ASUS Strix Radeon R9 380X review: One more graphics card for the mainstream

Just when we thought that we’d seen everything from AMD this year, the company sprung the Radeon R9 380X on us, a more powerful version of the Radeon R9 380 with a greater number of stream processors, texture mapping units, and higher clock speeds.

This has been a busy year for AMD. After rolling out a series of long overdue graphics cards – including cards based on the brand new Fiji architecture and other rebadged products – and debuting the first 3D memory architecture in High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), the company is hoping to reassert its place in the GPU market. Following a restructuring of its graphics division, it also announced that it would be ditching its Catalyst brand of drivers, opting instead for a broad umbrella called “Radeon Software”.

With the Radeon R9 380X, AMD looks to be hoping to offer even more choice to mainstream consumers, who arguably comprise the largest section of the market. By using a “fully-enabled” version of the Antigua GPU (rebranded Tonga) that we saw in the Radeon R9 380, AMD has given us a slightly more capable card, intended to woo consumers who desire even more performance.

NVIDIA actually took the reverse tack with the GeForce GTX 950, which featured a cutdown version of the GM206 GPU used on the GeForce GTX 960. It sure seems like both AMD and NVIDIA are milking their different GPU chips for all they are worth, in an attempt to provide an option for every conceivable budget.

A “Mainstream” Performance Card

AMD hasn’t released a reference version of the card, so we’ll be using the ASUS Strix Radeon R9 380 to assess the performance characteristics of the card. Incidentally, we used an ASUS card for our review of the Radeon R9 380 as well, so the comparisons between the two should be relatively fair.

While the Radeon R9 380 utilized an Antigua chip based on the Radeon R9 285’s Tonga GPU, the new R9 380X will feature Antigua XT, indicative of a fully-enabled Antigua chip. Indeed, it is equipped with 2,048 stream processors, around 14% more than the 1,792 on the Radeon R9 380. The number of texture mapping units has also been bumped up to 128 from 112, a similar 14% increase. 

As per most custom cards, the core clock has been factory overclocked to 1,030MHz, up from 990MHz on the Strix R9 380. This also represents a decent boost above the reference speeds of around 970MHz for a typical Radeon R9 380X class graphics card. A dedicated OC mode raises this to 1,050MHz for a slight performance boost. It also comes with 4GB of GDDR5 memory – unlike the R9 380 which came in 2GB and 4GB versions (we never knew why), this is the only flavor offered.

In addition, it has the same 256-bit memory bus width but the memory clock speeds have been bumped up to 1,425MHz, which translates into 182.4GB/s of available memory bandwidth, putting it just above what a reference Radeon R9 380 is specced for.

And despite its fully-enabled Antigua XT GPU, the Radeon R9 380X retains similar power characteristics (this is indeed the case in our power consumption tests) as the R9 380 with the same TDP of 190 watts.

Here’s a snapshot summarizing the card’s specifications:

When AMD announced its Radeon 300 series cards back in June, it singled out the Radeon R9 380 and above as being suited to gaming at 1440p resolutions. This time, AMD was more specific with the Radeon R9 380X’s placement in its product line-up – the R9 380X will be a 1440p gaming card, while the R9 390 and up will be targeted more at 4K gaming.

A Closer Look

The ASUS Strix Radeon R9 380X features all the bells-and-whistles that we’ve come to expect from a custom card. It relies on ASUS’ familiar dual-fan DirectCU II cooler to keep cool, complete with a stylized cooling shroud that resembles the watchful eyes of some red-eyed owl.

There are also no surprises when it comes to the fans, which use a semi-passive design that allows them to power down entirely when the GPU’s temperature falls below the 55-57°C range. And considering that the GPU idles at around 38°C, you shouldn’t see the temperature rise above the specified range while mucking around with light tasks like Web browsing or Microsoft Word, which means that you get to work, read, and surf the Web in relative quiet.

