PowerColor DEVIL R9 390X Review

Blending water and air, DEVIL takes advantage of PowerColor’s hybrid cooling solution and applies a factory overclock to AMD’s Grenada XT GPU.

Product on Review: PowerColor DEVIL R9 390X
Manufacturer & Sponsor: PowerColor
Street Price: £360 GBP / $459 USD

PowerColor has been in the market of producing graphics cards since 1997 and has always brought innovation and creativity to the table with exciting designs year-in, year-out. Today is no exception; we have in our midst a rather special product.

It was at Computex 2015 that PowerColor announced its DEVIL R9 390X and today we have the pleasure of taking a look at this rather unique piece of kit. Featuring a hybrid cooling solution, DEVIL uses a blend of water and air to effectively cool its Grenada XT GPU and VRM configuration. An aggressive design sets this card apart from others and as well as a custom cooling solution, also boasts a factory overclock.

How will it compare against other R9 390X graphics cards? Let’s find out!

About PowerColor

PowerColor, established by Tul Corporation in 1997, is a graphics industry leading brand name now and well known for its outstanding performance and innovative technology. As a leading provider of graphics card, PowerColor offers powerful, reliable and cost-effective solutions to customers worldwide.

Technical Specifications

Graphics Engine
RADEON R9 390X
Video Memory
8GB GDDR5
Engine Clock 1100MHz
Memory Clock 1525MHz x4(6.1Gbps)
Memory Interface 512bit
DirectX® Support 12
Bus Standard PCIE 3.0
Standard Display Connectors
DL DVI-D/ DL DVI-D/ HDMI/ DisplayPort
Feature Support
OpenGL Support
CrossFireX™ Technology Support
ATI Stream Technology Support
ATI Eyefinity Technology Support
ATI Hypermemory Technology
Display Support
VGA Output
DVI Output DL DVI-D/ DL DVI-D
DisplayPort On Board
HDMI On Board
Maximum Resolution
DVI 2560×1600
DisplayPort 4096×2160
HDMI 4096×2160
Board Dimensions
285mm*140mm*63mm
Minimum System Power requirement (W)
750W
Extension Power Connector
One 6-Pin and One 8-Pin PCI Express Power connectors

Packaging & Bundle

The packaging for DEVIL R9 390X is quite discreet but features a substantially larger box than the typical graphics card. Over on the reverse of the box there are some schematic diagrams of the card, showing a breakdown of the cooling methodology.

Opening the box up, there are some items which accompany the graphics card. These include:

• Driver/Software CD
• Power Cable – (8pin to 6-pin)
• Instructions Manual
• Mouse Pad

Since DEVIL R9 390X uses a Hybrid cooling solution the extra space is needed to include the radiator too. PowerColor furnish the inside with plenty of foam padding to protect the card and its radiator and conceal both items within anti-static bags.

Closer Look (Graphics Card)

The first thing that will become apparent when viewing the DEVIL graphics card is its unorthodox cooling solution. DEVIL uses a hybrid cooling solution which combines a traditional cooling fan with water cooling configuration courtesy of pump and radiator. We’ll look at the finer details later on, but from an initial look this card certainly has a unique visual appearance – PowerColor laying claim to being the only provider of such a hybrid solution for the R9 390X.

The actual graphics card uses a plastic shroud with the DEVIL insignia stamped on it and a brushed aluminium plate which sits over the cooling fan. Aesthetically, we really like what PowerColor has done with this 390X.

Flipping the card over, on the reverse the design is continues to add its own identity. A metal plate is positioned over the backside of the PCB to protect the card from damage and maintain rigidity.

Running down the edge of DEVIL there is a HYBRID logo which glows when the card is powered up. Immediately next to this we have the PCI Express. Since this card is powering two cooling fans and a pump we come to expect quite a power hungry offering. DEVIL demands 8+6pin connectors and PowerColor state that a 750W power supply is needed.

The 390X is designed for 4K gaming and ultra-high resolutions. As such there are some ports which assist with this, but we’d have liked to see more DP and HDMI than what’s allocated. Included are the following:

• 2x DVI-I port
• 1x DisplayPort
• 1x HDMI port

If you’re planning to go for a single 4K screen configuration it’s a good idea to go with DP or HDMI to get the faster refresh rate. Since this is an AMD card there is no port for the Crossfire – this is all done via software.

