Review: Asus STRIX R9 380X OC

Introduction and features

The new AMD Radeon R9 380X is the very latest midrange graphics card from the big Texan GPU maker, and should be filtering into shops and onto the e-shelves as you read this.

Asus' STRIX brand is its gaming-centric option and, as such, this owl-eyed version of the R9 380X comes with a little factory overclocking and a very tasty cooling array.

But to really call the R9 380X itself a new card is something of a misnomer.

That's not to say the R9 380X's Tonga XT chip isn't an advanced graphics core. In fact, after the Fiji GPUs that have gone into AMD's R9 Fury, Fury X and Nano cards, it's the most advanced chip AMD has got in its armoury.

The fact this GPU could have been launched around a year ago, when AMD first released the Tonga processor, does show something of how the company is progressing its graphics silicon. Given the missed production shrink down to a 20nm lithography AMD has largely had to stick with the same 28nm Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture it used for the last few generations.

This year then is more about supporting those newer Fiji-based cards and testing the water with its advanced – though relatively thin – High Bandwidth Memory frame buffers.

And that's why every card below those top-tier options are essentially refreshes of the last generation of Radeon cards.

Though that can't quite be said for this R9 380X, because AMD never did release the R9 285X which would have sported the same Tonga XT GPU as this latest midrange effort. It almost did – I had a good few conversations with one of AMD's main graphics cards partners about it before the R9 285X was seemingly canned.

We can't talk about AMD's cards without sparing a thought for the big green Nvidia competition, however, and where AMD has positioned the new R9 380X shows it's been thinking about the opposition carefully too.

In Nvidia's graphics stack there's nothing sat in between the £160 (around $250, AU$340) GTX 960 and £250 (around $380, AU$530) GTX 970, which is exactly where AMD has aimed this latest midrange card.

Hardware

So, what's the recipe for a Tonga GPU then? Silicon-wise we're still talking about the same GCN architecture AMD has been using since 2012, but the configuration is a little different.

The R9 380 and R9 380X cards' Tonga GPUs use the same basic configuration as the Tahiti chips fitted in the top cards of the last generation as well as the Grenada chips seen in the R9 390 and 390X cards.

The R9 380X though is sporting the Tonga GPU's full complement of 2,048 GCN cores, with 128 texture units. The straight R9 380 though has a slightly cut-down version of the chip with 1,792 cores and 112 texture units, exactly like the original R9 285 it's based on.

That means it's got the GPU skills to cope with the extra geometry which the latest game engines, featuring heavy tessellation, throw at graphics silicon.

The 256-bit memory interface, however, seems a little lightweight on the face of it, especially in comparison with the 512-bit setup of the cards on the next rung up its product stack. But with Tonga's modern, and still impressive, colour compression algorithms its memory interface actually becomes pretty capable. And with a full 4GB framebuffer to boot the R9 380X is well set for today's high-res gaming.

Features and spec

Alongside the hardware comes AMD's suite of graphics and GPU-based features, which includes its Powertune overclocking software, soon to be pushed through into its new software and driver system, Crimson.

Alongside that is the rather familiar Virtual Super Resolution (VSR) feature. This offers you the fidelity improvement – by smoothing out the edges – of a higher resolution on monitors which aren't able to deliver them natively. It's familiar because Nvidia released its Dynamic Super Resolution (DSR) tech last year, which had a similar effect.

On games where the GPU isn't being particularly taxed, upscaling the resolution can make things look sharper, but does have the same impact on performance as playing at that resolution would normally have.

With AMD's setup though you can have VSR set at either the game level or on the Windows desktop itself. It's a neat way to boost the desktop real-estate of a lower-res monitor.

Here are the core specs of the Asus STRIX R9 380X OC as provided to techradar:

• GPU: AMD Tonga XT
• GCN cores: 2,048
• Lithography: 28nm
• Clock speed: 1,030MHz
• Memory capacity: 4GB GDDR5
• Memory bus: 256-bit
• TDP: 190W

Performance

In terms of performance the Asus R9 380X is a pretty impressive little card. It's nearest Nvidia rival is the GTX 960, which is the same price as the straight R9 380. And when it comes to gaming the latest AMD midrange card manages an often healthy performance lead.

AMD is pegging the R9 380X as its 1440p card. In fact it's also putting the weaker R9 380 forward as such, but where that card struggles a little more at the 2560 x 1440 resolution, the R9 380X is still able to more or less stand its ground, if only just. The standard 2GB framebuffer in the GTX 960, however, starts to highlight the extra benefit of having 4GB of video memory strapped to your GPU these days.

The higher resolution textures of games like Shadow of Mordor or GTA V mean that, with only 2GB of capacity, the GTX 960 runs out of space very quickly. Then your gaming PC has to start accessing the slower system memory instead, introducing a drop in frame rate.

The average frame rate drop in Shadow of Mordor is obvious, less so in GTA V. Still, the difference is there around Los Santos too – the GTX 960 sometimes took as long as 167ms to draw a single frame, while the slowest the R9 380X hit was 90ms.

