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Today we look at a sub £300 graphics card from AMD partner Sapphire. The R9 390 Nitro is a model from Sapphire's new range and features Black Diamond Chokes and a large triple fan cooler to keep temperatures in check. The card ships in an overclocked state and is priced to compete against the popular Nvidia GTX970.
It is not always possible for AMD or NVIDIA to release completely ‘fresh’ new hardware running on brand new architecture. My colleague Anton has detailed the new range of cards, alongside the previous 200 generation and you can recap on this, over HERE.
| GPU | R9 390X | R9 290X | R9 390 | R9 290 | R9 380 | R9 285 |
| Launch | June 2015 | Oct 2013 | June 2015 | Nov 2013 | June 2015 | Sep 2014 |
| DX Support | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 |
| Process (nm) | 28 | 28 | 28 | 28 | 28 | 28 |
| Processors | 2816 | 2816 | 2560 | 2560 | 1792 | 1792 |
| Texture Units | 176 | 176 | 160 | 160 | 112 | 112 |
| ROP’s | 64 | 64 | 64 | 64 | 32 | 32 |
| Boost CPU Clock | 1050 | 1000 | 1000 | 947 | 970 | 918 |
| Peak GFLOPS (SP) | 5914 | 5632 | 5120 | 4849 | 3476 | 3290 |
| Memory Clock | 6000 | 5000 | 6000 | 5000 | 5700 | 5500 |
| Memory Bus (bits) | 512 | 512 | 512 | 512 | 256 | 256 |
| Max Bandwidth (GB/s) | 384 | 320 | 384 | 320 | 182.4 | 176 |
| Memory Size (MB) | 8192 | 4096 | 8192 | 4096 | 4096 | 2048 |
| Transistors (mn) | 6200 | 6200 | 6200 | 6200 | 5000 | 5000 |
| TDP (watts) | 275 | 290 | 275 | 275 | 190 | 190 |
The 300 series launch around 18 months after the 200 series has meant that AMD have been able to enhance the ASIC design by implementing microcode enhancements and the manufacturing processes have improved. We can consider the 390 an ‘improved 290’ – with the added bonus of double the memory – an increase from 4GB to 8GB.
So what do I have in store for you today? For the last week I have been running a series of tests at both 1440p and Ultra HD 4K resolutions – with the latest AMD and NVIDIA drivers – to keep everything on a completely even footing. It is time consuming, but worth it, especially with the release of the new ‘tweaked’ hardware. All AMD video cards are tested with the 15.6 Catalyst Beta, and all Nvidia cards the Forceware 353.30 driver.
The R9 390 has been released to specifically target Nvidia’s GTX970 so it will be interesting to see how that battle shapes up – as well as being able to take a look at the new card within a broader selection of hardware. Our Fury X review is coming soon, we have had it for some time now.
The Sapphire R9 290 Nitro ships in a dark box, with another robot on the front.
There are some technical details on the back of the box, if you happen to be buying inside a physical retail store.
Our box included a quality HDMI cable, a software disc and some literature on the product.
Understated – we like it. Sapphire have opted for a clean, black and gunmetal visage – with three ‘Nitro' stickers on the fans. Black tends to suit any matched, coloured system build, so its a good choice.
The card is equipped with a dual link DVI-D connector, three DisplayPort 1.2a connectors and a single HDMI 1.4a connector. Sadly, no support for the new HDMI 2.0 standard – which means you can’t get 4K 60hz from this connector. This is something I do depend on myself as I use a 4K Sony TV for my gaming (which has only HDMI ports).
The card takes power from two eight pin PCIe connectors. It has bridge less Crossfire support, exactly like the 290 and 290x.
Due to all the screws, it takes quite some time to remove the cooler. We can see the GDDR5 memory is directly cooled from the heatsink above. 10mm heatpipes expel heat from the copper heatpipe, across a large rack of aluminum fins which span the full width of the PCB. The diecast heatsink bolts into the PCB to help improve rigidity. Sapphire equip the card with their Diamond Black chokes to help improve stability and longevity.
