XFX Radeon R9 390 Black Edition OC 8GB Video Card Review
Final Thoughts and Conclusions
The XFX Radeon R9 390 Black Edition OC 8GB video card was found to be a solid well designed enthusiast class graphics card that has everything a gamer would need. The performance of the card was found to be better than a factory overclocked GeForce GTX 970 and very close to a GeForce GTX 980 reference card. We were impressed by the 1440P and 4K Ultra HD gaming performance numbers that were had a solid gameplay experience!
While the performance of the Radeon R9 390 8GB card was solid we did find that it was fairly loud and used significantly more power than comparable cards. The good news is since the fans on XFX’s Ghost 3.0+ thermal solution are always spinning the thermals on the card were great!
When it comes to pricing you can find this XFX Radeon R9 390 Black Edition 8GB model with 1050MHz core clock speeds at Newegg for $329.99 shipped after rebate or at Amazon for $339.99 shipped. The real deal right now is the XFX Radeon R9 390 Double Dissipation XXX OC video card with 1015MHz clock speeds for $274.99 shipped after rebate at Newegg. It’s the same exact card with lower clock speeds thanks to a UEFI flash and it’s $65 less than what Amazon is selling the overclocked card for. We were able to overclock our card up to 1150MHz on the core clock and the Hawaii GPU used on these cards usually can hit 1100MHz without any voltage modifications needed. Paying extra for an overclocked card that was binned at the factory might be worth it if the price difference is minimal, but more than $50 isn’t worth it to us. At $275 the XFX Radeon R9 390 8GB video card is a heck of a deal as it gives you better performance than an overclocked GeForce GTX 970 retail card and just behind a GeForce GTX 980 4GB retail card that start out at $479 after rebate. AMD has the $275 to $475 price range for video cards pretty much wrapped up with this card!
Being able to pick up an XFX Radeon R9 390 8GB video card for $275 and get performance numbers like these might be one of the best deals going for a higher-end video card that is capable of beyond 1080P gaming. The fact that it’s one of the recommended cards for Virtual Reality doesn’t hurt either!
Legit Bottom Line: You can purchase an XFX Radeon R9 390 8GB video card for $275 after rebate and get performance that is close to a GeForce GTX 980 reference card that costs hundreds more. Overclock the R9 390 and the performance will top a stock GeForce GTX 980!