On the next page we’ll take a close look at the cooling solution and PCB/components.

Closer Look (Cooling Solution + Components)

We’ve already mentioned how unique the cooling solution is and now we’ll take a look at the different elements in closer detail. Detaching the radiator and fan we discover that DEVIL uses the POWER LOGIC PLA12025S12M 120mm cooling fan which is mounted to an Asetek radiator/pump configuration.

Detaching the shroud and cooling fan from DEVIL we can now see the pump which sits over the GPU. PowerColor has designed this card to have a large metal plate sitting over the GDDR5 and a heatsink over the phases/VRM. The cooling fan which is attached to the shroud actively cools these phases and is a dedicated solution for the components in this area.

With the Hybrid cooling now completely removed from the graphics card we can see take a look at the inner-workings and see the full extent of the PCB. Unlike the FURY, the 390X doesn’t come with HBM memory and instead settles for GDDR5 instead. In total there is 8GB of graphics memory available.

At the very heart of DEVIL is the Grenada XT GPU. This is the same design as the 290X (Hawaii XT) – the same circuitry and design but with better manufacturing. Many were hoping for a bigger step-up from this but the 300 series has only had a minor facelift.

Located at the top of the PCB, there is a dual BIOS switch which allows the user to switch between Silent & Super Mode. This switch also offers a secondary choice for booting should there be any problems with an overclock etc.

DEVIL utilises a combination of high-quality components which include:

• Multi-Phases
• Digital PWM
• PowIRStage

In return, these components provide excellent power efficiency, reduce conduction loss and help to lower temperatures.

Test Setup & Methodology

How we test graphics cards

Testing a graphics card is an extremely lengthy process. We sometimes see reviews where a graphics card has been tested using out of date equipment, out of date games and even out of date drivers. While the latter can be excused due to the sheer amount of driver updates making a thorough review impossible we will however notify the reader when we have used a different driver to the normal for example a pre-release driver. For the most part however we will always use the same hardware and latest drivers so this does certainly need to be taken into consideration when viewing our testing results. Each game and benchmark is tested times with the lowest and highest scores omitted out of the 5 results and the average then taken from the three remaining to give us our final result for each resolution and setting used.

Hardware

With the latest Intel chipset release we decided to update our ageing X79 setup to the very latest X99 chipset. Not only that but we will be using the flagship Core i7-5960X Extreme Edition processor clocked to a realistic, achievable 4GHz to ensure we have no CPU bottlenecks. With 16GB (4x4GB) of GDDR4 at 2666MHz and a 500GB SSD there should be minimal paging so the benchmarks we run today will hopefully give a true reflection of the graphics card’s performance.

High End Graphics Cards on test:
PowerColor DEVIL R9 390X (Catalyst 15.20)
ASUS STRIX R9 FURY DC3 OC (Catalyst 15.20)
ASUS STRIX GTX 980Ti DC3 OC (Forceware 353.30)
SAPPHIRE R9 Fury X (Catalyst 15.15)
XFX R9 390X Double Dissipation (Catalyst 15.15)
MSI R9 390X GAMING 8G (Catalyst 15.15)
NVIDIA GTX 980 Ti 6GB (Forceware 352.90)
ZOTAC GTX 970 AMP! EXTREME CORE(Forceware 344.75)
ZOTAC GTX 970 AMP! EXTREME(Forceware 344.75)
MSI GTX 970 GAMING 4G(Forceware 344.75)
GIGABYTE G1 GAMING SOC GTX 970(Forceware 344.75)
ASUS STRIX GTX 970 4GB GDDR5(Forceware 340.60)
NVIDIA GTX 980 4GB GDDR5(Forceware 340.52)
SAPPHIRE TRI-X R9-290X 4GB GDDR5(Catalyst 14.3)

Special thanks go to Intel, Corsair, MSI and AOC for providing the extreme spec components used for our test bench:

