measure dBA output (though may begin soon), but can subjectively state that the Devil 13 is the loudest card we've ever tested. This game is one where Nvidia's GeForce GTX 970 outperforms the R9 390, matching the Devil at its factory clock rates. 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). More noticeable is the 0.1% low metric at 77.3FPS vs. 34.7FPS for the 2x R9 390s. The thermal measurement is only useful in scenarios where the Devil 13 is considered. Additionally the R9 390 sports a minimum of 8GB of VRAM versus 4GB on the R9 … It made sense to just leave it as 'Gamers.'". Newer versions can support more bandwidth and deliver better performance. The R9 390 has a 5% higher stock GPU clock, and a substantial stock memory clock increase of 20%. 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. GTA V had some anomalous issues with the CrossFire configuration during testing. Radeon R9 390X competes with GTX 980 performance. 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. GeForce GTX 970 vs Radeon R9 390X 8G. Until a point at which scaling is properly supported on this configuration (Devil 13 with 2x R9 390s), it appears that Fallout 4 runs most efficiently on just about any other configuration. This review of AMD's Radeon R9 390X benchmarks the MSI “Gaming” brand of the card, measuring FPS in the Witcher 3 & more, alongside power and thermal metrics.