An overview of the Sapphire R9 390 Nitro 8GB. It is built on the 28nm process, has 64 ROPs, 160 Texture units, and 2560 unifed shaders. The core is clocked at a rather modest 1,010mhz, only 10mhz over the reference design – I was expecting 1,050mhz. The 8GB of GDDR5 memory runs at 1,500mhz, or 6Gbps effective – an improvement over the R9 290, which on the reference design was set at 5Gbps effective.
As we spent another week testing all the hardware in this review with the same, latest drivers from both AMD and NVIDIA we thought it might be beneficial to also include results of the Sapphire R9 390 Nitro 8GB in its maximum overclocked state – alongside ‘out of the box’ performance.
How far can the Sapphire R9 390 Nitro 8GB be pushed? We used MSI Afterburner to get our results today.
We managed to increase the core clock to 1,125mhz before instability would occur – this translates to around a 11.4% increase in core speed. The GDDR5 memory exhibited headroom of an extra 9.1%.
All our graphs today will show performance from the Sapphire R9 390 Nitro 8GB at ‘out of the box’ speeds, along with a yellow arrow pointing upwards to indicate results at 1125mhz/1637mhz. This will show what you can expect out of the R9 390 architecture before it reaches a limit. Obviously not all cards will overclock to the same level, but this is a good indicator. We also want to see how a manually overclocked R9 390 will compare against a reference R9 390X.
On this page we present some high resolution images of the product taken with a Canon 1DX and Canon 28-70mm F2.8 lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source.
For the last week we have been testing and retesting all the video cards in this review with the latest 15.6 Catalyst and 353.30 Forceware drivers. We have also selected some new game sections to benchmark during our ‘real world runs’.
If you want to read more about our test system, or are interested in buying the same Kitguru Test Rig, check out our article with links on this page. We are using an Asus PB287Q 4k and Apple 30 inch Cinema HD monitor for this review today.
Due to reader feedback we have changed the 1600p tests to 1440p, and we have also disabled Nvidia specific features such as Hairworks in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt as it can have such a negative impact on partnering hardware.
Anti Aliasing is also now disabled in our tests at Ultra HD 4K as readers have indicated they don’t need it at such a high resolution.
If you have other suggestions please email me directly at zardon(at)kitguru.net.
Cards on test:
Sapphire R9 295X2 (1,018 mhz core / 1,250 mhz memory)
Nvidia Titan Z (706mhz core / 1,753 mhz memory)
Gigabyte GTX980 Ti G1 Gaming (1,152mhz / 1,753 mhz memory)
Nvidia Titan X (1,002 mhz core / 1,753 mhz memory)
Nvidia GTX 980 Ti (1,000 mhz core / 1,753 mhz memory)
Asus GTX980 Strix (1,178 mhz core / 1,753 mhz memory)
Sapphire R9 390 X 8GB (1,055 mhz core / 1,500 mhz memory) & (1,144mhz core / 1631 mhz memory)
Sapphire R9 290 X 8GB (1,020 mhz core / 1,375 mhz memory)
Asus R9 290 Direct CU II ( 1,000 mhz core / 1,250 mhz memory)
Asus R9 285 Strix (954 mhz core / 1,375 mhz memory)
Palit GTX970 (1,051 mhz core / 1,753 mhz memory)
Software:
Windows 7 Enterprise 64 bit
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
Unigine Valley Benchmark
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
3DMark
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark
Games:
Grid AutoSport
Tomb Raider
Grand Theft Auto 5
Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt
Metro Last Light Redux
We perform under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests games across five closely matched runs and then average out the results to get an accurate median figure. If we use scripted benchmarks, they are mentioned on the relevant page.
Game descriptions edited with courtesy from Wikipedia.
Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7. This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.
The stock clocked R9 390 slots in between the Asus R9 290 DCUII and the R9 290X Tri-X 8GB in the performance chart. When overclocked, the R9 390 Nitro 8GB is actually able to outperform the standard clocked Sapphire R9 390X Tri-X 8GB. Impressive first indicators.