Motherboard: MSI X99S GAMING 9 AC
CPU: Intel Core i7-5960X Extreme Edition @ 4GHz
RAM – 16GB (4x4GB) Corsair LPX Vengeance (Red) DDR3 @ 2666MHz 16-17-17-35 C1
Power Supply – CORSAIR RM Series™ RM1000
Hard Drive – CORSAIR Force Series™ LX 512GB SATA 3 6Gb/s SSD
Cooler – CORSAIR Hydro Series™ H105 240mm Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler
Monitor – AOC 28″ 4K U2868 PQU

Benchmarks
If you are a regular reader of our reviews you will know we like to test the latest hardware with the latest games and benchmarks on the market. Here are the games we have chosen:

Battlefield 4
Watchdogs
Company of Heroes 2
Thief
GRID: 2
Metro: Last Light

We also take into consideration the benchmarkers out there so have included three of the more popular synthetic benchmarks available:

Unigine: Valley
Unigine: Heaven 4
Futuremark 3DMark Firestrike

Let’s see how today’s graphics card performed…

Power, Temperatures, Acoustics

To test for power consumption we take a measurement from the plug socket. It is important to note that the figures below represent total system power use and not just the GPU. The CPU was always in a fixed state (4GHz overclock) so did not affect the additional power load when the GPU was placed under 100% load using Furmark which was ran for 15 minutes at which point a load reading was taken. Idle readings were taken 5 minutes after system boot to ensure any background services and applications had loaded.

Temperature

To test temperatures we measured idle temperatures after booting windows, letting all applications finish loading and ran a few benchmarks. Once the benchmarks were complete we left the card to reach a cooling plateau where we then took the idle temperatures. For the load tests, we would normally run Furmark for 20 minutes, taking the absolute maximum temperature attained however we found that this throttled the card and resulted in spurious results. So we set Heaven running continuously for 20 minutes and used this as a temperature result.

Acoustics

DEVIL uses two large cooling fans and a water cooling pump. As such when the card is fully loaded, noise is noticeable but not disruptive.

Overclocking

To overclock the DEVIL 390X we used MSI Afterburner Tool since it gives extensive options for modifying the graphics card.

Overclocking was fairly easy with DEVIL – we managed to overclock the GPU clock and memory clock to a conservative point. At default DEVIL sits at 1525MHz for the GPU clock and 6100MHz for the memory clock. The highest frequency we could nudge both these variables up to was 1234MHz and 6324MHz. In return, this gave us a slight boost in Ungine Heaven 4.0 as shown below!

3DMark FireStrike

Fire Strike is the new showcase DirectX 11 benchmark designed for high-performance gaming PCs. It is Futuremark’s most ambitious and technical benchmark ever, featuring real-time graphics rendered with detail and complexity far beyond what is found in other benchmarks and games today.

Unigine Heaven 4.0

Heaven Benchmark with its current version 4.0 is a GPU-intensive benchmark that hammers graphics cards to the limits. This powerful tool can be effectively used to determine the stability of a GPU under extremely stressful conditions, as well as check the cooling system’s potential under maximum heat output. It provides completely unbiased results and generates true in-game rendering workloads across all platforms.

Unigine Valley

Valley Benchmark is a new GPU stress-testing tool from the developers of the very popular and highly acclaimed Heaven Benchmark. The forest-covered valley surrounded by vast mountains amazes with its scale from a bird’s-eye view and is extremely detailed down to every leaf and flower petal. This non-synthetic benchmark powered by the state-of-the art UNIGINE Engine showcases a comprehensive set of cutting-edge graphics technologies with a dynamic environment and fully interactive modes available to the end user.

Battlefield 4

Battlefield 4 is a 2013 first-person shooter video game developed by Swedish video game developer EA Digital Illusions CE (DICE) and published by Electronic Arts. It is a sequel to 2011’s Battlefield 3 and is perhaps currently the most popular online First Person Shooter for PC gamers. It has an extremely powerful gaming engine that will stress components more than most FPS titles available.

Watchdogs

Watch Dogs is a 2014 open world action-adventure video game developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. Set within a fictionalized version of Chicago, Illinois, the single-player story follows a hacker and his efforts to seek revenge after the accidental death of his niece. The open world design lets players freely roam Chicago, which includes the urban city, open countryside, and slums. The game is played from a third-person perspective and its world is navigated on-foot or by vehicle. As such this is a very demanding game, especially when graphical options are turned up.

