Didn't even watch this video yet but this GPU was truly a beast, used it until a week ago. The models with good coolers could clock to at least 1150mhz core clock which gave a good boost in performance for new games.
Mine doesn't go over 1100 MHz core clock :( but the memory clocks like 1650 MHz with no problem, lol. I've got the same SAPPHIRE card, modded the bios with my custom OC and no power limit and I use it with ArchLinux. Solid 60 fps in Nier Automata, drops to 45 fps here and there for a second, but that may well be because of Proton. Still a solid card for older games.
Interesting. My XFX 290x died a couple months ago! I got so much bang for buck out of that thing over the years. I was doing 4k gaming 1440p and 1080p depending on the game. It did it all
This is crazy how these old gpus perform well despite the power consumption. I recently kinda updated my GPU from a GTX 1650 to a R9 290 for 30 euros and in pure performance especially in older titles or even in elden ring my GTX 1650 gets outperformed. old but gold
i literally just swapped my r9 390 for an rx 5700xt, i got the r9 390 when i was looking for a better system when the prices of cards were skyrocketing and i found mine for £180, fantastic find, it took everything i threw at without issue
@@plasticelephant1969 I just got a 6600xt and honestly think I should’ve got a 5700xt. The performance loss is not much for almost being a hundred dollars cheaper on the used market. Very happy with my card and the purchase but I’m starting to notice older used cards that perform similarly for extremely cheap.
Elden Ring: Def set volumetrics to low and motion blur + DOF to off. Gains you 3-4 FPS without much influence on the optics. The volumetrics setting is especially important in areas w/ a lot of fog like Liurnia.
I had a xfx r9 380 with fan problems so i made use of 2 stock ryzen cooler fans and zipped tied to the heatsink was a fun little project and looks cool to boot
lmfao I've replaced my XFX R9 390's fans three times now. They're pretty weeny. This time I said "fuck the plastic fan shroud" and it made a HUGE difference actually. Laziness paid off for once. XD
The most impressive is that they have held up for so long and some still do, like the r9 270 being able to play some AAA titles from only a few years back (RDR2, or Horizon Zero Dawn.
R9 290 will run anything not dirext 12, but it needs to be shroud modes to reach full potencial, nothing a couple of P12 and zip ties can't archive on the cheap.
@@NikosM112 I think it's also pretty good overall, if you were still using one I don't think you'd yet feel a totally desperate need to replace it. I hope my 2060S ages this well, but it probably won't.
Great! i've always loved this GPUs. Maybe we could see a video with the nimez drivers to see the difference in the 390. Also a video on the R9 Fury or R9 nano would be cool. Always tought this were such cool cards with the HBM memory and how few there are.
hes got videos on the fury and nano, comparing the fury to a 1650 super in which it held up surprisingly well, a revisit would be very nice tho. used a fury until a few months back and it was a total beast, i love seeing people be surprised by these old cards and how well they perform
I actually own and use a Fury X to this day, at 1080p it holds up pretty well, but HBM while cool and fast, is just a limiting factor in games today with only 4 1gb chips.
My GTX1080 died last week, so I picked up a cheap R9 290 as a temporary replacement and gave it a good cleaning + new thermal paste. Paired with NimeZ drivers? It's holding its own surprisingly well.
Man... I also have a GTX 1080 rog strix and when I play games I hear a big (like coil whine) and then black screen but pc still works. Changed thermal paste but still nothing... I hope by changing thermal pads that it will work but I'm not optimistic.
@@Labrinos14 This is exactly why im rather saving up till i can actually afford a RTX3060Ti or RX6700xt as 2 years is nothing compared to 6 years, plus it sucks that our low range to midrange gpus can't fully beat a GTX 1080 from 2016/17 like why let the low end stagnate this badly seeing as the low end is where most sales are at i mean look at the GTX 1060 and its sales history...
@@xstongames4778 yes barely, the 60 series cards shouldve beaten the 1080 by the 20 series and by a good margin cause the demands on hardware skyrocketed from 2016 to 2021.
after giving away my 1060, hopped back on my r9 290x , even though some games simply won't run, for what I am using it for, it is definitely good enough, still hoping to upgrade to the 7900xt as long as I can get it at msrp.
I'm still using an R9 290X with the NimeZ drivers, and its good. Something I've noticed is that they seem to be overrated in the power consumption numbers, because both of the 290x's I've had never really went above 220ish watts. Although I'm planning on a 7000 series upgrade soon, because the 290x doesn't really cut it for high refresh rate lol.
I'm shocked your card is still alive, I had a 290x and it was a great performing card, but it was hot, power hungry and loud. Stuck a aftermarket cooler on it to cool it better, but it still eventually died.
@@GrumpyWolfTech depends who made your card i have like 12 ref 290xs mined gamed etc 24/7 all still alive Also you undervolt it fyi wont be as hot or power hungry and many modded bioses for it to tweak ram timings etc
@@GrumpyWolfTech i have the sapphire tri-x OC which has a better binned chip than most 290x cards, so it runs decently cool and pulls less power than a regular 290x. If im not mistaken my model of the card has a total board power limit of like 216 watts
In gaming, you wont see so much power consumption. I had an Sapphire R9 290 Tri-X OC, when running Folding@home , it can eat up 300+Watts on its own on heavy compute task.
@@gravitalez I don't run my R9 390 anymore, so I haven't tried the legacy drivers, but from what I've seen from videos, the nimez can be worth it especially with newer titles. FSR will definitely be the saving grace for the R9 390.
