The Radeon R9 390 and 390X Aren’t Rebadges

The Radeon R9 390 and 390X Aren’t Rebadges

Does anyone really believe them? seriously?
Huge number of people have managed to flash 290x bios to 390x(me included). Who are they trying to fool?

 

As far as I understood is that they juse use higher binned 290x's for their 390(x) line-up.

 

They simply say that officially that bios will only be for the 390(x). The same they did with the 7970/280x.

 

Some vendors like MSI did it before this clear rebrand.

My 2 MSI Lightning 290X are a clear example of binned GPUs with high performance memory, they work perfectly stable at 1150/1600 in crossfire (under WC of course).

1220/1600 stable OC is also easy in single GPU setup using the best card of the 2.

Then only new GPU in series 300 are the Fiji ones who features the new HBM memory bus:

- Nano (Fiji LE)
- Fury (Fiji PRO)
- Fury X (Fiji XT)
- Fury X2 (Fiji XT)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Radeon_Rx_300_series#Chipset_table

 

Does anybody know if the Fury Nano got it's specs published anywhere?

I can't even find the price on that thing!

I always bought the second best GPU of the series everytime I upgraded my rig.

Considering prices and how Dollars went up crazy I guess this time I'll be forced to go a little lower.

I hate to, but I gotta consider moving back to Nvidia after 7 years with Radeons...

 

Oh! Forgot to ask... Will there be watercooled versions of the other Fury models, or will it be Fury X exclusive?

 

The only specs out of AMD's mouth about the nano, is that it was as fast or faster than the 290x, at half the thermal envelope. I believe that they don't get it out because they don't want to kill the 390(x), until they are out of Hawaii.
Another reason might be that since Fiji is huge, the production is not enough to both cover the Fury/X and the Nano at the same time. It would also be a smart move to sell the expensive cards first (Fury X), and then sell the core with lower margins, as production ramps up and gets progressively less expensive.

 

As far as watercooled cards go its only for the FuryX cards from my understanding.

Yeah I remember someone modding the 390X BIOS for 4GB of VRAM since the true 390X has 8gb of RAM. Also I wonder if anyone online bought a 390 and released a BIOS for it. I would like and try to flash my card to a 390.

 

Fender, the 290 non x version will flash to the modded 390x 4GB BIOS. I tested for two day and could not see any benifits to doing the flash but for testing. Go poke around in the modded 390x forum.

 

According to huddy, they are respins.

Same designs of 290 but, new silicon to take advantage of process maturities.

 

Waiting to see this!

 

Oh Ok thats cool. But since there are really no benefits of doing so I am just going to leave my card as it is.

 

Ok the 390x is the same gpu as the 290x tweakedto be a little faster and more efficient we all knew this. Does it make sense performance price wise for you to buy one that shouldreally be the question. I wouldn't mind picking one up when they get a little cheaper.

 

The physical area of the chips is exactly the same. Please let's stop the "these are not rebadges" thing. The chips themselves are identical, probably with better yields as they have been making them for so long. There is no physical difference between them, except dumping Elpida and going for Hynix for memory, and that's a difference on the card level, not the chip level.

The rest are bios tweaks that guys in here are already porting to the 290x.

 

They have been respun according to Hudyy.

Same design new silicon to take advantage of process maturity.

So no, not same chips as 290

 

:nerd:

What is that supposed to mean? And who is Huddy? Isn't this what all fabs do after a time? You improve the manufacturing process and the yields go up, and you get better quality chips. How is this not like the 7970/280x?

 

no, you cannot take advantage of increased performance offered by process maturity without a re-tape. Its new silicon, just not a new design. Thats what a re-spin is.

You can get better yield and leakage, but thats about it without re-taping to change necessary logic to take advantage of process changes.

Richard Huddy - AMD Chief Gaming Scientist (watever that means, but hes worked for Nvidia, Intel, and AMD over the last 20 or so years)

Hes their mouthpiece basically, but with engineering experience.

 

They can call it whatever they want, for me it's like the different console versions.

I.E. PS3 has 3 main packages:

- PS3 "fat" (Version 1)

- PS3 "Slim" (Version 2)

- PS3 "Superslim" (Version 3)

Each of this version have different firmware versions, memory and even connectors (HDMI, Spdif,ect) but basically they are the same system with the same CPU and GPU specs.

Sony changed the PS3 package but the main hardware is performing equally.

The only changes for consumers are less power consumption and less heat.

 

Makes sense to me. It the same hardware with a few improvements to it.

 

Are you talking about AMD_Roy? He posted on his Twitter a link to some guy on Overclockers forum, as a proof that the cards are new. The guy on that forum was high or something. He took the cards, put them on the same driver, kept the clocks different (MSI 390x OC vs 290x Reference), and then he tested for tessellation performance a game that doesn't use tessellation at all. The difference between them was 12%, and his take from that was that the chips in the 390x are more like Tonga, because apparently they have magical tessellation performance in Bioshock Infinite (which famously is not using ANY tesselation).

I pointed out all that on his Twitter, another guy pointed out that the cards have the same speed when under the same clocks and the same drivers, and AMD_Roy now blocked me. :infinity:

Man, even the total wattage is the same for the cards. The 390x get the same total power consumption under load, as a 290x at the same frequencies, with the same drivers.


They are simply getting rid of Hawaii, and they have tweaked the bios power table a bit. There is a whole thread in here about that bios modding, everything I say is evident there and on the Eurogamer and PCHardware.de comparisons with the same drivers. The 390x numbers are 290x 8GB OC numbers, even down to total power consumption.

Just look at this:



I don't know why everyone is surprised. AMD is insisting so much that these are not rebadges, but apart from vbios and frequencies even the pcb of the "new" cards is dot for dot the same.

It's not like they haven't done it before.