R9 390

The new AMD R9 390 is the direct successor to the R9 290. Both cards share the same GPU but the R9 390 is factory overclocked. The R9 390 has a 5% higher stock GPU clock, and a substantial stock memory clock increase of 20%. Additionally the R9 390 sports a minimum of 8GB of VRAM versus 4GB on the R9 290. At the current price levels of $329, the R9 390 can't compete given that R9 290s can be had for around $260. The increased VRAM will rarely help even at ultra high resolutions and in any case, most 4K gamers are likely to seek more GPU power than the R9 390 has to offer. We have seen several samples of the R9 390 and they scored an effective speed of 88.5% which, as expected, matches the speeds seen on overclocked R9 290s. On the face of it purchasing an R9 290 at a discount and then manually overclocking will result in the same performance as an R9 390 but with a saving of around $70. ^{[Jun '15 GPUPro]}