By comparison the Palit GTX970 trails just ahead of the R9 285 Strix and behind the Asus R9 290 DCUII.
3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads. If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.
AMD hardware scores well in the older Direct X 11 benchmark from Futuremark. When overclocked the Sapphire R9 390 Nitro 8GB actually manages to deliver a higher score than the Asus GTX980 Strix.
3DMark is an essential tool used by millions of gamers, hundreds of hardware review sites and many of the world’s leading manufacturers to measure PC gaming performance.
Futuremark say “Use it to test your PC’s limits and measure the impact of overclocking and tweaking your system. Search our massive results database and see how your PC compares or just admire the graphics and wonder why all PC games don’t look this good.
To get more out of your PC, put 3DMark in your PC.”
The R9 390 Nitro performs very well in the latest Direct X 11 Futuremark benchmark and when overclocked it manages to outperform the (considerably) more expensive Sapphire R9 290X 8GB Sapphire Tri-X.
Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.
Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk. Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:
- Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
- Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
- Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
- Multicore CPU support
- Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
- Powerful C++ API
- Comprehensive performance profiling system
- Flexible XML-based data structures
We test at 2560×1440 with quality setting at ULTRA, Tessellation at NORMAL, and Anti-Aliasing at x2.
AMD has always lagged behind Nvidia in regards to outright Tessellation performance however we can see the newer cards are performing a little better. The Palit GTX970 is outperformed by the Sapphire R9 390 Nitro, even before we overclock it. When overclocked the R9 290 Nitro manages to outperform the reference clocked R9 390X Tri-X. The Asus GTX980 Strix is still some way ahead of both Sapphire solutions, as we would expect considering the price differential.
Grid Autosport (styled as GRID Autosport) is a racing video game by Codemasters and is the sequel to 2008′s Race Driver: Grid and 2013′s Grid 2. The game was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on June 24, 2014. (Wikipedia).
We test with the image quality on ULTRA and 8x anti aliasing enabled.
The Palit GTX970 manages to outperform the Sapphire R9 390 Nitro 8GB – thanks to improvements in Nvidia driver code in recent months. When we overclock the Sapphire R9 390 manually, the difference is negated completely. That said, if we took a pure ‘apples to apples approach' and overclocked the Palit GTX970, it would pull out in front again.
Grid Autosport (styled as GRID Autosport) is a racing video game by Codemasters and is the sequel to 2008′s Race Driver: Grid and 2013′s Grid 2. The game was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on June 24, 2014. (Wikipedia).
We test with the image quality on ULTRA and 8 anti aliasing enabled.
While the Palit GTX970 held the lead at 1440p, at 4K, the Sapphire R9 390 Nitro takes the lead, and actually delivers a perfectly playable gaming experience – even before overclocking.
Tomb Raider received much acclaim from critics, who praised the graphics, the gameplay and Camilla Luddington’s performance as Lara with many critics agreeing that the game is a solid and much needed reboot of the franchise. Much criticism went to the addition of the multiplayer which many felt was unnecessary. Tomb Raider went on to sell one million copies in forty-eight hours of its release, and has sold 3.4 million copies worldwide so far. (Wikipedia).
We test at 1440p with the ‘ULTIMATE’ image quality profile selected.
Excellent results from the Sapphire R9 390 Nitro, clearly outperforming the Palit GTX970 this time, even at 1440p. A pattern is emerging – the R9 390 Nitro, when manually overclocked to the limit can match, or even slightly outperform the reference clocked R9 390X Tri-X 8GB.Tomb Raider received much acclaim from critics, who praised the graphics, the gameplay and Camilla Luddington’s performance as Lara with many critics agreeing that the game is a solid and much needed reboot of the franchise. Much criticism went to the addition of the multiplayer which many felt was unnecessary. Tomb Raider went on to sell one million copies in forty-eight hours of its release, and has sold 3.4 million copies worldwide so far. (Wikipedia).
