AMD Radeon R9 390X vs AMD Radeon HD 7970

The AMD Radeon R9 390X is an end-of-life desktop graphics card that released in Q2 2015 with a MSRP of $429. It is built on the GCN 2.0 GPU microarchitecture (codename Grenada) and is manufactured on a 28 nm process.

Memory

The R9 390X has 8 GB of GDDR5 memory, with a 1,500 MHz memory clock and a 512 bit interface. This gives it a memory bandwidth of 384 Gb/s, which affects how fast it can transfer data to and from memory. GPU memory stores temporary data that helps the GPU with complex math and graphics operations. More memory is generally better, as not having enough can cause performance bottlenecks.

Cores and Clock Speeds

The R9 390X includes 2,816 stream processors (SPs), the processing units for handling parallel computing tasks. The GPU operates at a core clock speed of 1,050 MHz. Complementing the processing units are 176 texture mapping units (TMUs) for efficient texture filtering and 64 render output units (ROPs) for pixel processing.

Compatibility & Power Consumption

The R9 390X occupies 2 PCIe expansion slots. It supports DVI, HDMI 1.4a, DisplayPort 1.2 display connections. AMD recommends a power supply of at least 600 W to handle the GPU's thermal design power (TDP) of 275 W.

Benchmark Performance & Value

The R9 390X has the 123rd best 3DMark 11 Performance GPU score among the 543 benchmarked GPUs in our database. It achieves 17.16% of the performance of the best benchmarked GPU, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090. Its 17,944 score and $429 launch price (MSRP) gives it a performance per dollar of 41.83. This is the 70th best in value for the 3DMark 11 Performance GPU benchmark.