Gadgetory

what's up guys welcome back to hub we're unboxed I'm your host Matt last week we reviewed the new Radeon r9 390x and I made what turned out to be a pretty controversial comment when I said that the 8 gigabyte memory buffer was frankly unnecessary I'd already compared that 8 gigabyte 390x to the 4 gigabyte 290x of 4k and games that use more than 4 gigabytes of vram so I knew it to be true before I share those results to do you I'll show you a little bit about how be around works and how we tested much like the relationship between the DRAM and CPU vram is a memory buffer that keeps the GPU fed with the information it needs to render images vrm holds textures frame buffer and other assets that are required in the rendering process such as bump maps shadow maps and lighting information this is done because it's considerably faster for the GPU to pull information from the vram opposed to say a hard drive SSD or the system memory for example the fastest SATA consume SSD is a limited to around five hundred and fifty megabytes per second Intel Core i7 59 60 X accesses at system memory at a little over 50 gigabytes per second and the Radeon r9 390x moves data from the video RAM at around three hundred and eighty four gigabytes per second the big question that game is often seem to ask is how much be around they really need this is where things get a little bit complicated it's true that high resolutions high quality textures and rendering features such as anti-aliasing can use quite a lot of be round and today's latest games are pushing possible gearbox however that doesn't mean that loading a graphics card with eight gigabytes of vram will necessarily ensure a better performance at high resolutions the key component isn't the B Rams but rather the GPU connected to the VM the GPU has to have enough horsepower to render image that would required that much be around the story the iron 390x is a perfect example it's essentially a rehashed I nine 290x and a single to 90s was never powerful enough for high quality 4k gaming adding an extra four gigabytes of vram and calling it a day isn't a real solution and this doesn't improve the GPUs ability to crush more data as a result if you were to play a game that requires 60 bytes of beer and the r9 390x wouldn't necessarily be any faster than the same GPU equipped with 4 gigabytes of vram the GPU just simply isn't powerful enough to take advantage of all the extra data now for my benchmarks with overclock the gigabyte r9 290x to match the operating clock speeds of the H is Island 390x this means the core has been set at a thousand 50 megahertz while the memory has been clocked at 1500 megahertz by creating a clock for clock scenario the changes in performance can only be attributed to the size of the memory buffer starting with Crysis 3 you can see that when operating in the same clock speeds the i9 390x in the i9 290x delivers the exact same performance at 4k with 22 frames per second each now 22 frames isn't enough for smooth playable performance in Crysis 3 so the amount of VRAM being used is irrelevant in this example regardless we see that the game only requires a little over 2 gigabytes of vram which is surprisingly low if we were to boost anti-aliasing levels to increase memory usage we'd be reducing the gameplay looking pretty much like a slideshow moving on we have battlefield hardline which was tested using maximum in-game quality settings two times msaa applied again the on i-29 X and the 390x deliver the same performance once clock speeds for the core memory were matched with just a thirty-five frames per second average gamers wouldn't want to go any lower and this time we see roughly three gigabytes of VRAM usage out of interest we increase the MSA a level of the four times which reduce the average frame rate to twenty-eight frames per second and the creates a video game uses to just three point six gigabytes playing downlight at 4k only allowed the 290x and 390x to deliver an average of 29 frames per second so again it's important to note the clock the clock we receive the same result Dynalite did require up to four gigabytes to be around with this resolution using the highest quality in game settings it is impossible to turn anything else up so four gigabytes was the maximum out of me around the game could use in our tests next we have grand theft auto 5 an own vram hog while the game can be set up to use 6.5 gigabytes of vram the Radeon r9 390x simply cannot come close to delivering playable performance on those conditions the standard graphics settings were maxed out with FX and applied while the advanced graphics settings were disabled this meant that the I know 390x was good for just 36 frames per second while the I 9 to 9 X was just one frame slower roughly 3.3 gigabytes of vram was used Metro Redux is a lot like Crysis 3 in the sense that visually it is quite an impressive game and yet it uses very little be read both the 390x and the 290x average is 24 frames per second and despite that just 1.2 gigabytes of be around was being used now here we have a game that's well known for its heavy use of beer and thanks to a high-resolution DLC package Middle Earth shadow of Mordor is the first game we have looked at and seen VRAM usage exceed for gearbox the i9 390 X or its meteor a message hit 5.2 gigabytes of 4k while the I 1990 X obviously maxed out at 4 gigabytes despite the 290 X's obviously around capacity limitation it was just one frame per second slower than the 390x finishing up we have the new Batman Arkham Knight and even bigger VM user the middle-earth at 4k the VM usage of the r9 390x in 6.1 gigabytes while the i9 290x was again limited at 4 gigabytes and yet despite this once again the I know 290x was just one frame per second slower so there you have it even in games that clearly use more than 4 gigabytes of vram the i9 390x just simply doesn't have the processing power to take advantage of its extra memory and subsequently when they go clock the clock it delivers the exact same performance as the i9 290x are you surprised by these results let me know in the comments hit like hit subscribe and we'll see you next time