Sapphire Nitro R9 380X Video Card Review - Sweet spot card at 1440p?
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
1,298 words · ~6 min read
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with the continuing trend of more capable gpus and higher resolution
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monitors falling in price gaming at 1440p is becoming an attractive option
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for people who want to go beyond the now standard 1080p experience but don't want
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to Fork out tons of cash for a 4K setup
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with that in mind today we're looking at AMD's new Radeon R9
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380x an upper mid-range card squarely
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focused on the 1440p market how does it
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stack up to the competition in terms of performance and value stay tuned to find
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out and if you guys like the video once you're done hit that like button
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up Corsair's RMI series power supplies
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feature premium components for great performance with very low noise click
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the link in the video description to learn more let's start off by having a
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look at the important specs of our three 80x like its slightly cheaper little
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brother the R9 380 the 380x features a
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tonga GPU but packs more stream processors for a performance boost you
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also get a fairly standard allocation of 4 GB of gddr5 memory a 256bit memory
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interface and at least a 970 MHz core
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clock with support for direct X12 Vulcan
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and mantle apis our review sample is a sapphire night retro Edition featuring a
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70 MHz outof the Box overclock a dual fan open aired cooler and a plastic back
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plate reference cards aren't available quite yet but you'll get a similar look
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to other recent gen radon cards with a black shroud and blower style fan you'll
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need two six pin PCI Express power connectors to give your card enough
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juice to properly run as well for testing We compare the 380x to a number
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of other mid-range to high-end is cards from an AMD to NVIDIA standpoint
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excluding the gtx980 TI and the R9 Fury
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series as those cards are priced well above the target market for the 380x we
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used our standard test bench inside of a cooler master master case Pro 5 you can
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see the specs of the test bench here on the screen so let's have a quick look at
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the results our first test was to check the power draw and temperatures at load
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the 380x performed about exactly where we expected it smack in the middle of
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the AMD product stack at 2 88 Watts its
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power draw is about 70 Watts higher than its closest competitor on the NVIDIA
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side the GTX 960 but is still by no
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means unreasonable the GPU stayed at a respectable 69° C so you shouldn't have
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to worry too much about temperatures north of the 80° kind of Mark that we've
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been having some issues with with the R9 290 and 390 series for our game
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benchmarks we started off with the notoriously resource hungry Crisis 3
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running at 1440 p on the very high preset with FXAA enabled here we saw the
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380x push 34 frames per second beating
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out its closest competitor the on the NVIDIA side the gtx960 by 6 FPS moving
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on to Far Cry 4 at ultra settings at 1440p the 380x mustered 39 frames per
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second beating out the GTX 960 by 4 FPS
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and in Tomb Raider at the same resolution and ultimate settings we got
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49 frames per second compared to the 40 from the 960 but while these frame rates
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are certainly playable they may not be quite as smooth as you'd like so we put
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the 380x through our suite of games again but this time turn the graphics
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down to one step below the maximum here
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we saw a pretty substantial Improvement especially in Tomb Raider and Crisis 3
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with the 38x now pushing 75 and 54 FPS
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respectively Far Cry 4 saw a more modest
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yet still noticeable bump at 44 FPS but
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just because this is a 1440p focus card doesn't mean that's what you have to use
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it for if you're rocking a 1080p Monitor and want to say just max out your games
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you can do so so we did and the 38x managed between about 53 and 70 FPS
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overall but what about value the aforementioned performance gain over the
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960 does come at a cost at the time of
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this video the cheapest gtx960 on new egg cost $55 less than the cheapest 380x
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due to to sales prices yes but you'd normally be looking at a closer to $25
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to $30 Delta so does the 380x make sense
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from a value for money perspective our Sapphire 38x is selling on New Egg for
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$230 while you can pick up the same ASUS
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strix GTX 960 that we used for 210
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looking at the graph you can see a slight but not earth shattering
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Advantage for the 3DX in terms of dollars per frame at 1440p which may
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make the $20 premium a worthwhile
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investment unfortunately we didn't have
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an r9380 non-x to test against but
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independent testing that we have seen has shown that the X edition only gives
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you a boost of 2 to three FPS in many cases so the plain vanilla 380 may be a
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better choice if you don't care about squeezing every last frame from your
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wallet including every last dollar so
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our conclusion is that while the 38x does doesn't change the game in the 200
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to$ 250ish dollar price point it's still a
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solid entry for AMD for those who want to game at 1440p with the settings
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cranked to high or those who want to get close to that 60fps Holy Grail at 1080p
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with everything cranked up if you really want to max out games at 1440p though
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and approach 60 frames per second spending the extra 70 to 100 bucks on a
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GTX 970 or R9 390 might have been a wise
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it's linked in the video description down below thanks for watching guys if
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that kind of stuff you're probably wondering what to watch next so look
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here and look no further for part one of
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the mineral oil build if you guys haven't seen that yet you probably have
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but if you haven't it's awesome