I had a r9 290, it was also a really strong card and only got replaced in 2020 when I needed something more VR capable. These cards were really a demo of what throwing watts at the problem can do. They can help a little with winter heating too
I managed to get an r9 380 for £25 about a month ago or so, still got to test it in games but I’m hopeful that I’ll get good frame rates in lighter titles
I still have an MSI 390x in my rig today and i got it to run my HTC Vice in 2016. I still can play Star Citizen (with a 5900x to be fair) and have been thinking about getting an after market 3080… It will pain me to say goodbye to this card since i’ve gotten WELL worth the 400$ i blew on it from my highschool ice cream scooping job. This card is STILL viable to this day. It’s a shame almost no one bought this gen and i love that you’re covering it man!
Many youtubers already did that, doesn't do much, just gets rid of flickering/texture issues in most (some) games & better support to newer features aswell. That's pretty much it.
I've never owned an AMD GPU but my first two laptops both had integrated ATI graphics... Not at all designed for gaming but that didn't stop me trying. The jump from my old single core laptop (can't remember the CPU but the GPU was an X1250) which could barely run Oblivion at lowest settings to my second laptop (again not sure on the CPU but GPU was a Radeon HD 4250) with two (!) CPU cores was insane at the time. Lots of good memories playing on those, before I cared about framerate or performance... Only exploring more of Cyrodiil was important to me back then.
I'm still using my almost decade-old, second hand R9-290 4GB and it surprises me which games it'll still handle at acceptable detail. Cyberpunk with FSR gets 45+ FPS, dipping in busy areas. Struggles a bit more with RDR2 but still very playable. It's the Sapphire Tri-X model and with a recent re-paste/pad jobby, the core never exceeds 60C and the VRMs stick below 70C. It was dropped by AMD drivers over a year ago sadly.
Just picked up 2 R9 390X's for €10(!!!) total, guy who sold em found them in his attic and thought one might be broken and couldn't be bothered to test them. Absolutely the best deal of my life. One went to my girlfriend (she had a Nvidia K2200 before), and the other which has slight overheating problems (probably fixed with a repaste) is going to me for some tinkering.
I used an r9 290x as a placeholder last year and it ran every game I usually play just fine on low with some medium textures. It was cool and quiet, very impressive for the age.
I have an R7 350 , it's a Dual Fan version from Sapphire , but I can't see any reviews of it on the internet. My issue with it is that it can't Open DMC 5 or similar games , it works very well for CS:GO , Valorant , etc E-Sports titles
@@roxymigurdia-t5p Wish they'd shipped with 6GB of HBM, at least. I know it wasn't physically possible at the time, but the 4GB limit is really showing its age. Otherwise it's still great, just gotta turn the settings down a bit and it'll run just about anything. Haven't found something it couldn't run whatsoever.
I was pretty hesitant to try some of the games in the video with my MSI R9 390 but I was pretty astonished to see that some of them run pretty well despite it being a dated GPU.
@@Krisztian5HUN oh yeah. I looked up the 290 and it was performing around the same as a gtx 1050 ti. AMD was a little ahead of Nvidia in direct X 12 feature support.
Hi mate, great review on the card, last night i picked up what i think was a bargain on ebay, it was a pretty old system that came with an i7 4790, gtx 970, 16gb ram, an ssd and a 3tb hdd, got it for only £57 haha
@@interrobangings yeah bro he told me if no one bid he would’ve taken it down to the recycling centre haha, i would’ve got it for £30 but someone tried to outbid in the last few seconds 😂
I have one of these (xfx black version) sat in a box unused as I replaced with a 1070ti. I remember it being quite a hot and toasty card, rather than cool and quiet, and had some heat-related stability issues as one of the vrms had absolutely no cooling attached to it whatsoever for some reason, so manually setting the fans higher was essential
AMD too early ending support, was the reason i switched to Nvidia. And the GTX 460 I purchased back then, was insanely long backed with drivers indeed! Love your videos, on top of the information you're talented storyteller :)
Bought mine 5-1/2 years ago for £130 for an absolute steel. Can't lie, was a little tempted to get rid when I saw them blast through the £300 price point in mining hike days. Decided not to in the end, and still run it today.
I still need to play Mafia Definitive Edition, absolutely loved the original when it came out... Great memories of that year... Morrowind, The Lord of the Rings films, the Star Wars: Episode II, Playstation 2, early days of mainstream internet adoption, skateboarding was a huge fad at school at the time, I was in year 6 of primary school if I remember correctly or perhaps year 7 starting secondary school.
Very cool! Did you know certain R9 390 can have shaders unlocked to make it effectively a 390X or close to it? When I got my xfx 390 from best buy I did so with the intention of using the lifetime warranty, Not only did the card not die on me in the 4 years I used it, it had unlockable shaders! Unlocked it ran at 1030mhz which was 20mhz shy of a real 390X but the free performance boost was really cool. I only upgraded it because it wasn't meeting my VR specs. If I didn't get VR I think I'd still be happily gaming on this card.
I loved my Sapphire 390, upgraded back in february to the RTX 3060. I probably would've continued using the card if it weren't for the games I had wanted newer drivers.
I’m still using my MSI R9 390 in November 2022. I bought it at released in 2015 and can’t believe it keeps going. I play at 1080P and it will run all modern games on medium settings. recently took it out of my rig, cleaned it and applied new thermal paste and under volted it and it’s never run cooler than now. I also just installed modded drivers for it and they are working well with modern titles. I am absolutely astonished at this card and I am dreading replacing it when I need to.
