Built for gaming at high resolutions, MSI's Radeon R9 390 Gaming 8G Graphics Card features 8GB of GDDR5 vRAM for loading large textures and graphics coupled to 2560 Stream Processors running at a base speed of 1000 MHz with a 512-bit memory bus with a 384 GB/s bandwidth. Using the included utility, the GPU can be overclocked up to 1060 MHz when running in OC mode. Another benefit of the OC mode in addition to the increase in GPU clock speed, is an increase in the effective memory clock speed to 6100 MHz from 6000 MHz.

Not only for gaming the R9 390 GPU is based on AMD's GCN architecture and supports APIs such as OpenCL and OpenGL. These APIs can take advantage of the GPU's 2560 Stream Processors to accelerate parallel computing tasks, taking some of the processing load off of the CPU.

The output panel of this card features four output ports, two dual-link DVI-D outputs, a DisplayPort output, and an HDMI output. The HDMI and DisplayPort outputs support resolutions of up to 4096 x 2160. That resolution, combined with AMD's Eyefinity, can provide an immersive gaming experience using up to three monitors.

To keep cool, even when overclocked, MSI implemented their Twin Frozr V cooler on this card. The Twin Frozr V cooler uses two large fans to force air through the heatsink and dissipate heat and lower the GPU's internal temperature. Because this kind of cooler recirculates air back into the case, this card works best in cases that have unrestricted airflow.