Overall and Final Verdict
Well the bump in clock speeds and additional vRAM clearly helped the Nitro R9 390 when it came to our performance testing. For the most part it falls just in between the GTX 980 and the GTX 970 and depending on the test slightly better or worse than the older R9 290X. So that is a nice bump in performance and most importantly it does out-perform the most direct competition from Nvidia. The new Sapphire design is a nice improvement as well on most accounts. The new blacked out design is sure to go over better for people trying to pick out a video card to match their build, with all neutral colors it will fit in just about any build without clashing. Of course I am going to miss the bright colors a little though.
The new cooler design is huge, the cooler goes well beyond the PCB both on length and height and it makes the Nitro nearly one of the longest cards you can find. The three large fans had me a little concerned for noise performance but the carded performed well in my testing, especially with it turning the fans completely off when you aren’t doing anything demanding. I was however a little disappointed that the large cooler didn’t run any cooler when in game. The higher clock speeds seemed to counteract the new cooling. The other big issue was with its power consumption under load, it topped our charts for singe card power draw. Obviously I haven’t tested one of the new R9 390X’s yet and I’m sure it will pull more, but it did pull a little more than the overclocked R9 290X that was at the top previously. This is exactly the opposite direction that Nvidia is going for power draw with the GTX 980 pulling almost 100 watts less.
Price wise the Sapphire Nitro R9 390 falls into an interesting spot. Officially its direct competitor is the GTX 970 and it out performs it by a good margin in every performance test I run. Were it gets interesting is when we consider the R9 290X as well though, currently it actually sells for less for a Sapphire card. So if you are shopping for a card in this performance/price point you might want to shop around and see what the 290X is going for as well, at least until they clear out that stock. Even after that it looks like AMD is a great option at this price point, of course you might have to get a new power supply to handle that additional load lol.
Live Pricing: HERE