I just put my 390 on the bench, it won't play Fortnite with all the settings pretty much as low as you can go at 60fps, even overclocked it still had terrible 1% lows. I tried a third party driver which wouldn't work, the older of the two AMD drivers available was better. Trying to record the gameplay it was totally unplayable. It's heating my the rest of the system like an oven, it's only fit for the bin as it's consuming more electricity than it's actually worth. You can't use DX12 because the game says you need the latest windows 10 or 11 which I have.
Wow! This performed much better than I expected. I have GTX970 and it can still manage 1080p 60 fps in most titles if settings are medium or couple of cases low or high. I have Ryzen 7 2700X with it and 16gb dual channel ram.
People should definitely try this card on Linux. On Windows the card is unsupported, but Mesa/radeonsi still fully supports the card and is benefiting from all the newer optimizations, vulkan extensions, etc.
I got a used r9 390 in 2020. I was quite happy with the performance of it as I had upgraded from a rx 460, but about a year after AMD ending driver support. I had noticed graphical issues in fortnite, but not any other games. I replaced it with a rtx 3060 in may of 2022 which I still use today, and I can''t be happier with it.
Still running my sapphire nitro r9 fury, same situation with driver support. Card is still plenty fast to game, it's sad the lack of updates will kill it prematurely
Not bad for a 7-year-old card, a good backup just in case you brick your primary card and need to RMA it. After 5 to 6 years, I upgrade the cards or designate them as a backup when I get a new one. AMD is okay with giving up support for older cards when you have a few good options for the low end, and most people already upgrade to the latest GPU, those that can't afford it would most likely see the previous generation or two for the cheap. There is usually a cut-off point for people on how low they are willing to go when getting new (old) PC hardware for daily use. Those sitting on legacy hardware are a niche for companies like AMD, Intel, and Nvidia thus, they stop supporting them. However, that does not mean they are not functionable, they still work, but your mileage may vary on newer games or getting driver support.
I'm still running this card since it came out. It has held up quite well for me over these years. Though it's a real space heater, a bit hard to use in the summer without AC. I think it also needs a repaste, as it is hitting the 94C thermal throttling limit. I upgraded my monitors to 1440p recently and is what is really going to force me to get a new card.
Yeah, I bought one (well 390x specifically) back in the day because the common consensus was that it was "a good 1440p GPU." It really wasn't, not if you wanted solid 60 FPS and decent settings. It wasn't TERRIBLE, but I definitely felt as though I overspent for a GPU that underdelivered. Thing also really struggles with volumetric fog really badly, but hey...if I had done more thorough research first and thusly knew it was a rebranded 7850 with higher clocks and more vRAM I would have skipped it. I since have learned to research more thoroughly before upgrading, I felt like I got burned on this one.
I install this on my pc and I mostly do racing games I always get over 60fps on high settings sometimes max on 1440p monitor. It’s been nearly a decade since I got this card.
I have a blower-style Radeon R9 390x in one of my test systems. That card has some crazy flaw, where the fan curve wouldn't even begin ramping up until it's at 85°C, and then it wouldn't spin up quick enough to counteract the temp buildup. Just as the fans reach 50%, the card hits 100°C and crashes. To make matters worse, Adrenaline doesn't allow for fan curve editing for this model of card, so I either have to use Afterburner, or manually crank up the fans while gaming using Open Hardware Monitor. Otherwise - a very slick and powerful card!: )
bought the powercolor pcs+ triplefan one for 155€ in the used market back in 2017, sold for the same amount 4years later after getting my rx 6800 at msrp, so i just had zero loss and much fun :D
I still have a soft spot for this exact card myself, replaced it with Aorus GTX 1060 6 GB a few years back and have now replaced that with a 3060 but both of those older cards live on happily in my kid's PCs. Wouldn't mind finding another cheap R9 390 though to mess around with SLI.
Had a reference 390 in my office pc for around 2 years. Started to show its age, but what an absolute beast it was considering said age. Plus it kept my calves warm.
I can see why AMD put this card in legacy status. It didn't sell very well and it's basically a slightly overclocked R9 290 with double the RAM. The 290 was also released 9 years ago. Personally I'd love to see more driver updates for the 6xxx series of cards. Hopefully AMD can fix the multi-monitor issue I'm having with my 6600 XT since it was never an issue for my 1060 or 750ti.
I have its bigger brother the R9 Fury but it only has 4gb of vram. What makes these cards great are their HBM memory which allows for faster than normal texture renderings.
My only AMD card was the X1650 XT, I bought it as a replacement for my 7600GS with passive cooling. Had roughly the same performance and I no longer had massive graphical glitches after playing 30-60 minutes.
@@gravitalez used MSI afterburner. Use the core voltage slider and keep moving it down and stressing it until it’s happy. Think I used to get mine to -120mv.
@@gravitalez tbh bud I sold my PC about 3 years ago and moved to a gaming laptop. If I still had it I’d probably just use the last driver AMD released or sell the gpu, then upgrade
I'm still using this card but the MSI version with 2 big fans. Bought this card in my last PC build in 2015 to play FO4. I think that in your test using a more modern CPU helped a lot. Some of those games don't run as smoothly with my i5 6600K cpu. I'm looking for an upgrade of the system this year but this card still does the job pretty well in 1080p on most games.
i have the exact same setup as you and got the PC for FO4 too, lol. my 6600K is OC'd to 4.6 with 1.34v. and my 390 is heavily undervolted (needed) with MSI afterburner with stock clocks.
