AMD Radeon R9 M370X vs AMD Radeon R9 M390X vs AMD Radeon R9 M390

AMD Radeon R9 M370X

The AMD Radeon R9 M370X is a mid-range graphics card for laptops that was announced mid 2015. It is used in the high-end 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro with 2 GB GDDR5 graphics memory. It is based on the GCN (Graphics Core Next) architecture and manufactured in 28nm at TSMC. According to current information, the card is based on the old Cape Verde chip with 640 shaders and an 128 Bit memory interface (GCN 1.0).

Apple states that the card is "up to 80% faster" than the previously used NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M. In our benchmarks, the card is only about 30% faster in average 3D gaming and 25 - 30 percent slower than a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M or Radeon R9 M280X. Demanding games (as of 2015) will be usually handled fluently in 1366 x 768 pixels and high settings.

AMD Radeon R9 M390X

The AMD Radeon R9 M390X is a mobile high-end graphics card for laptops. It is most likely based on the same chip as the AMD Radeon R9 M295X in the iMac 5K Late 2014. That means it should be based on the third generation of GCN (desktop Tonga chip). The amount of shader cores is identical but the core clock is reduced by 15% (from 850 MHz to 723 MHz) and the memory is also clocked slower (5448 MHz vs 5000 MHz).

The performance should be a bit below the M295X. Compared to the competition, the R9-M390X should be positioned somewhere between the GeForce GTX 965M and 970M and therefore suitable for high-end games in 1080p resolution and high detail settings.

The card was first mentioned by Alienware on their twitter account and should feature 4GB VRAM according to the tweet.

The power consumption should be rated around 100 Watt TDP and therefore suited only for large and bulky laptops (like the Alienware M17x it was announced in).

AMD Radeon R9 M390

The AMD Radeon R9 M390 is a mobile graphics card from 2015 and positioned as a fast mid-range GPU. It should be based on the the old Pitcairn chip (e.g. in 2012 used in the desktop 7870 graphics card) and offers 1024 shader cores clocked at 958 MHz. Furthermore, 2 GB GDDR5 dedicated graphics memory are connected via a 256 Bit memory bus. The graphics card is used in the Apple iMac 27-inch late 2015 (mid range model).

The performance of the Radeon R9 M390 slightly above a Nvidia GeForce GTX 960M or 870M but still beyond a desktop Radeon R7 370. Therefore, demanding games of 2015 may only run in medium settings at up to full HD resolutions fluently. The native 5K resolution of the iMac or even the perfectly scaled 2560x1600 will be definitely too much.