ASUS AMD R9 390X: The best engine besides GTX980 Ti

The quality of a car engine directly affects the overall performance of the car. Similarly, the game engine is the "engine" of the game, including: rendering engine, physics engine, collision detection system, sound effects, script engine, computer animation, artificial intelligence, network engine and scene management. It can be said to be the background commander of the game, controlling every link in the game.

Frostbite 3 is a 3D game engine designed by the Swedish EA Digital Illusions CE AB (DICE) game studio for the famous video game product Battlefield series. Compared with previous generations, the performance has been greatly improved, the destruction effect has been greatly enhanced, the buildings can be completely destroyed, the light and shadow system has been enhanced, the character action/animation system has been completely renewed, and the weather system has been completely renewed.

Game engines have influenced the development of PC hardware to a certain extent. Initially, PCs relied more on CPUs to run games. As game engines developed, graphics card cores gradually replaced CPUs and became the most important processing hardware for games.

GPU was first proposed by NVIDIA. Currently, there are not many manufacturers providing graphics card cores, but NVIDIA and AMD (formerly ATI) are the most popular. Which of these two products is better has always been a key issue for graphics card enthusiasts.

While NVIDIA was constantly launching new products, AMD, which had been silent for a while, finally couldn't hold back this year and launched the new Fiji core graphics card, which really brought a big impact to NVIDA.

Is the Fiji core graphics card really that powerful?

AMD's latest R9 390/390X/Fury/Fury X graphics cards all use AMD's latest Fiji core. To see if the Fiji core graphics card is really that powerful, we used the existing ASUS R9 390X to test it. From the running score, the R9 390x's score is slightly worse than that of the GTX 980Ti. However, if there are multiple groups, AMD's CrossFireX technology will still be stronger than NVIDIA's SLI technology. Data is only one aspect, and the actual performance still needs to be tested on the actual machine.

Test platform:

The graphics card used is ASUS STRIX-R9 390X-DC3OC-8GD5-GAMING, which is characterized by being "super cool".

"Super" Super Alloy Power Supply ASUS graphics cards have always adopted the exclusive "Super Alloy Power Supply" technology. Through super alloy capacitors, super alloy inductors, super alloy field effect transistors, super alloy hybrid engine, etc., it can bring 15% performance improvement to the graphics card, extend the service life by 2.5 times, and reduce the temperature of the power supply part!

"Cool" GPU direct-touch cooling ASUS R9 390X graphics card uses an exclusive DirectCU III heat pipe direct-touch three-fan design and is equipped with two dedicated 10mm diameter heat pipes, which can discharge more than 40% of the GPU heat, improving the cooling effect by 30% compared to the public version.

"Fast" GPUtweak overclocking acceleration
ASUS GPU Tweak Test:

ASUS GPU Tweak is a graphics card overclocking and optimization tool launched by ASUS. This tool monitors your graphics card parameters and optimizes the graphics card. It can adjust the core frequency, memory frequency, core voltage and fan speed of up to four graphics cards, and also supports video memory timing adjustment to maximize the performance of the graphics card. Through the monitoring window, you can monitor the graphics card information in real time and accurately.

3DMARK11 running points:

As a well-known war game, Battlefield has attracted much attention from players. Recently, 3DM released a cracked version of Battlefield Hardline, a game in the Battlefield series. Let's see how the graphics card performs in combination with this game.

Battlefield Hardline is a "police drama" rather than a war game. The reason why it is called a "police drama" is not only because of the plot content, but also because it adopts a series-style plot division. Every time you leave and enter the game, there is a "next episode preview" and "previous story review".

Running the game at full resolution on a real machine, Battlefield Hardline, which is produced by the Frostbite 3 engine, has advantages in large-scale map graphics, a complete destructible object system, and simulated physics and HDR sound effects that make the game more realistic. As a high-end graphics card, the performance of ASUS R9 390X did not disappoint, with large-scale map details, destructible object system, and simulated physics effects all well displayed.

Not only that, players are more concerned about whether there will be any lag during operation, that is, whether the FPS meets the standard. Even when running in a full-height environment, the average FPS of the game is 60 frames, ensuring that the game can run smoothly. The game runs smoothly, the picture is outstanding, and the "police and gangster drama" is fully displayed. This is enough to prove that although the data of R9 390X is not as good as GTX 980ti, its performance is still very outstanding.

Fiji brings new vitality to AMD

The difference between the Fiji core and the previous core is that it integrates 4096 stream processors, which is almost half more than the previous generation R9 290X. In addition, the area of ​​596 square millimeters and 8.9 billion transistors also set a new record for A cards and a new record for GPUs.

R9 390/390X is equipped with 8GB DDR5 video memory. R9 Fury/Fury X is equipped with 4GB HBM video memory. R9 390X's opponent is NVIDIA's GTX 980, and R9 Fury X's opponent is GTX 980Ti. With the same core and smaller video memory capacity, they are actually competing against higher-level graphics cards? Why is AMD so bold? The reason is that many people are not familiar with HBM video memory.

What is HBM video memory and why is it so good?
HBM video memory is SK Hynix's latest high-bandwidth video memory, and is undoubtedly the best choice for AMD, which has always pursued high bandwidth. With an amazing bit width of up to 4096-bit, eight times that of traditional GDDR5, it only needs an effective frequency of 1GHz to provide an ultra-high bandwidth of 512GB/s, but unfortunately the capacity is limited to 4GB. It is worth mentioning that AMD's R9 Fury/Fury X is the first graphics card to use HBM video memory.

The biggest advantage of the Fiji core is that it supports DirectX 12, FreeSync technology and LiquidVR technology. Support for DirectX 12, its parallel multi-threaded processing method can improve the effective utilization of the GPU, so that the GPU can render the picture better. FreeSync technology allows the GPU to synchronize the refresh rate of the display device to ensure the completion of the picture and prevent the occurrence of screen tearing. LiquidVR technology is AMD's support for VR, making its application range wider.

The NVIDIA/AMD war continues

NVIDIA will not ignore such a high-profile AMD. Next year, NVIDIA's new "Pascal" architecture graphics card will also be launched, and it will not use HBM memory, but HBM2 memory that will be launched next year. It seems that in the face of AMD's challenge, NVIDIA will not be soft-handed and chooses to fight directly.

AMD will not give up the Fiji core in the short term, but NVIDIA is eyeing it, how will AMD respond? Next year, AMD will not only be limited to the Fiji core, but will also launch the new "Arctic Islands" and "Greenland" cores. They also use HBM2 video memory, and AMD will get the second video memory before NVIDIA. This means that the graphics card war between NVIDIA and AMD will continue.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.