This card is absolutely brilliant. Shame I'd have to unplug the fridge to use it. I have an R9 280 that I recently cleaned and re-pasted. She's still going strong.
My first GPU She served me well. Only complaint I ever had was that this thing ran SO HOT. It kept my room very hot. Additionally, the lack of a good hardware encoder sucked for streaming. Think about it though. This card had 8gb of vram 7 years before it was the norm. In fact at the time, nvidia didn’t even have anything at 8gb Truly a card ahead of its time and one of my favorites.
Haha i remember i picked it up for 50 € and gave it too an good friend for 90 in the gpu shortage where they where I like 200-300 at least. He still rocks this card and ist super happy
Not sure if you're using Nimes drivers, but those have definitely given the card a lot more life and boost performance beyond the last available Radeon WHQL drivers. Give it a try! Might be great content for a future comparison video vs Radeon drivers 😏
That is an amazing deal! I managed to get my hands on an Asus Strix GTX 980 4GB for £40 just because the person did not know how to install drivers and were selling it for spares or repair
Bought this card for 444 CAD in 2015. Had an issue with drivers crashing DX12 until the end of 2015 but it was fantastic after. Traded it for a GTX 1060 3gb, which I traded for a 980 plus a bit of cash in 2018
If you hadn’t told us what it was immediately, I would’ve assumed it was still a pretty recent card. Not bad at all AMD
Yeah it’s held up well in terms of looks as well!
The wattage is the only deal breaker for me. That daaaaammmn TDP.
@@natejennings5884 Total power consumption is only going up it seems.
@@natejennings5884 loool then dont buy the new cards they have even higher TDP
Sapphire nitro cards always look slick
Didn't even watch this video yet but this GPU was truly a beast, used it until a week ago. The models with good coolers could clock to at least 1150mhz core clock which gave a good boost in performance for new games.
I used a 290 till about a few weeks ago too, I bought that gpu in 2014, insane how long that one lasted me.
Mine doesn't go over 1100 MHz core clock :( but the memory clocks like 1650 MHz with no problem, lol. I've got the same SAPPHIRE card, modded the bios with my custom OC and no power limit and I use it with ArchLinux. Solid 60 fps in Nier Automata, drops to 45 fps here and there for a second, but that may well be because of Proton. Still a solid card for older games.
and good boost to heating your home lol
Interesting. My XFX 290x died a couple months ago! I got so much bang for buck out of that thing over the years. I was doing 4k gaming 1440p and 1080p depending on the game. It did it all
Same here man wouldve gone for 2 more years I bet but I spilled on my psu and fried the motherboard and maybe the card
The fact a 3070 has the same VRAM is mind blowing.
Yeah this was ahead of its time
The 30 series probably won't get the same praise for forward thinking on vram in 7 years
@@xTheUnderscorex yeah, the 3080Ti would be great but it was extremely overpriced for the majority of its lifetime. Now, the 1080Ti, that is a legend.
@@denisruskin348 id say the 1000 series was the best Nvidia launched, great prices, great cards, and nice timing of launch
@@ScoutCounterAttacks and yet many people mock pascal back then as paxwell.
This is crazy how these old gpus perform well despite the power consumption. I recently kinda updated my GPU from a GTX 1650 to a R9 290 for 30 euros and in pure performance especially in older titles or even in elden ring my GTX 1650 gets outperformed.
old but gold
Of course it gets outperformed. 290 is way closer to 1650S than 1650. The 1650 is closer to 280-280X.
i literally just swapped my r9 390 for an rx 5700xt, i got the r9 390 when i was looking for a better system when the prices of cards were skyrocketing and i found mine for £180, fantastic find, it took everything i threw at without issue
rx 5700xt is a fantastic card, beating Turing RTX lower end cards
just did the exact same, happy gaming broski
Dude same lmao
Got myself sapphire pulse variant
But i got my r9 390 for 40 bucks lmao
@@aqyx There is a patern here lol
@@plasticelephant1969 I just got a 6600xt and honestly think I should’ve got a 5700xt. The performance loss is not much for almost being a hundred dollars cheaper on the used market. Very happy with my card and the purchase but I’m starting to notice older used cards that perform similarly for extremely cheap.
Elden Ring: Def set volumetrics to low and motion blur + DOF to off. Gains you 3-4 FPS without much influence on the optics. The volumetrics setting is especially important in areas w/ a lot of fog like Liurnia.
I had a xfx r9 380 with fan problems so i made use of 2 stock ryzen cooler fans and zipped tied to the heatsink was a fun little project and looks cool to boot
lmfao I've replaced my XFX R9 390's fans three times now. They're pretty weeny. This time I said "fuck the plastic fan shroud" and it made a HUGE difference actually. Laziness paid off for once. XD
The most impressive is that they have held up for so long and some still do, like the r9 270 being able to play some AAA titles from only a few years back (RDR2, or Horizon Zero Dawn.
R9 290 will run anything not dirext 12, but it needs to be shroud modes to reach full potencial, nothing a couple of P12 and zip ties can't archive on the cheap.
That 8GB frame buffer is really holding this card up, shame they couldn't keep supporting it for another year but thems the breaks I suppose.
It's still perfect for esports title gamers.
@@NikosM112
I think it's also pretty good overall, if you were still using one I don't think you'd yet feel a totally desperate need to replace it. I hope my 2060S ages this well, but it probably won't.
I mean they dropped support for it in June 2021…
NimeZ drivers are a thing and they work
Could support it ofc, but they wouldn't. AMD are disgusting.
