The PCS+ Radeon R9 390X 8GB from PowerColor is amongst the very first Radeon R9 390X graphics cards with 8 Gigabyte memory, which are available these days. Compared to earlier PCS+ cards PowerColor has reworked their cooler and apart from that this particular pixel accelerator features a 10 MHz factory overclock on the GPU. Since this is the very first Radeon R9 390X we're having a close look at we're rather curious to find out how it does.


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Presentation

PowerColor, aka the TUL corporation, is one of AMDs launch partners when it comes to the new Radeon R9 390X. If you were following the news prior to the launch you might have noticed, that the 390X is actually a rebranded R9 290X with more VRAM. Basically I've already spilt all the beans at the beginning of this article but nevertheless it will be interestsing to see how this card performs, since it features 8 Gigabyte of GDDR5 memory in combination with a 512 Bit memory interface. Already in the past AMD cards were strong regarding 2160p (UHD / 4K), thanks to the wide memory interface as well as the fact, that there was 4 Gigabyte VRAM with all R9 290 as well as R9 290X cards. It looks like AMD is sticking to that legacy - providing more VRAM than their competitior - and we're certainly curious to find out in what extent this pays off or not.


As you can see from the GPU-Z screenshot below, PowerColor decided to use quite a tiny factory-overclock on the new PCS+ Radeon R9 390X 8GB. While the reference Radeon R9 390X runs at 1050 MHz GPU clock the PowerColor bumped the frequency by 10 MHz to 1060MHz. A closer look at the memory reveals the AMD board partner kept things at reference clocks. Checking frequencies with Furmark, meaning that we're applying maximum load on the GPU, we see that the card is throttling down to 960 MHz, while the memory stays put to 1500 MHz. Running 3DMark we don't see throttling at all. In this case, GPU-Z is telling us that the GPU frequency reamains at 1060 MHz through the entire benchmark. This is also what we've noticed when running games, since there is no throttling whatsoever when running recent titles.

Specifications

	PowerColor Radeon PCS+ R9 390X 8GB	AMD Radeon R9 390X 8GB	AMD Radeon R9 290X 4GB
Chip	Hawaii XT	Hawaii XT	Hawaii XT
Process	28 nm	28 nm	28 nm
Transistors	6.20 billion	6.20 billion	6.20 billion
GPU clock	1'060 MHz	up to 1'050 MHz	up to 1'000 MHz
Memory GDDR5	8'192 MB	8'192 MB	4'096 MB
Memory clock	1'500 MHz	1'500 MHz	1'250 MHz
Memory interface	512 Bit	512 Bit	512 Bit
Memory bandwidth	384'000 MB/s	384'000 MB/s	345'000 MB/s
TMUs	176	176	176
Shader Cores	2'816	2'816	2'816
ROPs	64	64	64
TDP	300 Watt	300 Watt	290 Watt
Slots	2.5	2	2
Cooler	PCS+	AMD Reference	AMD Reference

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Page 1 - Presentation / Specifications	Page 11 - Thief
Page 2 - The card	Page 12 - Sleeping Dogs
Page 3 - Photo Gallery / Delivery	Page 13 - Metro Last Light
Page 4 - Test Setup	Page 14 - Far Cry 4
Page 5 - 3DMark Fire Strike	Page 15 - GTA V
Page 6 - Unigine Heaven 4.0	Page 16 - GRID Autosport
Page 7 - Battlefield 4	Page 17 - Power Consumption
Page 8 - Watch Dogs	Page 18 - Temperatures / Noise Levels
Page 9 - Tomb Raider	Page 19 - Performance Index & Price
Page 10 - Crysis 3	Page 20 - Conclusion