Benchmarks

So without further ado, here are the results of our extensive benchmarking in full, directly comparing the card to GTX 960, GTX 970 and R9 390 opposition:

Synthetic tessellation performance (2560 x 1440)

Heaven 3.0 – Avg (Min) FPS

• Asus STRIX R9 380X: 26 (8)
• Asus STRIX GTX 960: 23 (11)
• Sapphire R9 390 Nitro: 38 (16)
• Gigabyte GTX 970: 38 (15)

Gaming performance (2560 x 1440)

Battlefield 4 – Avg (Min) FPS

• Asus STRIX R9 380X: 36 (22)
• Asus STRIX GTX 960: 37 (23)
• Sapphire R9 390 Nitro: 58 (34)
• Gigabyte GTX 970: 57 (34)

Total War: Attila – Avg (Min) FPS

• Asus STRIX R9 380X: 14 (9)
• Asus STRIX GTX 960: 11 (6)
• Sapphire R9 390 Nitro: 20 (13)
• Gigabyte GTX 970: 19 (13)

GRID 2 – Avg (Min) FPS

• Asus STRIX R9 380X: 68 (53)
• Asus STRIX GTX 960: 59 (48)
• Sapphire R9 390 Nitro: 88 (70)
• Gigabyte GTX 970: 96 (76)

GTA V – Avg (Min) FPS

• Asus STRIX R9 380X: 35 (11)
• Asus STRIX GTX 960: 31 (6)
• Sapphire R9 390 Nitro: 52 (15)
• Gigabyte GTX 970: 49 (19)

Shadow of Mordor – Avg (Min) FPS

• Asus STRIX R9 380X: 40 (19)
• Asus STRIX GTX 960: 24 (14)
• Sapphire R9 390 Nitro: 56 (28)
• Gigabyte GTX 970: 51 (38)

Gaming performance (1920 x 1080)

Battlefield 4 – Avg (Min) FPS

• Asus STRIX R9 380X: 57 (31)
• Asus STRIX GTX 960: 55 (31)
• Sapphire R9 390 Nitro: 82 (47)
• Gigabyte GTX 970: 90 (47)

GTA V – Avg (Min) FPS

• Asus STRIX R9 380X: 51 (14)
• Asus STRIX GTX 960: 49 (9)
• Sapphire R9 390 Nitro: 74 (20)
• Gigabyte GTX 970: 75 (21)

Shadow of Mordor – Avg (Min) FPS

• Asus STRIX R9 380X: 56 (26)
• Asus STRIX GTX 960: 36 (17)
• Sapphire R9 390 Nitro: 79 (38)
• Gigabyte GTX 970: 74 (50)

Verdict

We liked

The Asus spin of the R9 380X is a great little gamer. For the around £190 outlay you're getting a graphics card which is practically silent when you're just fiddling about on your desktop – all thanks to the STRIX fans which don't kick in until the GPU temperature hits a little over 60 degrees C. And when you are in-game the fans will start spinning, but still do so quietly. It wasn't even particularly noticeable when I pushed the chip a little faster with some light overclocking, either.

The R9 380X, then, will keep your games trucking along at a decent rate of knots. So long as you're realistic.

At 1080p it performs brilliantly with all the graphical bells and whistles turned on, pushing 60 fps in a lot of titles. At the 1440p resolution AMD is trying to position the card at, though, things are a little tougher. You're not going to hit 60 fps without seriously scaling down your game setting expectations.

We disliked

Software is a major concern for AMD, so much so that it's ditching the Catalyst drivers completely very soon. There's no issue with the performance, but the Catalyst Control Panel is awkward in the extreme and I'm praying for the day when the Raptr gaming app – AMD's licensed-in answer to Nvidia's far better GeForce Experience – is long gone.

I'm also not entirely convinced by AMD positioning this card as a 1440p option. Sure, with some games it can cope at this resolution, but for the majority you're not going to get a great experience.

Final verdict

It's all about the money, money, money, as some tall lady with massive shoes once sang. When you're looking to buy a new graphics card you'll pretty much always be able to find one to fit your exact budget – there are simply that many options.

But that also means there isn't too much distance between them either. Just £20 cheaper than this overclocked, and thus slightly more expensive than normal, R9 380X, sits both the standard R9 380 and GTX 960. That makes this card worth a cheeky upgrade if you'd already been looking at either of those. For £60 more, however, you can get either the R9 390 or GTX 970.

Things start to get pretty tasty in those upper echelons, with both those cards able to post vastly higher gaming performance than the R9 380X. Psychologically the difference between £190 (around $290, AU$400) and £250 (around $380, AU$530) is relatively large, but in realistic terms it would probably be worth saving a little longer and spending bigger.

After all, you'll have to replace this card sooner than either of those far speedier GPUs.

But, for what it is – namely a GPU which should have been released a year back – the R9 380X is a pretty impressive performer, and puts clear air between it and the nearest green-tinged rival, Nvidia's GTX 960. However, if you want a genuine 1440p card you'll have to spend bigger.

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