AMD has unleashed the custom Radeon 300s to the masses

Jun 19, 2015 14:15 GMT  ·  By

As the Radeon 300 series debuted a few days ago to the public at E3 2015, the Radeon 200 series is about to be completely replaced by the 300 apparently overnight.

Radeon 300 series specs have been made public, so it's normal to see a flood of custom graphics cards from Gigabyte, ASUS,MSI, Club 3D and Sapphire rush into retail stores, while no manufacturer stays behind in bringing its own Radeon 300 series version. Some offers have been leaked previously like the XFX ones, others hit the public right now.

Gigabyte Radeon R9 300 and R7 300 Series

Both come as factory overclocked, and bring the in-house designed WindForce cooling system and custom PCBs. Both carry the G1 suffix, meant for gaming.

The series begins with the GV-R736OC-2GD, based on the R7 360, factory overclocked at 1200 MHz core, vs. 1050 MHz reference; and one 90-mm fan based heatsink cooling system. The other one is GV-R737WF2OC-2GD/4GD, with 2 GB and 4 GB variants, factory OC of 1015 MHz, vs. 975 MHz reference, and GIGABYTE's compact rendition of its WindForce 2X cooling solution.

Following that is Radeon R9 380 G1.Gaming SOC, GV-R938G1 GAMING-4GD, featuring 4 GB of memory, a minor OC of 990 MHz, vs. 970 MHz reference, and a small WindForce 2X cooler in charge of taming this 190W chip.

At last the top tiers, the R9 390 G1.Gaming and R9 390X G1.Gaming, with which GIGABYTE brings 2-slot, 2-fan WindForce 2X cooling system, that will easily the 275W cards. The R9 390 G1.Gaming ticks at 1025 MHz (vs. 1000 MHz reference); while the R9 390X G1.Gaming runs its core at 1060 MHz (vs. 1050 MHz reference).

R9 390 G1.Gaming
R9 390 G1.Gaming

ASUS joins the fun with its STRIX versions of the 300 series

The STRIX DirectCU 3 is actually the same cooling system as the one on GeForce GTX 980 Ti STRIX, which we spotted at Computex. It comes with a massive monolithic aluminum fin stack heatsink, to which heat drawn from the GPU is fed by four 10 mm thick nickel-plated copper heat pipes. Three 100mm spinners ventilate the heatsink.

This heatsink has contact bases even over the card's 8-phase VRM, and a base plate that draws heat from its 16 GDDR5 memory chips, that make up 8 GB. The R9 390 STRIX offers factory OC of 1050 MHz (vs. 1000 MHz reference); while the R9 390X STRIX offers 1070 MHz, vs. 1050 MHz reference. The memory clock goes at 6.00 GHz on both cards.

R9 390 STRIX
R9 390 STRIX

MSI quickly pulls R9 and R7 300 series video cards after announcing its version of the GTX 980Ti

Not to remain behind the pack and to capitalize on AMD's popularity surge, MSI is introducing a brand-new line of MSI GAMING graphics cards powered by the AMD R9 and R7 300 series GPUs.

Equipped with Twin Frozr V cooler, both the R9 390X GAMING 8G and R9 390 GAMING 8G cards feature a massive 8GB of VRAM to support smooth 4K gaming. The R9 380 GAMING will come in both 4G and 2G editions. The new MSI AMD R9 300 GAMING series graphics cards come equipped with a solid metal backplate, for excellent heat conductivity.

Just like its Nvidia counterpart, the R9 380 2GD5T OC and R7 370 2GD5T OC feature Military Class 4 Components for excellent cooling and thermal conductivity. The R7 360 2GD5 OC is available to satisfy demand for smaller form factor graphics cards with solid performance, being perfect for most popular online games such as League of Legends and DOTA 2.

R9 390X GAMING 8G
R9 390X GAMING 8G

Club 3D doesn't lag behind and also offer their version of R7 300 and R9 300 Series as well

Starting with Radeon R7 360, this is the low-end of the offer sporting a quiet but capable cooler, supports AMD FreeSync. It's using the next-gen, supercharged graphics and compute API's: Vulkan, DirectX12, OpenGL 4.4 and Mantle.

Going up a bit the specs-line Club 3D comes with Radeon R7 370 royalQueen. It features 1024 SP's, 2GB of fast GDDR 5 memory and a 256 bit memory bus. It's fitted with a CoolStream cooler which keeps the card cool and quiet at all times.

The last of Club3D's offer is its premium Club 3D R9 390 and 390X royalQueen. Offering AMD's Virtual Super Resolution, it successfully emulates 4K gameplay by supersampling, even on 1080p resolutions. Packing 4GB of GDDR5 memory and a faster memory interface, you can connect multiple 1080p monitors in an Eyefinity configuration or jump directly to 4K Ultra HD resolution.

R9 390X royalQueen
R9 390X royalQueen

Sapphire ends our today's list of the R9 300 series with its premium R9 390X Tri-X 8GB Graphics Card

Paired with larger frame buffers and including the latest technology expected for next-gen video cards like DirectX 12, AMD FreeSync, TrueAudio, Liquid VR, VSR scaling and support for Ultra HD Sapphire brings its own branded Tri-X cooling technologies for its Radeon flagship R9 390X Tri-X, hence the suffix.

Being a premium top-tier 300 series model the new card from Sapphire features dual ball bearings in each of the three fans for higher reliability and enhanced Intelligent Fan Control (IFC-II) which turns off the fans completely for silent operation under light load.

The cards specs are impressive. The new SAPPHIRE Tri-X R9 390X comes with 2816 Stream Processors, 8GB of the latest GDDR5 memory running at 6000MHz, and an engine clock speed of 1055 MHz.

Sapphire guarantees is perfect for both the enthusiast and the professionals that want breeze through games at 1080p on maximum settings and deliver a great gaming experience at 1440 and beyond.

R9 390X Tri-X
R9 390X Tri-X

In the end, we can conclude that summer is here, and with AMD undercutting from all sides Nvidia's recent success with GTX 980Ti, the heat will get more intense as the competition gets even tighter.

Custom manufacturers bring AMD 300 series (6 Images)

Custom Radeon 300s are here
R9 390X Tri-XR9 390X GAMING 8G
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