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
Overclocking
Finally, no review of a video card would be complete without a look at overclocking performance.
With ASUS setting the STRIX R9 380X’s factory clockspeed to 1030MHz – 60MHz ahead of AMD’s reference clock of 970MHz – ASUS is already significantly eating into the headroom available on the card, and the 1050MHz OC mode further cuts into that. We don’t have any voltage control (we can’t even read the voltage) so the card can only be overclocked as far as the Tonga GPU can go on default voltage. Meanwhile ASUS hasn’t touched the memory clockspeed at all, which should mean there’s a bit more headroom there to play with.
| ASIS STRIX R9 380X Overclocking | ||||
| ASUS STRIX R9 380X OC (Stock) | ASUS STRIX R9 380X (OC) | |||
| Boost Clock | 1030MHz | 1100MHz | ||
| Memory Clock | 5.7Gbps | 6.4Gbps | ||
| Power Limit | 100% | 115% | ||
Ultimately we were able to push the STRIX R9 380X OC from 1030MHz to 1100MHz on the GPU, a 70MHz (7%) overclock. I fully expect that Tonga could do better with more voltage – and the ASUS cooler could keep up – but at the same time it would take a bad power efficiency situation and make it worse. Otherwise memory overclocking was a bit more fruitful, as we were able to push the card from 5.7Gbps to 6.4Gbps, a 700Mbps (12%) performance increase. Note that relative to the original 7970, the R9 380X has a narrower 256-bit memory bus, so if there are any situations where GCN 1.2’s color compression technology can’t make up the difference, a memory overclock may help to close the gap.
Overall overclocking is good for another 5% performance increase over the STRIX R9 380X's factory overclock. Though enough to be significant, as we guessed base upon the clockspeeds, ASUS has already tapped much of the overclocking headroom available on the card. For reference clocked cards on the other hand, assuming that they can overclock similarly well, this means they can look forward to a total of 10% or so from overclocking.
Since we can't overvolt, the power/temp/noise impact of overclocking is limited. Under gaming workloads the difference is a handful of watts and a nothing for temperature or noise. Otherwise FurMark, with the higher power target, pushes the STRIX card a bit harder, but everything still remains within reason.
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CaedenV - Monday, November 23, 2015 - link
My guess is that these cards are factory OC'd, which means that they would need to be underclocked to run an apples-to-apples comparison at true 'stock' settings.Zeus Hai - Monday, November 23, 2015 - link
Can anyone confirm that AMD's Frame Limiter still doesn't work on Windows 10?nathanddrews - Monday, November 23, 2015 - link
That's news to me.Just for you, I tested it using my i3-2100/HD7750/W10 test mule. VSync globally disabled in CCC, VSync disabled in Dota 2, Frame Target set to 60fps. Steam overlay shows 60fps and I see no signs of tearing or stuttering. To my knowledge, it never stopped working.
Zeus Hai - Monday, November 23, 2015 - link
Hmm.., it should have some tearing because it doesnt really sync with the monitor anyway, mate. Can you set it to 65, 70, 75? Mine doesnt work in LoL, I set it to 60, but it always fires up over 150fps+Dirk_Funk - Monday, November 23, 2015 - link
LoL does have its own fps limiter, so perhaps that's causing a mix-up in the software. Also, LoL might be running in fake fullscreen mode whereas the catalyst fps limiter specifies it will "Reduce power consumption by running full-screen applications at reduced frame rates." I'm gonna go try a round of LoL now because you have me curious.Asomething - Tuesday, November 24, 2015 - link
Mine does, was just benching my new 290x and forgot to turn it off so my results were skewed by the 75fps frame cap i set.nirolf - Monday, November 23, 2015 - link
There's "ASUS R9 Fury OC" mentioned in the first table in the Overclocking section.Ryan Smith - Monday, November 23, 2015 - link
Thanks.Shadowmaster625 - Monday, November 23, 2015 - link
Tonga is an epic disaster. It is less than 10% more efficient than tahiti in terms of performance per watt, and in terms of performance per transistor (fps per mm^2) it apeears to be actually worse. Meanwhile, Nvidia releases maxwell which outperformas kepler on both these metrics not by some paltry 10% or less, but by a very wide margin.CiccioB - Tuesday, November 24, 2015 - link
All the GCN architecture is a disaster.With TeraScale architecture AMD could fight with smaller dies and less W for a bit less performance.
With GCN AMD has to compete using larger and power hungry dies that have brought it to go in red also in the graphics division, while with older TeraScale it at least could be at least on par.
GCN is an architecture not up with that of the competition.
DP64 presence is not the problem, as AMD has kept on reducing it influence over every GCN step (starting from 1/4FP and ending to 1/24FP) with no real results under the power consumption term. They probably could just spare few mm^2 on the die, but they are too way back with memory compression (I can't really believe they never thought about that) and their bus are way too big, expensive and power hungry.
All the architecture is a fail. And DX12 is not going to solve anything, as if they ever raise their performances of 10% over the competition, they are still way back in efficiency both in terms of W and die size.