The Strix Radeon R9 380X also uses a triple heatpipe design, comprising a single extra-thick 10mm heatpipe and dual 8mm ones to help channel heat away from the GPU die.

In addition, it sports an extra-dense array of heatsink fins to increase the area available for heat dissipation. ASUS puts the total heat dissipation surface area at 2,842.53cm² , 1.5 times more than the 1,942.49cm² available on the reference design. In theory, this should mean less thermal throttling because of the card’s ability to dissipate more heat.

The card relies on a digital 8-phase power design and upgraded capacitors, chokes, and voltage regulation components over the reference design. These supposedly help create a cleaner power signal and widen the voltage modulation tolerance, which looks like it might help with more stable overclocking. But as we’ll see later, the card doesn’t take too well to being overclocked, which is unsurprising given that overclocking headroom wasn’t impressive on the Radeon R9 390 series cards either.

As expected of custom cards today, there's also a metal backplate for further structural reinforcement (and it looks good too). At 273mm long, this is not exactly a small card, so the extra support is a welcome feature.

The card is powered by two 6-pin PCIe power connectors, a change from the single 8-pin connector on the Strix Radeon R9 380. As per the previous Strix card we’ve reviewed, there are two LEDs above the connectors that will glow white when a successful connection has been established. They will glow red if there’s a problem, so you’ll know if it is a loose connection that’s the culprit.

Round the back, the card has a fairly standard selection of display connectors, including one DVI-I port, one DVI-D port, one HDMI connector, and one DisplayPort output.

Test Setup

Here are the specifications of our graphics test bed:

• Intel Core i7-5960X
• ASUS X99-Pro (Intel X99 chipset) motherboard
• 2 x 4GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDRR-2133 (Auto timings: CAS 15-15-15-36)
• Corsair Force LX 256GB SSD (OS)
• Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB (Benchmarks + Games)
• Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit SP1
• Intel INF 10.0.20

For our comparisons, we rounded up the AMD cards directly above and below the R9 380X in AMD’s product hierarchy, which means the Radeon R9 380, R9 390, and R9 390X. On top of that, we also threw in the Palit GeForce GTX 970 JetStream and ASUS Strix GeForce GTX 960, the closest comparable NVIDIA cards.

However, do note that because of the upcoming release of AMD’s new Crimson software, these results may be subject to change as the new Radeon Software: Crimson edition will supposedly bring certain performance improvements. Nevertheless, because our test benchmark titles are mostly over a year old, we don’t expect major changes when Crimson releases. But whatever may be the case, these results should still serve as a general indicator of the performance of the R9 380X relative to the other cards.

Below is the full list of cards tested and their driver versions:

• ASUS Strix Radeon R9 380X DirectCU II OC 4G (AMD Catalyst Display Driver 15.201.1301.0 WHQL)
• ASUS Strix Radeon R9 380 DirectCU II OC 2G (AMD Catalyst Display Driver 15.200.1062.1004 WHQL)
• PowerColor PCS+ R9 390 (AMD Catalyst Display Driver 15.200.1046.0 WHQL)
• MSI Radeon R9 390X Gaming 8G (AMD Catalyst Display Driver 15.200.1046.0 WHQL)
• Palit GeForce GTX 970 JetStream (ForceWare 353.30)
• ASUS Strix GeForce GTX 960 (ForceWare 353.30)

Benchmarks

As this is our first review of the Radeon R9 380X, we’ll be running our complete suite of synthetic and gaming benchmarks to get an idea of its full performance characteristics:-

• Futuremark 3DMark 2013
• Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
• Crysis 3
• Tomb Raider
• Hitman: Absolution
• Thief

For our temperature and power consumption tests, we used the Fire Strike Extreme benchmark in 3DMark 2013.