We test at 3840×2160 (4K) with the ‘ULTIMATE’ image profile selected. We normally reduce the image quality profile to ‘ULTRA’ at this resolution, but we decided to keep it at the highest image quality possible.
At Ultra HD 4K, the extra shader power of the R9 390X takes command and even when overclocked, the R9 390 Nitro can't quite match it. That said this particular test shows that manually overclocking the R9 390 reaps reward, driving the minimum frame rate past the 25 fps point which could be considered as the ‘bare minimum for smooth motion'. Realistically some image settings would need reduced to help improve frame rates at 4K.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (Polish: Wiedźmin 3: Dziki Gon) is an action role-playing video game set in an open world environment, developed by Polish video game developer CD Projekt RED. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt concludes the story of the witcher Geralt of Rivia, the series’ protagonist, whose story to date has been covered in the previous versions. Continuing from The Witcher 2, the ones who sought to use Geralt are now gone. Geralt seeks to move on with his own life, embarking on a new and personal mission whilst the world order itself is coming to a change.
Geralt’s new mission comes in dark times as the mysterious and otherworldly army known as the Wild Hunt invades the Northern Kingdoms, leaving only blood soaked earth and fiery ruin in its wake; and it seems the Witcher is the key to stopping their cataclysmic rampage. (Wikipedia).
We test with the highest image quality settings, although I have disabled the Nvidia Hairworks option specifically as it does kill frame rate on many cards. Graphics Preset is on ULTRA and Postprocessing is on HIGH.
I have played The Witcher 3 for around 85 hours and I have completed the single player campaign. I tested the game today by playing 4 different save game stages for 5 minutes each, then averaging the frame rate results for a real world indication of performance – one of the map sections we tested is one of the most demanding in the game and our results can be considered strictly ‘worst case'. The Witcher 3 is a dynamic world, so it is important to run tests multiple times to remove any discrepancies. Our results below are
This is one of the greatest PC games ever released in my opinion, so I spent around a total of 48 hours benchmarking it for this review alone – it should be on your must have list, if you don't have it already.
Our settings are very intensive – the R9 390 delivers reasonable frame rates – although for many, a couple of image quality settings would need to be dropped to improve minimum frame rates in the more intensive sections of the game. The out of the box speed is very closely matched against the Palit GTX970.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (Polish: Wiedźmin 3: Dziki Gon) is an action role-playing video game set in an open world environment, developed by Polish video game developer CD Projekt RED. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt concludes the story of the witcher Geralt of Rivia, the series’ protagonist, whose story to date has been covered in the previous versions. Continuing from The Witcher 2, the ones who sought to use Geralt are now gone. Geralt seeks to move on with his own life, embarking on a new and personal mission whilst the world order itself is coming to a change.
Geralt’s new mission comes in dark times as the mysterious and otherworldly army known as the Wild Hunt invades the Northern Kingdoms, leaving only blood soaked earth and fiery ruin in its wake; and it seems the Witcher is the key to stopping their cataclysmic rampage. (Wikipedia).
We test with the highest image quality settings, although I have disabled the Nvidia Hairworks option specifically as it does kill frame rate on many cards. Graphics Preset is on ULTRA and Postprocessing is on HIGH.
I have played The Witcher 3 for around 85 hours and I have completed the single player campaign. I tested the game today by playing 4 different save game stages for 5 minutes each, then averaging the frame rate results for a real world indication of performance – one of the map sections we tested is one of the most demanding in the game and our results can be considered strictly ‘worst case'. The Witcher 3 is a dynamic world, so it is important to run tests multiple times to remove any discrepancies. Our results below are
This is one of the greatest PC games ever released in my opinion, so I spent around a total of 48 hours benchmarking it for this review alone – it should be on your must have list, if you don't have it already.
4K is too much for the R9 390 unless you were willing to significantly drop the image quality settings to compensate. Still, we can see the card is outperforming the equally priced Palit GTX970.
