Power Consumption
The Radeon R9 390X actually does consume less power than R9 290X, but only on certain condition. The card is basically overclocked Hawaii chip, so it can’t magically require less power, but thanks to more optimized power states and matured drivers, R9 390X actually does consume less power, but during 4K playback.
HIS R9 390X vs GTX 980 vs R9 290X — Power Consumption
Temperature and noise
Temperature rose to 85C during Furmark test, which is 4C higher than R9 290X. That’s because 390X is clocked higher than 290X and cooling solution has not been modified – it’s the same cooler. I actually managed to lower this temperature with new thermal-paste (Arctic MX4), but only by 2C. HIS scarified lower temperatures in favor of lower noise levels. Manufacturer claims noise level should not exceed 28dB. I was genuinely surprised how quiet this card is under load (compared to other cards I tested).
MSI GTX 980 GAMING has more efficient cooler, but the downside of ZeroFrozr technology makes the GPU run hotter at idle. The ZeroFrozr state was usually engaged when I left my PC alone, starting any HD YouTube video immediately initialized at least one fan.
HIS R9 390X vs GTX 980 vs R9 290X — GPU Temperature
Memory Utilization
Finding a game that can utilize the whole frame buffer is not very hard, but finding a game that utilizes full buffer AND allows ‘virtual’ rendering at higher resolutions is a bit trickier. It is important because I don’t have 4k monitor for tests, meanwhile R9 390X is dedicated for this resolution. Synthetic benchmarks are far from useful in this test. Only two games I own offer such option: GTA5 and SoM.
The results from GTA5 have shown too much variance, the highest reported memory usage by Afterburner was 5711 MB (R9 390X), R9 290X and GTX 980 were quickly capped at 1.5x resolution rendering.
Same thing happened in Shadow of Mordor as both R9 290X and GTX 980 were quickly out of memory, but already at 1440p. The highest memory utilization of R9 390X reported by Afterburner was 6042 MB at 5120×2880 resolution.
R9 290X @ 1440p
R9 390X @ 1440p
R9 390X @ 2160p
R9 390X @ 2880p
| Review Contents | |
|---|---|
| Page 1 | Introduction |
| Page 2 | Overview HIS Radeon R9 390X IceQX² OC |
| Page 3 | Overview MSI GeForce GTX 980 GAMING 4G |
| Page 4 | Testing platform and methodology |
| Page 5 | Test Overclocking |
| Page 6 | Test Power consumption ● Temperature ● Memory Utilization |
| Page 7 | Test 3DMark11 ● 3DMark ● Catzilla ● Unigine Valley ● CompuBench |
| Page 8 | Test Batman: AO ● COH2 ● GRID: A. ● Hitman A. ● Metro: LL ● THIEF ● Tomb Raider ● SoM ● SE3 |
| Page 9 | Bonus Content Radeon R9 390X & R9 290X CrossFire mini-test |
| Page 10 | Conclusion |
