In addition, memory clock speeds have been increased from 5000MHz to 6000MHz, equivalent to a sizeable 20% boost over the previous generation. Similarly, the Radeon R9 290’s reference clock of 947MHz has been bumped up to 1000MHz on the Radeon R9 390. In comparison to the reference clock of 1000MHz on the Radeon R9 290X, the Radeon R9 390X sports a 1050MHz core clock. You could say that AMD has taken the easy way out and simply ramped up clock speeds to improve performance over last year’s cards. The number of stream processors also remains unchanged from the 290 series, with the R9 390X featuring 2816 stream processors and the R9 390 a more modest 2560. On the other hand, the R9 390 retains the four Shader Engines but has just 40 CUs because one is disabled in each Shader Engine. The Radeon R9 390X has 11 CUs enabled per Shader Engine, for a total of 44. The Radeon R9 390X retains 44 CUs across four Shader Engines. But despite the spanking new name, the new cards are still very much Hawaii GPUs at heart. We see a return to Hawaii on the R9 390X and 390, but AMD has decided to rename the architecture to Grenada XT. That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet. It’s slightly disappointing that AMD has nothing new to offer below the top-end Fury X, but we suppose the lower price somewhat makes up for it. The Radeon R9 290X and 290 saw AMD debut its new Hawaii GPU architecture, which AMD has returned to on the R9 390X and 390. That’s because like the Radeon R9 380 and R7 370 below it, the Radeon R9 390X and 390 are essentially rebadges of last year’s 200-series cards. Note that we also mentioned that AMD has upgraded, rather than replaced its 200-series of cards. While the Radeon R9 290X and 290 were originally launched at US$549 and US$399 respectively, this year’s Radeon R9 390X and 390 come in at just US$429 and US$329 each. This is helped along by the lower launch price of both cards. The majority of consumers instead seek to find a balance between performance and value, and the Radeon R9 390X and 390’s entrance into the upper-end of the mainstream graphics card market could be a boon to consumers looking for performance, but don’t necessarily want to absolute best. The Radeon R9 Fury X and Fury are without doubt the cards enthusiasts will look to when they want the very best from AMD, but these consumers comprise the minority of the overall graphics card market. Let’s just say that by offering a new flagship under a new name and upgrading its existing line-up of cards, AMD has created a more diverse product portfolio.
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