Grand Theft Auto V is an action-adventure game played from either a first-person or third-person view. Players complete missions—linear scenarios with set objectives—to progress through the story.
Outside of missions, players can freely roam the open world. Composed of the San Andreas open countryside area and the fictional city of Los Santos, the world of Grand Theft Auto V is much larger in area than earlier entries in the series.
The world may be fully explored from the beginning of the game without restrictions, although story progress unlocks more gameplay content. (Wikipedia).
We maximised every slider – FXAA was enabled, although we left all other Anti Aliasing settings disabled – based on reader feedback from previous reviews. ‘Ignore Suggested Limits’ was turned ‘ON’.
We found some intensive sections of the Grand Theft Auto 5 world and tested each card multiple times to confirm accuracy. The game demanded around 3.5GB of GPU memory at 1440p and just over 4GB at 4K.
The game is perfectly playable at these settings, holding over 30 frames per second at all times. For those wanting a solid 60 frames per second – some of the image quality settings would need reduced.
Grand Theft Auto V is an action-adventure game played from either a first-person or third-person view. Players complete missions—linear scenarios with set objectives—to progress through the story.
Outside of missions, players can freely roam the open world. Composed of the San Andreas open countryside area and the fictional city of Los Santos, the world of Grand Theft Auto V is much larger in area than earlier entries in the series.
The world may be fully explored from the beginning of the game without restrictions, although story progress unlocks more gameplay content. (Wikipedia).
We maximised every slider – FXAA was enabled, although we left all other Anti Aliasing settings disabled – based on reader feedback from previous reviews. ‘Ignore Suggested Limits’ was turned ‘ON’.
We found some intensive sections of the Grand Theft Auto 5 world and tested each card multiple times to confirm accuracy. The game demanded around 3.5GB of GPU memory at 1440p and just over 4GB at 4K.
To enjoy Grand Theft Auto 5 at Ultra HD 4K with all the settings maximised, two cards are advised. The Sapphire R9 295X2 delivers great results with this game – holding above 40 frames at all times. Again, this is a worst case scenario – most people would be happy dialing down a couple of the image quality settings to improve frame rates.
On May 22, 2014, a Redux version of Metro Last Light was announced. It was released on August 26, 2014 in North America and August 29, 2014 in Europe for the PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Redux adds all the DLC and graphical improvements. A compilation package, titled Metro Redux, was released at the same time which includes Last Light and 2033. (Wikipedia). We test with following settings: Quality-Very High, SSAA-off, Texture Filtering-16x, Motion Blur-Normal, Tessellation-Normal, Advanced Physx-off.
We benchmark at some of the most intensive sections of the game, causing frame rates to dip. Many sections of the game are much smoother than this – so again, this is a strictly ‘worst case scenario'.
We can note yet again that the Sapphire R9 390 Nitro 8GB when overclocked via software will outperform the Sapphire R9 390X Tri-X 8GB at the very modest ‘out of the box' settings.
On May 22, 2014, a Redux version of Metro Last Light was announced. It was released on August 26, 2014 in North America and August 29, 2014 in Europe for the PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Redux adds all the DLC and graphical improvements. A compilation package, titled Metro Redux, was released at the same time which includes Last Light and 2033. (Wikipedia). We test with following settings: Quality- High, SSAA-off, Texture Filtering-16x, Motion Blur-Normal, Tessellation-Normal, Advanced Physx-off.
At the out of the box speeds, the Sapphire R9 390 Nitro is just slightly ahead of the older R9 290X Tri-X 8GB. When we manually overclock the hardware it manages to battle head to head against the Asus GTX980 Strix – quite an achievement!
The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 23c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this.Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by playing Crysis Warhead for 30 minutes and measuring the peak temperature. We also have included Furmark results, recording maximum temperatures throughout a 30 minute stress test. All fan settings were left on automatic.
The cooler copes reasonably well, although it does have to deal with quite a lot of heat from the PCB.
