MSI Radeon R9 390X Gaming 8G Review
Published by Marc Büchel on 22.10.15Conclusion
| General | + | - | |
| The MSI Radeon R9 390X Gaming 8G did well in our tests. It comes with a tiny factory overclock of 10 MHz on the GPU, but on the other hand, there is a great cooler. Its fan profile has been set to deactivate the fans when the operating system is in idle, which makes the card noiseless under these circumstances. Under load this card becomes well audible at 75°C. This means that the fans have to revv up quite a bit to maintain this temperature. Performance wise this particular card is on the level we expected it to be. Since the R9 390X is basically a rebrand of the 290X with 4 GB of additional memory, it's able to score a few more frames especially with UHD. Most games, when they're being run at UHD, require more than 4GB of VRAM and that is actually where the 390X with 8GB scores. |
- Performance - Cooling - Design - Noise level |
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| Cooling / Noise Level | + | - | |
| As noted earlier, the dual fan, 2.5 slot cooler on this particular card is really powerful. We very much like the fact, that in idle this card is inaudible, since the fans are not spinning at all. Under load the situation changes, since at a little more than 41 dBA the card is well audible. MSI is making sure the GPU doesn't exceed 75°C, which enusres, there won't be any throttling, but on the other hand the fans have to revv up quite a bit. Nevertheless, in our opinion, the noise level is on a reasonable level and so definitely is the cooling as well. | - Inaudible in 2D | ||
| Performance | + | - | |
As we already mentioned, the card particularly benefits when being tested with games running ultra high resolutions. Having a closer look at UHD results, we see that this R9 390X with 8GB VRAM can pull away from the R9 290X by on average of 11.6 percent. This is thanks to the fact, that there is twice the memory and apart from that the VRAM also runs higher frequencies than the predecessor. Other than that the fact, that the GPU has been overclocked by a mere 10 MHz, doesn't bring any noticeable difference. Having a look at 1080p the 390X is only a tiny little be quicker than the 290X. |
- Performance - Power consumption |
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| Recommendation / Price | + | - | |
| At the moment we find this card listed in Europe
for 430 Euro. At this price point the Radeon R9 390X Gaming 8G is
an interesting card being almost as fast as a reference GeForce GTX 980. Should you be looking for a graphics card with 8GB of VRAM, a great cooler at a reasonable price, then the MSI Radeon R9 390X Gaming 8G is definitely worth considering. |
- 2160p Gaming - Silent PC |
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| The MSI Radeon R9 390X Gaming 8G receives good 4.5 out of 5 stars. | |||
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