ASUS Radeon R9 390X STRIX 8G review - Introduction

Meet the ASUS Radeon R9-390X STRIX edition

We review the ASUS Radeon R9 390X STRIX. The card's equipped with that renamed Hawaii GPU, now called Grenada. Thanks to a huge triple slot air cooler based on the new DirectCU III design the product is purring at just roughly 83 Degrees C, that's under full gaming load whilst being factory clocked at 1070 MHz on the GPU base clock. The 2816 Stream processor based Hawaii/Grenada chip will get paired with 8 GB GDDR5 memory running along a 512-bit memory interface. The card itself is fully customized including component selection, custom PCB, custom cooling, well... custom everything! Powered through 8-Pin + 6-Pin power configuration it obviously runs at factory overclocked specifications as well. 

So to clear up some confusion from the get-go, this product is based on the Hawaii GPU released back in October 2013, the silicon is the same yet with a few tweaks applied the product is now called Grenada, the latest iteration of the asic. It is the very same 6 Billion transistor GPU on that 28nm fab based 438 mm² Die. Over time the fabrication will however yield better; much like fine wine the latest iterations of the silicon evolve, hence they can now be clocked a notch faster. The memory is tied to a 512-bit memory bus with one distinct difference, you now get 8 GB of graphics memory. That memory is tweaked and clocked a notch faster as well, 6 GHz (effective data-rate) for the reference products, with the MSI model tested today running 6.1 Gbps (GDDR5) memory. The 390X GPU will get a reference clock of 1050 MHz, this MSI SKU is factory clocked at 1100 MHz. So, overall coming from the 290X you should see performance increases running up-to maybe 10% overall, depending on the card you purchase. With the recent focus on Ultra HD gaming, AMD is also marketing that to be pretty significant, hence that 8 GB of graphics memory. It's not new though as there have already been 8 GB SKUs of the 290X available for over a year, let's do mention that as well.

The tweaks on the GPU and memory clocks however seem to be the biggest change, the rest is complimentary from the board partners. As stated, the ASUS Radeon R9 390X STRIX card is tweaked a little better for you, its GPU may run upwards to 1070 MHz with 6000 MHz (effective) on the GDDR5 memory. The all custom PCB with Grenada is being cooled with the new model cooler. Since 390X is clocked higher, the GPU needs more voltage, that also means a need for better cooling. The DirectCU II model cooler is now 2 slots wide. While not totally silent, the product remains fairly silent, in idle / desktop mode the fans won't even spin. You get color lighting options to change the logo to a color of your preference.
 

	AMD Radeon R9 290X	AMD Radeon R9 290	AMD Radeon R9 390X	ASUSR9 390X STRIX
Shader Processors	2816	2560	2816	2816
Texture Units	176	160	176	176
ROPs	64	64	64	64
Core Clock	727MHz	662MHz	-	-
Boost Clock	1000MHz	947MHz	1050MHz	1070MHz
Memory Clock	5GHz GDDR5	5GHz GDDR5	6GHz GDDR5	6GHz GDDR5
Memory Bus	512-bit	512-bit	512-bit	512-bit
Memory	4GB	4GB	8GB	8GB
FP64	1/8	1/8	1/8	1/8
Transistor Count	6.2B	6.2B	6.2B	6.2B
Manufacturing Process	TSMC 28nm	TSMC 28nm	TSMC 28nm	TSMC 28nm
Architecture	GCN 1.1	GCN 1.1	GCN 1.1	GCN 1.1
GPU	Hawaii	Hawaii	Hawaii/Grenada	Hawaii/Grenada
Launch Price	$549	$399	$399	$419

Regardless of being a respin product, these cards are little beasts if priced right. Have a peek at the new design and then head on over to the next page please.