Great! i've always loved this GPUs. Maybe we could see a video with the nimez drivers to see the difference in the 390. Also a video on the R9 Fury or R9 nano would be cool. Always tought this were such cool cards with the HBM memory and how few there are.
hes got videos on the fury and nano, comparing the fury to a 1650 super in which it held up surprisingly well, a revisit would be very nice tho. used a fury until a few months back and it was a total beast, i love seeing people be surprised by these old cards and how well they perform
@@sandrocarletto9386 Yeah, maybe a revisit with custom drivers. They do at least a great job with the HD 7 series
I love how smol HBM cards can be.
I actually own and use a Fury X to this day, at 1080p it holds up pretty well, but HBM while cool and fast, is just a limiting factor in games today with only 4 1gb chips.
My GTX1080 died last week, so I picked up a cheap R9 290 as a temporary replacement and gave it a good cleaning + new thermal paste. Paired with NimeZ drivers? It's holding its own surprisingly well.
Man... I also have a GTX 1080 rog strix and when I play games I hear a big (like coil whine) and then black screen but pc still works. Changed thermal paste but still nothing... I hope by changing thermal pads that it will work but I'm not optimistic.
@@Labrinos14 This is exactly why im rather saving up till i can actually afford a RTX3060Ti or RX6700xt as 2 years is nothing compared to 6 years, plus it sucks that our low range to midrange gpus can't fully beat a GTX 1080 from 2016/17 like why let the low end stagnate this badly seeing as the low end is where most sales are at i mean look at the GTX 1060 and its sales history...
@@EBMproductions1 the 3060 beats the GTX 1080Ti , while the rx 6600 also comes close to beating it
@@xstongames4778 yes barely, the 60 series cards shouldve beaten the 1080 by the 20 series and by a good margin cause the demands on hardware skyrocketed from 2016 to 2021.
after giving away my 1060, hopped back on my r9 290x , even though some games simply won't run, for what I am using it for, it is definitely good enough, still hoping to upgrade to the 7900xt as long as I can get it at msrp.
I'm still using an R9 290X with the NimeZ drivers, and its good. Something I've noticed is that they seem to be overrated in the power consumption numbers, because both of the 290x's I've had never really went above 220ish watts. Although I'm planning on a 7000 series upgrade soon, because the 290x doesn't really cut it for high refresh rate lol.
I'm shocked your card is still alive, I had a 290x and it was a great performing card, but it was hot, power hungry and loud. Stuck a aftermarket cooler on it to cool it better, but it still eventually died.
@@GrumpyWolfTech depends who made your card i have like 12 ref 290xs mined gamed etc 24/7 all still alive
Also you undervolt it fyi wont be as hot or power hungry and many modded bioses for it to tweak ram timings etc
@@GrumpyWolfTech i have the sapphire tri-x OC which has a better binned chip than most 290x cards, so it runs decently cool and pulls less power than a regular 290x. If im not mistaken my model of the card has a total board power limit of like 216 watts
In gaming, you wont see so much power consumption. I had an Sapphire R9 290 Tri-X OC, when running Folding@home , it can eat up 300+Watts on its own on heavy compute task.
@Tobster What are NimeZ drivers?
Used to own an R9 390, it was a great card, glad to see it's still a very capable card in 2022.
I got mine in early 2016 for $270 and served me well until I upgraded to the rx5700 non xt. Still going strong!
I still have my MSI R9 390. Loved that card, could run Doom 2016 with max settings in 1440p and get 60+ fps. Great video!
One question, I have the same gpu and my last update is from 2021, it is not possible to update to a newer one. Is it like this with all r9 390?
@@ethanr7789 Thank you! If researching I also read that the legacy drivers (2022) can be installed, are they worth it anyway? have you tried them?
@@gravitalez I don't run my R9 390 anymore, so I haven't tried the legacy drivers, but from what I've seen from videos, the nimez can be worth it especially with newer titles. FSR will definitely be the saving grace for the R9 390.
I had a r9 290, it was also a really strong card and only got replaced in 2020 when I needed something more VR capable. These cards were really a demo of what throwing watts at the problem can do. They can help a little with winter heating too
I managed to get an r9 380 for £25 about a month ago or so, still got to test it in games but I’m hopeful that I’ll get good frame rates in lighter titles
Is this the 7950? I used one a 280 briefly a few years ago and it constantly surprised me.
@@paddyodoors2757 slightly better then a 7950 with an extra gb of VRAM
I still have an MSI 390x in my rig today and i got it to run my HTC Vice in 2016. I still can play Star Citizen (with a 5900x to be fair) and have been thinking about getting an after market 3080… It will pain me to say goodbye to this card since i’ve gotten WELL worth the 400$ i blew on it from my highschool ice cream scooping job.
This card is STILL viable to this day. It’s a shame almost no one bought this gen and i love that you’re covering it man!
Would love to see a comparison between its performance with the stock drivers vs the Anermine/NimeZ drivers!
Many youtubers already did that, doesn't do much, just gets rid of flickering/texture issues in most (some) games & better support to newer features aswell.
That's pretty much it.
I've never owned an AMD GPU but my first two laptops both had integrated ATI graphics... Not at all designed for gaming but that didn't stop me trying. The jump from my old single core laptop (can't remember the CPU but the GPU was an X1250) which could barely run Oblivion at lowest settings to my second laptop (again not sure on the CPU but GPU was a Radeon HD 4250) with two (!) CPU cores was insane at the time. Lots of good memories playing on those, before I cared about framerate or performance... Only exploring more of Cyrodiil was important to me back then.
