Overall and Final Verdict
After putting the R9 390 Gaming 8G through all of our testing and taking a closer look at its features what do I think of the card? Well for starters I really like the styling of the card. I felt like the other 390’s that I have testing were a little bland and in the case of the XFX a little unusual in the styling department so the bright color scheme of the Gaming 8G was a nice change and it looks sharp. The card is a little big though, especially on the height where the MSI is a little under an inch taller than the top of the PCI slot but also because the cooler sticks out making this a 2 and a half slot card. MSI also slipped in a backplate on the Gaming 8G where the other 390’s didn’t come with them adding to the overall strength and quality of the card.
As for its performance, the 390 Gaming 8G dominated in our 1080p testing and also didn’t run into any games that it couldn’t run with the settings cranked at 1440p. In all of the tests it was a little faster than the other 390’s that I tested inching it a little closer in performance to the GTX 980. Obviously because it was closer to the GTX 980 did mean that it out performed the GTX 970 in almost every situation. When it came to the tests that depended more on the MSI features it did struggle though. For one it pulled a crazy amount of power, almost 140 watts more than the GTX 980 and more than the other 390’s as well. This translated to more heat in the cooling testing as well and also required the use of the large fans that make the card taller and were a little on the noisy side.
So what about the price? Well that is where things start to get really interesting. With the MSI 390 Gaming 8G and most of the other R9 390’s priced near $329.99 all of the comparisons we did earlier to the Nvidia cards get a little weird. Remember that for the most part the R9 390 ran just below the GTX 980 reference card. It was obviously not faster, but it was a lot faster than the GTX 970. Well when we take into account the price the GTX 970 that sells for as low as $279.99 isn’t looking like that good of a deal. Especially when you look at the R9 390’s performance compared to the $459.99 GTX 980. Basically at this price point it is really hard to justify the GTX 980 and the R9 390 looks like a good value for its performance.
Live Pricing: HERE