Thief

Thief is a stealth video game developed by the Canadian video game developer Eidos Montreal, and published by Square Enix. It is a revival of the cult classic Thief series of stealth games, of which it is the fourth game. Thief is set in a dark fantasy world inspired by Victorian, gothic, and steampunk aesthetics. Using a modified version of the Unreal Engine 3 it makes for a challenging game to pitch against our range of components.

Company of Heroes 2

Company of Heroes 2 is a real-time strategy video game developed by Relic Entertainment. It is the sequel to the critically acclaimed 2006 game Company of Heroes.As with the original Company of Heroes, the game is set in World War II but with the focus on the Eastern Front, with players primarily controlling the side of the Soviet Red Army during various stages of the Eastern Front, from Operation Barbarossa to the Battle of Berlin. Company of Heroes 2 runs on Relic Entertainment’s proprietary Essence 3.0 game engine and is extremely demanding of both CPU and GPU.

Metro Last Light

Metro: Last Light is a single-player post-apocalyptic-themed first-person shooter video game with stealth and survival horror elements, developed by Ukrainian studio 4A Games and published by Deep Silver. The game is set in a post-apocalyptic Moscow, part of the universe of the novel Metro 2033 and its sequels, written by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky. The second of our FPS titles, it runs on the 4A gaming engine which again, has the capability to stress even the best GPU components.

GRID 2

Grid 2 (stylised as GRID 2 and known as Race Driver Grid 2 in Japan) is a racing video game developed and published by Codemasters and is the sequel to 2008’s Race Driver: Grid. The game includes numerous real world locations and cities such as Paris. It also includes motor vehicles spanning four decades. In addition, it includes a new handling system that developer Codemasters has dubbed ‘TrueFeel’, which aims to hit a sweet spot between realism and accessibility. It uses the EGO 3.0 engine which while not overly challenging, is representative of games of this genre.

Overall Performance

Here we take a look at the overall performance of the graphics card. This figure is determined by finding the average FPS across all of the settings used in a particular benchmark(game) to give us an overall value.

Value For Money

We make a simple calculation for this set of results. For each game we add all of the resulting FPS totals together and then divide by the four sets to give us an overall performance figure. While the figures alone do not give you an accurate picture of how the card will perform in any given scenario, they do tell you, when averaged, which GPU is the more capable across all of the benchmarks and settings tested.

Conclusion

With the AMD 300 series now in full swing a variety of brands are bringing some custom designs to the table to spice things up. One such brand is PowerColor which, as we’ve seen in today’s review, brings a new concept into the foray.

Showcasing the new Hybrid cooling solution, the DEVIL 390X combines air and water cooling. This unique concept translates to low-temperatures compared to rival; standard, air cooled 390Xs. The only issue some may have is where to mount the radiator/fan combo – especially if the system is using a closed loop cooler for the CPU too. But aside from this, we quite like the design – it works well and achieves what it sets out to.

On the performance front the DEVIL 390X tackled a wide selection of games very well. Synthetic tests revealed a worthy 390X and overclocking realised a reasonable accomplishment.

The only slight niggles come with the high power consumption. PowerColor state that a minimum of 750W is a necessity with DEVIL 390X and our power consumption test highlighted a rather hungry graphics card indeed. We also think one or two more HDMI/DP would be more suitable for this calibre of graphics card, especially since it’s designed for ultra-high resolution gaming.

DEVIL 390X is priced at £360 GBP / $459 USD – this is comparative to other custom cooled/overclocked R9 390X graphics cards currently gracing the market. This card performs well and does so by offering low temperatures with a reasonable warranty too.

PowerColor has designed an impressive R9 390X in the DEVIL – it boasts an innovative hybrid cooling solution which delivers outstanding results. If you’re in the market for one of AMD’s cards, this one is a great choice!

Pros
+ Visually attractive
+ Low-temperatures
+ Great performance
+ DirectX 12 ready
+ 2 years warranty

Cons
– High power consumption
– More DP/HDMI ports required
– Requires 120mm radiator mounting

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