I'm still using my almost decade-old, second hand R9-290 4GB and it surprises me which games it'll still handle at acceptable detail. Cyberpunk with FSR gets 45+ FPS, dipping in busy areas. Struggles a bit more with RDR2 but still very playable. It's the Sapphire Tri-X model and with a recent re-paste/pad jobby, the core never exceeds 60C and the VRMs stick below 70C. It was dropped by AMD drivers over a year ago sadly.
Just picked up 2 R9 390X's for €10(!!!) total, guy who sold em found them in his attic and thought one might be broken and couldn't be bothered to test them. Absolutely the best deal of my life. One went to my girlfriend (she had a Nvidia K2200 before), and the other which has slight overheating problems (probably fixed with a repaste) is going to me for some tinkering.
I had an R9 390 some years ago before upgrading to my Titan X (Maxwell), and loved everything about the card. Still holds up well today.
I used an r9 290x as a placeholder last year and it ran every game I usually play just fine on low with some medium textures. It was cool and quiet, very impressive for the age.
I used to have one of these, I gave it to a friend when I upgraded to a 2060 KO and as far as I know, he's still using it daily!
I have an R7 350 , it's a Dual Fan version from Sapphire , but I can't see any reviews of it on the internet. My issue with it is that it can't Open DMC 5 or similar games , it works very well for CS:GO , Valorant , etc E-Sports titles
I had R7 360 and that card was unbelievable.. for the money it was a beast but underrated by many people
Still using an R9 Fury with the Amernime/Nimez drivers. It's fantastic.
Yeah those drivers are great
@@RandomGaminginHD YOU'RE great.
Miss my old R9 Fury X. I should have held onto it!
@@roxymigurdia-t5p Wish they'd shipped with 6GB of HBM, at least. I know it wasn't physically possible at the time, but the 4GB limit is really showing its age. Otherwise it's still great, just gotta turn the settings down a bit and it'll run just about anything. Haven't found something it couldn't run whatsoever.
I was pretty hesitant to try some of the games in the video with my MSI R9 390 but I was pretty astonished to see that some of them run pretty well despite it being a dated GPU.
almost same as the R9 290
290/390 still a beast card, and almost 10yo.... crazy!
Except the 290 doesn't support dx12 fully.
@@samuelswenson1505 290 and 390 same GCN 2.0 architecture same DirectX
12 (12_0) feature level
@@Krisztian5HUN oh yeah. I looked up the 290 and it was performing around the same as a gtx 1050 ti. AMD was a little ahead of Nvidia in direct X 12 feature support.
Hi mate, great review on the card, last night i picked up what i think was a bargain on ebay, it was a pretty old system that came with an i7 4790, gtx 970, 16gb ram, an ssd and a 3tb hdd, got it for only £57 haha
That’s a ridiculous bargain haha, well done
That's a fucking steal!!!!!
@@interrobangings yeah bro he told me if no one bid he would’ve taken it down to the recycling centre haha, i would’ve got it for £30 but someone tried to outbid in the last few seconds 😂
@@danr1795 whatcha gonna do with it
@@interrobangings probably just keep it for a little while then once I can get a decent system, either sell it or something
I have one of these (xfx black version) sat in a box unused as I replaced with a 1070ti. I remember it being quite a hot and toasty card, rather than cool and quiet, and had some heat-related stability issues as one of the vrms had absolutely no cooling attached to it whatsoever for some reason, so manually setting the fans higher was essential
I have one, and finally put it to rest, ran legacy drivers and surprisingly it held up really well on medium settings for alot of games
AMD too early ending support, was the reason i switched to Nvidia. And the GTX 460 I purchased back then, was insanely long backed with drivers indeed!
Love your videos, on top of the information you're talented storyteller :)
i didn't expect a 7 y/o card to perform this well, i can only hope my card will keep up for as long!
The 1060 is almost 7yo and it performs much better than the 390.
I had one of these over the past winter. It kept my room quite warm.
Bought mine 5-1/2 years ago for £130 for an absolute steel. Can't lie, was a little tempted to get rid when I saw them blast through the £300 price point in mining hike days. Decided not to in the end, and still run it today.
I still need to play Mafia Definitive Edition, absolutely loved the original when it came out... Great memories of that year... Morrowind, The Lord of the Rings films, the Star Wars: Episode II, Playstation 2, early days of mainstream internet adoption, skateboarding was a huge fad at school at the time, I was in year 6 of primary school if I remember correctly or perhaps year 7 starting secondary school.
lovely location you got there - nice! another great vid. i got the 380 4gb nitro - shockingly good card even today.
Very cool! Did you know certain R9 390 can have shaders unlocked to make it effectively a 390X or close to it?
When I got my xfx 390 from best buy I did so with the intention of using the lifetime warranty, Not only did the card not die on me in the 4 years I used it, it had unlockable shaders! Unlocked it ran at 1030mhz which was 20mhz shy of a real 390X but the free performance boost was really cool. I only upgraded it because it wasn't meeting my VR specs. If I didn't get VR I think I'd still be happily gaming on this card.
Still a great performing GPU which software support was cut waaaay short imo. Btw, gorgeous sunset 🌅
I loved my Sapphire 390, upgraded back in february to the RTX 3060. I probably would've continued using the card if it weren't for the games I had wanted newer drivers.
Nimez drivers exist, but ya I know what you mean
despite the fact that they exist and are installed successfully, it still did not help me run the talos principle 2
It's also one of the first mainstream GPU to have 8gb of VRAM. I had an MSI R9 390 that I used for 5 years but unfortunately died during stress test.
