Radeon R9 390
Next up we have the card from the Red Team. The R9 390 is powered by AMD’s Hawaii chip, in its ‘Pro’ configuration, meaning it has some parts disabled. This card is essentially a fine-tuned R9 290 with an extra 4GB of memory, bringing the total to a rather massive 8GB. The R9 390 launched on June the 18th, 2015 for $329.
Sapphire’s Radeon R9 390 Nitro
Taking a closer look at Hawaii Pro
Hawaii Pro block diagram
The Hawaii GPU powering the R9 390
- 40 CUs
- 2560 Stream processors
- 160 Texture Mapping Units
- 64 ROPs
- 512-bit memory interface
- 1MB L2 Cache
- 8GB GDDR5
- 6Gbps memory clock
- 1000MHz core clock
The Hawaii Pro chip powering R9 390 has less disabled than the GM204-200 in the GTX 970. Out of Hawaii’s 44 Compute Units, only 4 have been disabled resulting in a reduction of stream processor count from 2816 to 2560, and texture units down from 176 to 160. Everything else is fully enabled, including the chip’s massive 512-bit memory interface. You’ll notice the 390 has a lot more resources on tap compared to GM204, but can it leverage that raw processing power to its advantage?