We install the graphics card into our system and measure temperatures on the back of the PCB with our Fluke Visual IR Thermometer/Infrared Thermal Camera. This is a real world running environment.
Details shown below.
The rear of the card heats up in one area quite a bit, hitting almost 86c under full load. This is hot, although not critical. There is no doubt that a backplate would help spread this heat out better over the length of the card.We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with almost completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run looped 3dMark tests.
We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the closed chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation. Ambient noise in the room measures close to the limits of our sound meter at 28dBa. Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.
KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refrigerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum
Not the quietest card we have tested, but not intrusive either. When idle the fans spin down, and the graphics card could be classed as basically silent. Under heavier load the fans spin up and when gaming, hit a peak around 34.5dBa.To test power consumption today we measure power consumption from the whole system when idle and when gaming, excluding the monitor.
This architecture from AMD is showing its age now in regards to power consumption. This system demands around 330 watts when gaming – swapping over to the GTX970 drops the power consumption of the system by close to 100 watts.Earlier this week I reviewed the Sapphire R9 390X Tri-X 8GB (HERE) and while it wasn't as fast as the GTX980, it wasn't too far behind. At around £50 less (£347.99 inc vat) than many of the high grade, custom GTX980 solutions it would be justified to say it has a practical place in the market.
The Sapphire R9 390 Nitro 8GB is a more cost effective solution – this graphics card is released to go head to head against the Nvidia GTX970. As our tests have shown today, it is clearly able to outperform the Nvidia card – both are close to reference speeds according to manufacturer specifications. Not only that, but when manually overclocked to the limit, the R9 390 can trade blows with the more expensive R9 390X.
Nvidia's GTX970 has dominated the sub £300 market now for a long time and while many enthusiast gamers demanded their money back once the 0.5GB memory ‘issue' was highlighted and subsequently acknowledged by Nvidia's CEO – it has still sold by the bucketload. I still rate the GTX970 very highly.
The R9 390 has been released to target this card directly, and for the most part it could be considered a success. Our benchmarks today show it is more than capable of competing against the Nvidia GTX970 – even though it is basically a ‘tuned and tweaked 290' – which was released way back in 2013.
One of the big talking points with the 300 series is the doubling of memory to 8GB. Make no mistake, on the R9 390, it is going to make for a great talking point, if little else. The real limitation will be the power of the graphics core itself. It runs out of horsepower at Ultra HD 4K resolutions long before the 8GB of memory will ever be fully utilised.
Sapphire make great air coolers, and there is no doubt they need to, after all they have to keep these hot running Hawaii cores running cool. Their Vapor X, Toxic and Tri-X cards have been highlights for AMD over the last 24 months and I don't think they get enough credit. On a slightly negative note, I do wish Sapphire had fitted a backplate to their R9 390 Nitro, as it would have helped to dissipate the heat from several hotspots across the length of the PCB.
If you are in the market for an R9 390X – we recommend that you save around £80, pick up this R9 390 Nitro and then overclock it in Windows to 1,100mhz+. It is just as fast as the reference R9 390X and you can put the money saved into other hardware.
In comparison to GTX970 solutions, the Sapphire R9 390 Nitro is competitive. A page listing on Overclockers UK (HERE) shows GTX970 prices ranging between £260 and £320.
You can buy the Sapphire R9 390 Nitro from Overclockers UK for £269.99 inc vat.
Discuss on our Facebook page, over HERE.
Pros:
- Fans turn off at light load.
- well built.
- great cooler.
- 8GB of GDDR5.
- Software overclocking reaps reward – as fast as more expensive R9 390X.
- outperforms the GTX970 at the same price.
Cons:
- weak ‘out of the box' overclock.
- demands a lot more power than the GTX970.
- no backplate – rear of PCB has hotspots.
- No HDMI 2.0 support.
Kitguru says: The Sapphire R9 390 Nitro is one of the best sub £300 graphics cards that money can buy. We actually see no reason to spend the extra on the R9 390X – as manual overclocking will push this card to the same performance zone for gaming.