I loved mine. The sapphire nitro plus cards were beastly. Overvolt the men controller 50-74mv and you could get quite a bit more mem speed too.
39 quid for this R9 390? Damnnn, these have the same performance as the RX 580 but they consume quite a lot more
Yeah got lucky with this one
I’m still using my MSI R9 390 in November 2022. I bought it at released in 2015 and can’t believe it keeps going. I play at 1080P and it will run all modern games on medium settings. recently took it out of my rig, cleaned it and applied new thermal paste and under volted it and it’s never run cooler than now. I also just installed modded drivers for it and they are working well with modern titles. I am absolutely astonished at this card and I am dreading replacing it when I need to.
I just put my 390 on the bench, it won't play Fortnite with all the settings pretty much as low as you can go at 60fps, even overclocked it still had terrible 1% lows. I tried a third party driver which wouldn't work, the older of the two AMD drivers available was better. Trying to record the gameplay it was totally unplayable. It's heating my the rest of the system like an oven, it's only fit for the bin as it's consuming more electricity than it's actually worth. You can't use DX12 because the game says you need the latest windows 10 or 11 which I have.
The first computer I ever built had an R series card, this brought back so many memories
Wow! This performed much better than I expected. I have GTX970 and it can still manage 1080p 60 fps in most titles if settings are medium or couple of cases low or high. I have Ryzen 7 2700X with it and 16gb dual channel ram.
People should definitely try this card on Linux. On Windows the card is unsupported, but Mesa/radeonsi still fully supports the card and is benefiting from all the newer optimizations, vulkan extensions, etc.
Damn, you dropped this just as they updated it with FSR 2.1, which would have made it more interesting. Time for medium settings testing, I guess.
I got a used r9 390 in 2020. I was quite happy with the performance of it as I had upgraded from a rx 460, but about a year after AMD ending driver support. I had noticed graphical issues in fortnite, but not any other games. I replaced it with a rtx 3060 in may of 2022 which I still use today, and I can''t be happier with it.
I don't know what you where expecting when buying a at the time of purchase 7 year old gpu architecture.
@@screwb1882 I didn't buy it a friend gave it to me
the r9 fury x is one of my favorite cards. You can get them nowadays for under 100$.
The fury nano is also great, but harder to find.
Still running my sapphire nitro r9 fury, same situation with driver support. Card is still plenty fast to game, it's sad the lack of updates will kill it prematurely
Not bad for a 7-year-old card, a good backup just in case you brick your primary card and need to RMA it. After 5 to 6 years, I upgrade the cards or designate them as a backup when I get a new one. AMD is okay with giving up support for older cards when you have a few good options for the low end, and most people already upgrade to the latest GPU, those that can't afford it would most likely see the previous generation or two for the cheap.
There is usually a cut-off point for people on how low they are willing to go when getting new (old) PC hardware for daily use. Those sitting on legacy hardware are a niche for companies like AMD, Intel, and Nvidia thus, they stop supporting them. However, that does not mean they are not functionable, they still work, but your mileage may vary on newer games or getting driver support.
I'm still running this card since it came out. It has held up quite well for me over these years. Though it's a real space heater, a bit hard to use in the summer without AC. I think it also needs a repaste, as it is hitting the 94C thermal throttling limit. I upgraded my monitors to 1440p recently and is what is really going to force me to get a new card.
Yeah, I bought one (well 390x specifically) back in the day because the common consensus was that it was "a good 1440p GPU." It really wasn't, not if you wanted solid 60 FPS and decent settings. It wasn't TERRIBLE, but I definitely felt as though I overspent for a GPU that underdelivered. Thing also really struggles with volumetric fog really badly, but hey...if I had done more thorough research first and thusly knew it was a rebranded 7850 with higher clocks and more vRAM I would have skipped it. I since have learned to research more thoroughly before upgrading, I felt like I got burned on this one.
I install this on my pc and I mostly do racing games I always get over 60fps on high settings sometimes max on 1440p monitor. It’s been nearly a decade since I got this card.
The only problem with the R9 390 is the lack of hardware HEVC decoder to play video. It doesn't support VP9 hardware decode for UA-cam videos too.
I have a blower-style Radeon R9 390x in one of my test systems. That card has some crazy flaw, where the fan curve wouldn't even begin ramping up until it's at 85°C, and then it wouldn't spin up quick enough to counteract the temp buildup. Just as the fans reach 50%, the card hits 100°C and crashes. To make matters worse, Adrenaline doesn't allow for fan curve editing for this model of card, so I either have to use Afterburner, or manually crank up the fans while gaming using Open Hardware Monitor. Otherwise - a very slick and powerful card!: )
Energy efficiency: meh Performance: Still adequate in 2022 for 1080p games. Highly recommended w/ Linux. Btw this thing can do FreeSync.
bought the powercolor pcs+ triplefan one for 155€ in the used market back in 2017, sold for the same amount 4years later after getting my rx 6800 at msrp, so i just had zero loss and much fun :D
Regardless of it losing driver support it still holds its own in 2022. Did not do too bad in the benchmarks. Amazing card AMD.
I still have a soft spot for this exact card myself, replaced it with Aorus GTX 1060 6 GB a few years back and have now replaced that with a 3060 but both of those older cards live on happily in my kid's PCs. Wouldn't mind finding another cheap R9 390 though to mess around with SLI.
