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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
101 Comments
View All Comments
SpartyOn - Monday, November 23, 2015 - link
My 770 is at 1400 MHz core / 7940 MHz memory; trust me, neither the GTX 960 or this 380x are beating me and I'm not digging into my wallet until Pascal comes out. It was tough when the GTX 980 Ti was released, but I'm sticking to my guns.At 1080p, which is where the 960 and 380x should be competing (because if you buy either of these for 1440p+, you're a moron), if they had gotten a 960 4GB for comparison, there wouldn't be much difference. You can get a 960 4GB, which is a one year old card, for less than $200 and it's essentially just as good at stock. The few frames the 380x wins in this review is mostly due to the VRAM limit on the 960 2GB.
Plus you can overclock a 960 to insane levels, so why spend $229 on the 380x when you can spend $180 on a GTX 960 4GB and overclock it if you want more speed?
Sushisamurai - Monday, November 23, 2015 - link
Errr... Isn't the 960 a rebadge of the 770?Sushisamurai - Monday, November 23, 2015 - link
Note: rebadge in the sense that the hardware is super similar, minus the maxwell gen 2 featuresSushisamurai - Monday, November 23, 2015 - link
Oops I lied. The 770 is not comparable to the 960; I'm assuming it's better. Mind u, the 280X and 770 were comparable back in the day.silverblue - Monday, November 23, 2015 - link
Yep, as the 770 is essentially a tweaked 680, which traded blows with the 7970/7970GE,CiccioB - Tuesday, November 24, 2015 - link
The sad thing is how all you make comparisons on this kind of technology. GPU scales well when made fat. So the point of "performance" is really moot when doing comparisons. It's like saying that the 750Ti is the same as a GTX480 because they perform similarly.This card (like all the new AMD 300 series) are simply fat, bloated, clocked at their limit GPUs that are sold under cost to compete with smaller more efficient architectures created by the competition (that is selling them at premium prices).
This 380X card is a complete fail in trying to make AMD advance in its fight. Competition has done marvelous things meanwhile: they came with a GPU, the GM106, which is half the GK104 in term of size and power consumption, and has the same performances. This is the progress the competition did while AMD passed from GCN 1.0 to GCN 1.2, which has only few tricks and hacks but nothing really good to bring that already obsolete architecture to the new level of competition.
Sorry, but if you are excited by this kind of "evolution" and you do not understand where this has brought "your favorite company" to, you really deserve to stay a generation back in terms of innovations. And be happy of this Tonga which will be sold for few bucks in few month and be completely forgotten when Pascal will annihilate it at it first iteration.
britjh22 - Monday, November 23, 2015 - link
Comparing a 2.5 year old card that cost $450-500 against a $230 card.... and complaining if AMD is even trying... your bias is showing sir. You shouldn't feel the need to upgrade yet in my opinion, unless of course your card is being crippled by NVIDIA's drivers, whoops!tviceman - Monday, November 23, 2015 - link
GTX 770 launched at $399, not $450. Interestingly, the GTX 770 was a smaller chip and drew less power. So, tossing the consumer economics aside, SpartyOn raises a good point.britjh22 - Monday, November 23, 2015 - link
The 770 2GB launched at $399, but the 4gb launched at anywhere from $450 to $500 depending on the model.200380051 - Monday, November 23, 2015 - link
The power consumtion of the 380X under load is lower with Furmark than it is with Crysis 3, while it is the opposite with the GTX 960. Any thoughts on that?