r9 290 or r9 390

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I'm building my first PC and I've been looking at the r9 390 allot and that seems to be the one that I want to get. BUT I've been hearing allot about how hard the drivers are to install for the 390 and that the drivers for the 290 are much easier to install. I have NO experience installing drivers and trouble shooting. And I also heard that the 390 is just a re-branded 290 with just more RAM. Is this true? Is the 290 actually just as good as the 390. I'm mostly looking to play battlefront 3 and 1080p ultra setting with 60+ fps. And I'm going to upgrade to a 1440p monitor later but I don't expect to max out games with that.

My CPU of choice is the fx 8350 and i have 8gb ram and PSU is undetermined
 
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jimmysmitty


The drivers will be simple to install. You put the card in the machine and then go to www.amd.com and download the 15.7.1 drivers and run the installer. It is simple and most anyone can do it, even a novice.

at 1080P the GPU is a good choice.
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jimmysmitty

jimmysmitty

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The drivers are the same for the 390 and 290. They are the same card just that the 390 has 8GB VRAM and is clocked slightly higher.

The 390 is fine for 1080p but 1440p it will start to struggle to keep 60FPS:

http://www.bjorn3d.com/2015/08/sapphire-nitro-r9-390-8g-ds-review-playing-nitro/8/
 
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jimmysmitty

jimmysmitty

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BF4 is a pretty old game and it can't do 60FPS at 1440P.

http://www.ocaholic.ch/modules/smartsection/item.php?itemid=1633&page=3

The majority of games don't do "Ultra" at 60FPS with the R9 390.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2015-amd-radeon-r9-390-8gb-review

Again it is not that it is a bad GPU but at 1440P it starts to show signs of struggling and that is because at its heart it is just a R9 290 with 8GB of VRAM and a higher stock clock speed.
 
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But while playing at 1080p will it be worth the time to try to get the drivers working properly?
 
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jimmysmitty

jimmysmitty

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The drivers will be simple to install. You put the card in the machine and then go to www.amd.com and download the 15.7.1 drivers and run the installer. It is simple and most anyone can do it, even a novice.

at 1080P the GPU is a good choice.
 
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Solution
NightAntilli

NightAntilli

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You'll be more than fine with the R9 390. Leaving this here... You can assume the R9 390 is somewhere between the R9 290 and the R9 290x.

900x900px-LL-8e75e04e_untitled-1.png
 
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jimmysmitty

jimmysmitty

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You are using one game that had been highly optimized (and very well I might add) that cannot be taken as representative of all games.

For most games QHD is going to be more stressful on a R9 390 than FHD.
 
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gilbadon

gilbadon

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The GTX 980ti... but that is nowhere near your price range. The R9 390 performs well at 1440p. I do not agree with @jimmysmitty that the r9 390 is not as good for 1440p as it is for 1080p. I think this card is good for 1080p, but it does not nearly use any of it's memory potential and you might as well get a GTX 970 instead. At 1440p you can finally see the advantages of the expanded memory. Yes you are not reaching 60fps in the new games, but for the price, you are reaching much better fps than any competition in the market by a large margin. The GTX 970 does not even get close to the marks of the R9 390 at 1440p resolution.

All of my knowledge is based off of the Toms Hardware Review of the Sapphire R9 390 Nitro, and my own use of Gigabyte's G1 R9 390 @ 1440p.

 
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jimmysmitty

jimmysmitty

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The OP stated he wants 60FPS at 1080P with plans to go to 1440P. That would make me assume he wants to play at 60FPS at 1440P then a R9 390 will not do it. Nothing in that price range s of now will do it. That is the point I am getting at.

And having more VRAM does not always equal better performance. The GTX 980Ti has 6GB of VRAM vs the Fury Xs 4GB of VRAM, granted it is HBM, but it performs nearly the same in most games at 4K. There are more factors. You can shove 8GB of VRAM onto a GTX 960 but that does not mean it will magically perform better if the GPU core is too weak to handle the games themselves.
 
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NightAntilli

NightAntilli

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Uhm... jimmy...


You're right about the RAM, mostly. Games can load things multiple times to improve performance though. But, if you're planning to use a card for 3-4 years or more, more RAM is always better.
 
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