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
Grand Theft Auto V
The open world action game in our benchmark suite is also the last game in our suite: Grand Theft Auto V. The latest edition of Rockstar’s venerable series of open world games, Grand Theft Auto V was originally released to the last-gen consoles back in 2013. However thanks to a rather significant facelift for the current-gen consoles and PCs, along with the ability to greatly turn up rendering distances and add other features like MSAA and more realistic shadows, the end result is a game that is still among the most stressful of our benchmarks when all of its features are turned up.
On a quick note about settings, as Grand Theft Auto V doesn't have pre-defined settings tiers, I want to quickly note what settings we're using. For "Very High" quality we have all of the primary graphics settings turned up to their highest setting, with the exception of grass, which is at its own very high setting. Meanwhile 4x MSAA is enabled for direct views and reflections. This setting also involves turning on some of the advanced redering features - the game's long shadows, high resolution shadows, and high definition flight streaming - but not increasing the view distance any further.
Grand Theft Auto V is another game that punishes 2GB cards to a degree, which plays into the R9 380X’s favor. At 1080p this helps to keep the card 11% ahead of the GTX 960 and 5% ahead of the R9 380. That said, GTA is the one game where perhaps even the R9 380X isn’t powerful enough for no-compromises 1080p gaming, and while 38fps is more than playable (this was a 30fps console game), the 60fps PC standard will require giving up MSAA to hit that mark.
Meanwhile the 99th percentile framerates further drive home the point about 2GB cards being insufficient. However it also points out how even the R9 380X can’t stay above 30fps at all times, reiterating what we said above about possibly needing to drop MSAA to get the best 1080p performance on the R9 380X.
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funkforce - Monday, November 23, 2015 - link
Haha, funny you should ask that...Check the comments...
January 2015
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8923/nvidia-launches...
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9547/nvidia-launches...
http://www.anandtech.com/comments/9390/the-amd-rad...
"jeffrey - Thursday, July 02, 2015 - link
Ryan Smith, any update on GTX 960
REPLY
Ryan Smith - Thursday, July 02, 2015 - link
As soon as Fury is out of the way. "
http://www.anandtech.com/comments/9621/the-amd-rad...
extide - Monday, November 23, 2015 - link
Looks like you missed a comment, because there was one at one point that said that there will not be a 960 review. I don't have a direct link to it because I'm not obsessed with the topic, but yeah, it was said.funkforce - Monday, November 23, 2015 - link
You're right, I don't know when that was said. I waited months for that review, because I trust the unbiased reviews here and wanted to buy a new graphics card based on info I could count on.And I just really don't like when you keep promising things, stringing your readers on, and then never delivering. I don't care if the review gets posted, it's just how it was handled. I've been raised that a person's word means something (he told me personally on twitter that he would do it). And I'm sure you could go on that this is the internet etc. but when you've been reading a site since it's start, it's content means something, at least to me. I guess it's why we're all here to some extent. If you go back on your word, then you should at least let ppl. know, a bit more officially, than in a comment section of, I would assume, another article.
Samus - Monday, November 23, 2015 - link
The problem with reviewing the GTX960 is the drivers have been optimizing around improving its performance all year, and every single card performs so different. The GTX960 overclocks incredibly well, some people hit 1400MHz is the board has the right power configuration. This is why you hear people talk about the GTX960 completely trumping the R9 28x/38x's when in reality, both GPU's give and take blows in various games at stock.But when overclocked, the GTX960 is a bit faster than an overclocked R9 28x/38x. I think this causes a lot of reviewers to tip-toe around these cards. And when you consider a GTX960 with 4GB is over $200 and a GTX970 with 4GB (er technically 3.5GB) is $260-$280 after rebate, it becomes muddled.
OrphanageExplosion - Tuesday, November 24, 2015 - link
I own the GTX 960. Mine hits 1450MHz easily. I think they all do because temps and power consumption barely budge. I also own the R9 380 in 4GB configuration.Drivers have barely improved the 960 performance and the 380 is faster in almost every game I own. Overclocking gets the 960 to parity, or slightly better to a small extent where you can't really tell the difference.
Of the two I'd take the 960 simply due to the efficiency, but driver updates have really made no difference to anything other than the games they were optimised for. Library titles have seen no improvement.
dananski - Monday, November 23, 2015 - link
I also waited a while, checking the site often. I think I spotted some 960 benchmarks slipped into some analysis article on here many months later, but no post to say they'd been done, let alone a full review.It's not just the graphics section either. I really don't get why there are so many announcements and so few reviews on here these days. It's a shame because reviews like this one here are the reason I like AnandTech so much.
olivaw - Monday, November 23, 2015 - link
I wanted the GTX 960 reviewed because it seems to be pretty good for an HTPC, since the power consumption is lower than most chips. I know the card is good, but I wanted an AnandTech review :)drwhoglius - Monday, November 23, 2015 - link
From Steam Hardware Survey http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/directx/October 2015 results
GTX 970 3.80%
GTX 960 2.16%
R9 200 Series 1.06%
R9 300 Series not yet measurable (or too new to be measured as GTX 950 isn't measured either)
Tikcus9666 - Monday, November 23, 2015 - link
Power difference is irrelevant in desktop PC's a 75W difference... 20 hours of usage at Full load is ~20p in the UKa 1000 hours of gaming (a years worth?) for an extra £10
This does not factor in some of this usage is in Winter months, so the extra heat generated reduces the amount of heat required from other sources, thus reducing other heating costs
jasonelmore - Monday, November 23, 2015 - link
what about idle power consumption? which uses 24/7 365 days.it can add up