Before diving into the full results, here's a table to show how the Radeon R9 380X stacks up against the immediate competition:

[hwzcompare]

[products=531008,511104,514919,514140,514922,491673]

[width=200]

[caption=ASUS Strix Radeon R9 380X and competitive SKUs compared]

[showprices=1]

[/hwzcompare]

Performance Results

3DMark 2013

3DMark is our go-to synthetic benchmark for testing the graphics performance of cards at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K resolutions. Unsurprisingly, there was a close pairing of results between the R9 380X and R9 380, and the R9 390X and R9 390, with a much greater difference between the two pairs. This pattern was also something that we continued to observe in the rest of our gaming benchmarks.

In 3DMark FireStrike and FireStrike Extreme, the R9 380X was about 7-8% faster than the R9 380. This gap widened to around 28% in FireStrike Ultra, but we’re not paying too much attention to those results as both cards are rather ill-suited to 4K gaming.

The R9 380X was also approximately a good 15% faster than the GeForce GTX 960. However, both the GeForce GTX 970 and R9 390 were roughly 30% faster than the former card. This is quite a large performance gap, but one that is to be expected given the potential price difference between the two.

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

Shadow of Mordor is a fairly taxing game that demands quite a bit of graphics memory, especially at the Ultra settings that we ran the benchmark at. At a resolution of 2,560 x 1,600 pixels, the R9 380X turned out to be around 24% faster than the R9 380. As in 3DMark, there was also a huge performance gap between the R9 380X and the R9 390, with the latter pushing out nearly twice the number of frames.

In fact, it looks like the 8GB of GDDR5 memory on the R9 390 and 390X is coming into play here. The GeForce GTX 970 was fairly close in performance to the two in 3DMark, but it fell behind in Shadow of Mordor, perhaps due to its having just 4GB of GDDR5 memory.

As a result, the 24% difference we noted between the R9 380X and 380 might even narrow slightly if you opt for the 4GB version of the R9 380 (ours was the 2GB version).

Crysis 3

There were less stark performance differences in Crysis 3, where the R9 380X was around 7% quicker than the R9 380. The R9 380X also closed the performance gap with the R9 390 series cards somewhat, although the difference was still by no means small – the R9 390 was about 18% faster than the R9 380X at a resolution of 2,560 x 1,600 pixels with anti-aliasing turned off.

Turning on 8X MSAA in Crysis 3 resulted in all the cards taking a huge performance hit. The average frame rates on the R9 380X just about halved at both tested resolutions, so this is something to take note of if you’re the sort that likes to crank up all the eye candy to maximum.

Tomb Raider

Tomb Raider is starting to show its age in our benchmarks, and we’re used to seeing most recent releases churn out more than playable frame rates in the game. This was the case with the R9 380X as well, and it was approximately 10% faster than the R9 380.

However, the R9 390 series cards and the GeForce GTX 970 once again leapt ahead here, with the latter even outstripping the former by a good margin. As we’ve noted repeatedly in our previous reviews, AMD’s latest batch of cards don’t really thrive at lower resolutions compared to NVIDIA’s offerings.

Hitman Absolution

Hitman Absolution is also another game that is getting slightly long in the tooth, but it still manages to demand quite a bit when anti-aliasing is turned on. Like we saw in Crysis 3, all the cards once again showed a large performance drop with 8X MSAA turned on. The R9 380X still managed a playable average of 26.91fps at a resolution of 1,920 x 1,200 pixels with 8X AA, but cranking things up to 1600p made things absolutely unplayable.

As a result, when it comes to MSAA at least (which is generally one of the more demanding forms of AA), you’re going to have to pick between a higher resolution or anti-aliasing. Of course, one thing to note is that higher resolutions do reduce jagged edges and thus mitigate the need for anti-aliasing, so it might turn out to not be much of a trade off after all.

At a resolution of 2,560 x 1,600 pixels and no AA, the R9 380X was about 7% faster than the R9 380, which so far seems to be the average difference that we’ve observed across benchmarks.