On Linux, AMDGPU driver maybe can make this card be alive for more years
Had a reference 390 in my office pc for around 2 years. Started to show its age, but what an absolute beast it was considering said age.
Plus it kept my calves warm.
I can see why AMD put this card in legacy status. It didn't sell very well and it's basically a slightly overclocked R9 290 with double the RAM. The 290 was also released 9 years ago.
Personally I'd love to see more driver updates for the 6xxx series of cards. Hopefully AMD can fix the multi-monitor issue I'm having with my 6600 XT since it was never an issue for my 1060 or 750ti.
I still have my sapphire nitro r9 390 that i bought in 2015. Still kicking, definitely making it one of the best gpus for the money ever made.
R9 390 is my current card! Its great! Been using it since my R9 Fury died...
I found one for dirt cheap and it is at the heart of my linux gaming machine where it might be timeless!
I have its bigger brother the R9 Fury but it only has 4gb of vram. What makes these cards great are their HBM memory which allows for faster than normal texture renderings.
Ran one of these cards until last week when it finally gave out there good cards and perfect for budget builds and run pretty good
what did you end up getting? im looking to upgrade this year
Future Linux gaming Card with Community drivers :D
Yes, they changed the settings around in Cyberpunk 2077 (Patch 1.6); all but Ultra are slightly tweaked.
I bought the same model in 2016, and it was really a beast at that time..
its amazing to me how modern it looks, it could easily pass as 6800xt with that looks
I am still using this card, got it for free in 2020 during the gpu raids and it heats as well!!
I had this card on release... came in my brand new Macintosh Plus.
rx 480 8gb owner still here i have a an arctic accelero xtreme IV cooler with liquid metal on the cpu and this gpu is giving me its life line..
My only AMD card was the X1650 XT, I bought it as a replacement for my 7600GS with passive cooling. Had roughly the same performance and I no longer had massive graphical glitches after playing 30-60 minutes.
My first PC had a i5 4460 and MSI R9 390. It was a beast of an under volter too, made it run much cooler
Same here. How do you do it with the drivers? My last update is from 2021
@@gravitalez used MSI afterburner. Use the core voltage slider and keep moving it down and stressing it until it’s happy. Think I used to get mine to -120mv.
@@smyth0109 Thanks I'll try! Regarding the drivers, have you installed an alternative like Nimez or have you left the legacy drivers?
@@gravitalez tbh bud I sold my PC about 3 years ago and moved to a gaming laptop. If I still had it I’d probably just use the last driver AMD released or sell the gpu, then upgrade
I'm still using this card but the MSI version with 2 big fans. Bought this card in my last PC build in 2015 to play FO4. I think that in your test using a more modern CPU helped a lot. Some of those games don't run as smoothly with my i5 6600K cpu. I'm looking for an upgrade of the system this year but this card still does the job pretty well in 1080p on most games.
i have the exact same setup as you and got the PC for FO4 too, lol. my 6600K is OC'd to 4.6 with 1.34v. and my 390 is heavily undervolted (needed) with MSI afterburner with stock clocks.
That is my card! It still works fine for me, I love it.
Sold my one last year after years of faithful 1440p service. A solid beast of a card - runs a little warm, but it's decent
This card is absolutely brilliant. Shame I'd have to unplug the fridge to use it. I have an R9 280 that I recently cleaned and re-pasted. She's still going strong.
Yup, my 290X I bought in 2013 lasted me until 2019 when I upgraded simply because 4gb of vram was no longer enough for me at 4k.
My first GPU
She served me well. Only complaint I ever had was that this thing ran SO HOT. It kept my room very hot. Additionally, the lack of a good hardware encoder sucked for streaming.
Think about it though. This card had 8gb of vram 7 years before it was the norm. In fact at the time, nvidia didn’t even have anything at 8gb
Truly a card ahead of its time and one of my favorites.
I had the previous r9 290x as a backup card until 2020. It used a lot of power and got pretty warm.
I have this card it held up very nice can still play newer games with it
i bought a mined 290 in 2014, still working until now, esport high refresh rate at 1440p are easy since its basically is rx470
Im using right now an R9 290X 4GB to play Genshin Impact at 1440P Med preset. Still kicking
Legendary gpu. The Sapphire Nitro was one of the best versions of the 390.
Haha i remember i picked it up for 50 € and gave it too an good friend for 90 in the gpu shortage where they where I like 200-300 at least. He still rocks this card and ist super happy
Not sure if you're using Nimes drivers, but those have definitely given the card a lot more life and boost performance beyond the last available Radeon WHQL drivers. Give it a try! Might be great content for a future comparison video vs Radeon drivers 😏
That is an amazing deal! I managed to get my hands on an Asus Strix GTX 980 4GB for £40 just because the person did not know how to install drivers and were selling it for spares or repair
This is why i respect and buy NVIDIA, i'm too poor to not get driver updates that fast.
nice looking R9 390 THANK YOU FOR SHARING THIS AMAZING VIDEO
Bought this card for 444 CAD in 2015. Had an issue with drivers crashing DX12 until the end of 2015 but it was fantastic after. Traded it for a GTX 1060 3gb, which I traded for a 980 plus a bit of cash in 2018
I use Nimez Drivers on both HD6950@70 / R9 390
Works like a charm.
Can definitely recommend the nimez drivers for any older unsupported amd gpu.
A few years back I was getting these so cheap and would use them in plenty of budget builds.
I remember the r9 390 v gtx 970 debate. good times
I have this laying around and am contemplating whether to switch it out with my current HD 7600. Not an AMD fan specifically, but just feels right.