The AMD Radeon R9 380X Review, Feat. ASUS STRIX
by Ryan Smith on November 23, 2015 8:30 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- AMD
- Radeon
- Asus
- Radeon 300
Final Words
Bringing this review to a close, for the last 14 months now we’ve been pondering just what a fully enabled Tonga desktop SKU might look like, and with Radeon R9 380X we finally have our answer. With the final 4 CUs enabled – bringing us from 28 CUs to 32 CUs – Radeon R9 380X picks up where R9 380 left off and adds a further 10% in performance. This is a bit less than the 14% we’d expect to gain going from CU counts alone, but at the same time few games are purely CU limited. So in a mixed selection of games this is a pretty reasonable outcome.
This also means that R9 380X essentially picks up from where AMD’s past Tahiti cards like the 7970 and R9 280X left off. As the successor-of-sorts to AMD’s original GCN GPU, Tahiti, Tonga brings with it some welcome feature upgrades that otherwise left Tahiti dated. So within AMD’s lineup it’s now Tonga that’s anchoring the mid-range, between the Hawaii based 390 series and the Pitcairn based 370 series.
This makes R9 380X a reasonable step up from the R9 380, though on the whole it’s unremarkable. Priced at $229, the card is about $30 more expensive than the 4GB R9 380 (and the 4GB GTX 960), which means it’s not pushing the price/performance curve in any way, though in all fairness to AMD they never said it would. Instead what we’re looking at is a small but logical stepping stone between the R9 380 and the R9 390, where similar to factory overclocked cards if you spend a bit more money you get a bit more performance. The end result is that for AMD’s stack the R9 380X is their best 1080p gaming card, almost never having to compromise on quality in order to get playable framerates.
Meanwhile looking at the competition, by virtue of the GPU configurations AMD and NVIDIA went with for this generation, the R9 380X has no true competitor from NVIDIA. This doesn’t give AMD much freedom – the card is only 10% faster than the GTX 960, so they have to stay within reason on pricing – but it means that they’re the only game in town for a $200-$250 video card family. Otherwise the one tradeoff here (as has been the case with most of AMD’s cards this year) will be on power efficiency; R9 380X doesn’t improve on AMD’s efficiency at all, resulting in R9 380X drawing a lot more power for its 10% advantage over GTX 960. We will add however that a 10% gap means that the R9 380X’s performance isn’t outside the potential reach of factory overclocked GTX 960 cards, but that is very much on a case-by-case basis as opposed to today’s look at baseline performance for each video card series.
The challenge to the R9 380X then doesn’t come from below, but from above. The R9 390 and GTX 970 start at $289 – $60 more than the R9 380X – and each is a rather sizable 40%+ faster than the R9 380X. Consequently both are value spoilers, offering that 40% better performance for a 26% higher price; a significantly higher cost for even more significant performance. At the end of the day budgets exist for a reason and the R9 380X is a reasonable offering in the product range it was designed for, but if you can afford to spend more for GTX 970 or R9 390 then right now that’s the better buy (with NVIDIA’s current game bundle as an extra kicker in favor of this).
Last but not least however we have the matter of the specific R9 380X card in today’s review, ASUS’s STRIX R9 380X OC. With the STRIX lineup ASUS has focused on quality and workmanship, and their STRIX R9 380X OC continues this legacy. It’s a well-built card – one of the best to have come our way all year – and it sets a very high bar for ASUS’s competition. The one drawback with the card is the price, and this goes hand-in-hand with the value spoiler effect we just covered. At $259 the STRIX R9 380X OC halves the premium for an R9 390/GTX 970, yet those cards are still 30%+ faster. It’s very hard to charge a premium price for a premium card in the current market, and while the STRIX R9 380X is a fantastic R9 380X, it’s none the less in a very awkward spot right below some very powerful video cards.
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Samus - Monday, November 23, 2015 - link
I had the Asus GTX970 Turbo and it had the grindiest ball bearing fan I've ever heard. It brought me back to the Athlon's YS Tech and Delta days. The "Titan" cooler on my old GTX770 was virtually silent in comparison.So Asus has their duds, but the Strix seems to be a great cooler if you don't need a blower...but many of us do. In a bit a shame toward Asus, I replaced their Turbo with a PNY 970 (also a blower) and the PNY feels cheaper, but cools better and makes less noise.
evilspoons - Tuesday, November 24, 2015 - link
Don't get me wrong here, I really like ASUS stuff - but they have let me down several times on cheapo video card cooling systems. Nasty sleeve bearing fans on half-height Radeon 6580s that vibrate then seize, which was really cheeky considering the box had a "high quality fan omg!!" thing as part of its marketing material.Ended up replacing the half-height card with a passively cooled one - and a nearby 80 mm case fan - so I couldn't have a crappy onboard fan, since every other card on the market seemed to be carrying the same stupid POS fan. I couldn't even spend more to get a better one!
Margalus - Monday, November 23, 2015 - link
I wouldn't get anything other than a EVGA cooling system.. I have the ACX 2.0 verions of a 970 and a 980 ti, and they are really fantastic... lolSamus - Tuesday, November 24, 2015 - link
EVGA is great, but they don't make Radeon cards. It's important to point out, as well, that EVGA is actually NOT NVidia's OEM partner. PNY is. PNY makes a ton of cards based off NVidia's reference designs, which I think are the best. The Titan cooler used on reference 770/780/970/980 GPU's, specifically the vapor-chamber variant, is unsurpassed by any other partners'. That's why almost every partner makes at least one variant of these GPU's with the Titan cooler. They don't make many, because the rumor is NVidia charges $30 for the vapor chamber cooler and it is more expensive to manufacture the cards because of the installation (GPU binding) technique.But EVGA has probably the best, easiest to deal with warranty. Unfortunately I've had to use it.
tamalero - Tuesday, November 24, 2015 - link
If use Sapphire's DualX and triX for the AMD camp imho.I'm still with my trusty 7950 dual X OC. and works wonders!
just4U - Friday, November 27, 2015 - link
From what I understand Sapphire started with the vapor chamber type cards on a few of their Radeons 6 years ago.. Interesting that Nvidia went that route. I'd never heard of any other company doing it before and didn't know they had that on their high end coolers..maecenas - Monday, November 23, 2015 - link
Fair enough, I am generalizing based on an observation pool of 2, which I shouldn't do, but I really enjoy having a silent GPU that doesn't go over 65C! It seems that cooling technology has progressed across the board, which is great news for everyone.BurntMyBacon - Tuesday, November 24, 2015 - link
@maecenasI agree they have a nice cooling system. They may even have the best at the moment. That said, I do believe they have some good competition in this area. MSI impressed me with their Twin Frozer design back before Asus had a DirectCU design out. They've been constantly improving since then. Saphire (much as I dislike them) released some very appealing vapor chamber designs. EVGA had pretty decent blower coolers, but nothing really standout until their second revision of their non-blower design (ACX 2.0). The ACX 2.0+ is copper heaven. I don't really favor designs that just throw another fan at it without really giving much thought to the heatsink design like Gigabyte's Windforce cards. I feel like MSI set the bar with their original Twin Frozer cards and since then, MSI, Asus, Saphire (sigh), and now EVGA have been vying for dominance in the cooling department.
just4U - Friday, November 27, 2015 - link
Strix is nice but MSI's cooling solution is just as good.olivaw - Monday, November 23, 2015 - link
Did I miss the GTX 960 review???