Beautiful cards don’t come by often, at least that’s how I feel about the industry, the PowerColor’s R9 390 is probably the best looking one around.
If this card with tri-fan cooling system looks familiar, you’re right and you’ve probably paid enough attention to my articles. 😀 It’s the same card used in my Cooler Master MasterCase Pro 5 modification.
The card uses 8pin and 6pin PCI-E connection, this means the possible power draw goes up to some 300W.
The PowerColor PCS+ R9 390 8GB comes with a backplate, making it a very weighty card while.
The heatsink shroud design is unique, with the shroud extending far to the front which I think is nice touch as it serves as a support to PCI-E cables.
As for the I/O port, I’m quite surprised to see it has only 1x HDMI and 1x DisplayPort with 2 DVI ports.
Here’s the GPU-Z of the card.
Test Setup
| Processor | Intel Core i5-4670K |
| RAM | AVEXIR Blitz 2x 4GB 1600Mhz DDR3 |
| Motherboard | ASRock Z87 Extreme4 |
| Cooler | NZXT Kraken X31 |
| Monitor | Dell UP3214Q |
| Power Supply | FSP AURUM S 700W |
| Casing | NZXT S340 |
| Operating System | Windows 10 64bit |
Overclocking
Overclocking was rather limited, I managed to add 100Mhz to the core clock and 150Mhz to the memory, the card did show some performance boost despite the limitation.
Benchmarks
Unigine Heaven 4.0
*NOTE : Details are set to maximum.
*NOTE : AA disabled in 4K test.
| Card | 1080p (avg) | 4K (avg) |
| PowerColor PCS+ R9 390 8GB | 56.3 | 15.2 |
| PowerColor PCS+ R9 390 8GB Overclocked | 60.4 | 16.4 |
| EVGA GTX 970 ACX 2.0+ (REF) | 53.8 | 13.8 |
| ASUS GTX 960 Turbo | 33.2 | N/A |
| Reference GTX 980 | 65 | 17 |
Metro Last Light
| Card | 1080p (avg) | 4K (avg) |
| PowerColor PCS+ R9 390 8GB | 77.5 | 27 |
| PowerColor PCS+ R9 390 8GB Overclocked | 81.5 | 29 |
| EVGA GTX 970 ACX 2.0+ (REF) | 80 | 29 |
| ASUS GTX 960 Turbo | 55.0 | N/A |
| Reference GTX 980 | 88 | 33 |
Bioshock Infinite
Settings are at
2 – UltraDX11_DDOF | 2 – Custom | 1 – 16:9 | 4 – FullHD / 4K
| Card | 1080p (avg) | 4K (avg) |
| PowerColor PCS+ R9 390 8GB | 111 | 37.83 |
| PowerColor PCS+ R9 390 8GB Overclocked | 117.8 | 40.63 |
| EVGA GTX 970 ACX 2.0+ (REF) | 112 | 37 |
| ASUS GTX 960 Turbo | 75.04 | N/A |
| Reference GTX 980 | 123 | 43 |
Shadow of Mordor
Settings : Set to ULTRA, V-sync off.
| Card | 1080p (avg) | 4K (avg) |
| PowerColor PCS+ R9 390 8GB | 91.7 | 38.71 |
| PowerColor PCS+ R9 390 8GB Overclocked | 98.67 | 41.99 |
| EVGA GTX 970 ACX 2.0+ (REF) | 71 | 30 |
| ASUS GTX 960 Turbo | 46.62 | N/A |
| Reference GTX 980 | 92 | 38 |
Grand Theft Auto V
Settings : Every option to the MAX setting available.
| Card | 1080p (avg) | 4K (avg) |
| PowerColor PCS+ R9 390 8GB | 39 | 31 |
| PowerColor PCS+ R9 390 8GB Overclocked | 44 | 32 |
| EVGA GTX 970 ACX 2.0+ (REF) | 37 | 27 |
| ASUS GTX 960 Turbo | 23.4 | N/A |
| Reference GTX 980 | 44 | 32 |
To summarize – the performance is absolutely beautiful, especially when it’s comparable to the more expensive GTX 970 and in some games like Shadow of Mordor, the 8GB available to the R9 390 widens the performance gap!
Temperature
Furmark Burn-in Test was used to stress the card. Fan settings are at Auto. Room set to ~25c.
| Card | Idle(°C) | Load (°C) |
| PowerColor PCS+ R9 390 8GB | 35 | 65 |
| PowerColor PCS+ R9 390 8GB Full RPM | 30 | 59 |
The fan hovers at around 56% on AUTO settings where the audio level.
Power Consumption
The stress was done with Furmark Burn-in Test. Power consumption reading was taken from the watt-meter, actual power draw by the entire system from the wall point. I’m using an FSP Aurum S 700W with 90% efficiency and the estimated system power draw (CPU, not including GPU) during Furmark test is 60w.
| Card | PowerColor PCS+ R9 390 8GB |
| Furmark Burn-in | 366 |
| Estimated Actual System Draw | 306 |
| Estimated Card Power Draw | 275 |
The power draw is HIGH – Sure, Furmark tests draw more power than usual so in normal gaming conditions it’ll hover around 260W range.
The Verdict
The PowerColor PCS+ R9 390 8GB GDDR5 Graphics Card retails at 1499, an awesome choice when it comes great value in price to performance ratio. The only downside is that it draws a lot of power, around 50% more than that of a GTX 970. It’s not a huge issue though, a good 600W PSU would be more than enough to deal with it.
What do I think of this card? HIGHLY RECOMMENDED if you intend to keep your budget under RM 1,500 and it looks great too with that sleek back plate.