Thief

The R9 380X put out numbers that were very close to those of the R9 380 in Thief. In all four of our tested settings, the cards were within just a couple of frame of each other. This was the case for the R9 390X and 390 as well, and it looks like Thief doesn’t fully utilize the greater number of stream processors on the top cards in the R9 380 and 390 series.

Furthermore, the NVIDIA cards did rather well here. Again, this was something we observed in our previous reviews, where this year’s AMD cards showed a heavy emphasis on performance at 1440p and up as opposed to the less demanding 1080p resolution. This is clearly seen in the results, where the GeForce GTX 960 outstripped the R9 380X at a resolution of 1,920 x 1,200 pixels and the Low preset, only to fall behind as the settings were cranked up.

Temperature and Power Consumption

Our temperature tests are conducted by looping 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme for a little while and then checking the highest recorded temperature. Interestingly enough, the R9 380X ran 4°C cooler than the R9 380 despite its higher clock speeds. Along with the R9 390, it was the coolest card in this comparison.

The R9 380X and R9 380 cards we tested both came from ASUS, and they both use very similar, if not identical, cooling designs. As a result, the lower temperature of the R9 380X vis-à-vis the R9 380 could be due to a variety of other factors like chip binning.

In fact, power consumption on the R9 380X was also slightly lower than that on the R9 380, so it may be that chips on the R9 380X are simply more power efficient.

Overclocking

In the overclocking department, the R9 380X unfortunately turned out to be a lackluster overclocker. While we were able to push the core clock to 1,100MHz on the R9 380, we were only able to hit 1,060MHz on the R9 380X. Things were better when it came to memory overclocking though, and we managed to achieve an effective memory clock of 6,000MHz on the R9 380X.

This resulted in just a 3% boost in performance in 3DMark, which probably is not going to translate into any significant gain in actual games. So if you want a card that offers up truckloads of free performance via overclocking, the R9 380X is probably not it.

Just another option for the mainstream

When all’s said and done, the Radeon R9 380X is just another option for mainstream consumers. The R9 380 was a rebranded version of the Tonga GPU on the R9 285, and the R9 380X simply builds on that with a fully-enabled (and renamed) Antigua XT GPU with more stream processors.

The R9 380 was nothing new, and neither is the R9 380X. It retains all the features of the AMD 300 series cards like Frame Rate Target Control, Asynchronous Shaders, and Virtual Super Resolution, while adding a bit more performance onto the table.

It looks like AMD might be trying to plug the price and performance gap between the R9 380 and R9 390, which is in all honesty quite large. The US$329 Radeon R9 390 was anywhere north of 40% faster than the US$199 Radeon R9 380, and while you can probably justify shelling out over US$100 more for the fairly big jump in performance, AMD may have been hoping to offer an additional fresh option for gamers deciding between the R9 380 and 390 (without resorting to selecting a card from the 'older' 200-series). On the NVIDIA front, AMD has said that the R9 380X is intended as a replacement for older cards like the GeForce GTX 660 and 760.

AMD has priced the Radeon R9 380X at US$229 (we don't have the local pricing of the ASUS card yet), only US$30 more than the Radeon R9 380. That seems reasonable for the roughly 7-10% performance increase that you’re getting on the R9 380X, and may be a good choice for gamers who aren’t happy with the Radeon R9 380’s performance, but don’t have the budget to make the leap to the R9 390. However, if you were looking for a card that fits neatly in the middle between the R9 380 and R9 390, the R9 380X is unfortunately not that card as the R9 390 is still at least 30% quicker in most situations, and its 8GB of GDDR5 memory (compared to the 4GB on the R9 380X) helps it deal with the increasing memory bandwidth demands of recent games.

One other caveat is that the R9 380X is probably better suited to gaming at 1440p resolutions as opposed to 1080p. At the latter resolutions, you may just want to consider the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970. It’s more expensive of course, but it offers significantly better performance without as big a price tag as the Radeon R9 390 series. Still, we welcome AMD’s introduction of the R9 380X. Whichever way you parse it, more choice for consumers is always a good thing.

Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.