PowerColor DEVIL Radeon R9 390X review - Introduction

PowerColor DEVIL Radeon R9 390X
The fun is in the Devil ? 

In this article we review the DEVIL edition Radeon R9 390X from PowerColor. This product is Hybrid cooled meaning air for the VRM area and liquid cooling on the Hawaii GPU, now called Grenada. Thanks to this cooler the card hovers just above the 50 Degrees C, that's under full gaming load whilst being factory overclocked towards 1100 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. 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.

Devil R9 390X utilizes 8GB of GDDR5 memory, 2816 stream processors, comes with a core clock speed at 1100MHz, and 1525 MHz -> 6100 effective memory clock speed which is connected via a 512-bit memory interface. The board design has a total of 8 phases (6+1+1). Devil R9 390X 8GB GDDR5 adopts a Hybrid Cooling system. Air Cooling uses a sensor that detects the MOSFET's temperature automatically and controls the fan speed. The GPU obviously is liquid cooled with the same cooler the Fury X uses. As stated, the card is tweaked a little better for you, its GPU may run upwards to 1100 MHz with 6100 MHz (effective) on the GDDR5 memory. Since 390X is clocked higher, the GPU needs more voltage, that also means a need for better cooling. The card is 2 slots wide. While not totally silent, the product remains fairly silent, in idle / desktop mode the fans won't even spin. 

	AMD Radeon R9 290X	AMD Radeon R9 290	AMD Radeon R9 390X	PowerColor R9 390X DEVIL
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	1000/1050MHz	1100MHz
Memory Clock	5GHz GDDR5	5GHz GDDR5	6GHz GDDR5	6.1 GHz 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	$429

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.