Gadgetory

hi and welcome back to hardware unboxed I'm your host Matt and today we'll be uncovering and benchmarking the new Radeon r9 380 X if you're currently shopping around for a new graphics card for less than $300 your options are pretty limited assuming you can't afford or simply don't wish to spend $300 on an i-9 390 or GTX 970 then you're limited to $200 options in the r9 380 or gtx 960 that $100 price gap is pretty big and normally we expect to see a $250 option for example last generations r9 280 or gtx 760 to round out 2015 AMD will be releasing another 300 series graphics card today the Radeon r9 380 X and you guessed it this is the new $250 candidate if you checked out our gtx 960 versus r9 380 head-to-head comparison where we tested over 20 games you'll know that AMD currently offer the best $200 graphics card and that being the case we expect big things from the 380 X so what's under the hood based on the GC and 1.2 architecture the 380 x packs 2048 SPU's 128 ta use and 32 ro PS this is the same core configuration as the 280 X and therefore the Radeon HD 7970 both of which used the original GCN 1.0 architecture a key difference of the 380 X when compared to those previous jeep uses the 256-bit wide memory bus which is also used by the standard 380 and Radeon r9 285 before it however unlike the 380 the 380 X will come with a 4 gigabyte of gddr5 memory based configuration as AMD isn't just targeting 1080p gaming with the 380 X but also 1440p AMD has slapped the same thermal design power rating of 100 and 90 watts on the 380 X as they did on the 380 and despite that we certainly expect the beefier 380 X use quite a bit more power the default AMD specification calls for a core clock speed of 970 megahertz and a memory speed of 1000 125 megahertz which provides a data rate of 5.7 gigabits per second it should be noted that the 256-bit wide memory bus limits the 380 X to a memory bandwidth of just 182 gigabytes per second the same memory bandwidth of the 380 and a far cry from the 384 gigabytes of the r9 390 for testing we used to make sure pretty new games including fallout for Mad Max The Witcher 3 Batman Arkham Knight and battlefield 4 although battlefield 4 isn't new the game is still very demanding and visually impressive it also serves as an excellent base line given drivers have had plenty of time to mature and it's commonly used for benchmarking initially we plan to throw in some call of duty black ops 3 results as well but Judas and performance anomalies between the 380 and 380 X we decided against it the latest beta driver showed massive performance gains for the 390 and 380 X over the standard 388 there's definitely some funny business going on there rather than risk artificially skewing the results we dropped the test entirely Batman Arkham Knight is a questionable addition to our battery of benchmarks giving the game trouble history still today it seems to be in a playable state we certainly didn't run into any issues when benchmarking Batman features its own built-in benchmark but it doesn't accurately represent real gameplay instead we use fraps to measure 60 seconds gameplay while driving the Batmobile around the in-game quality settings roll max down was the exception of the Nvidia game work settings which include interactive smoke interactive paper debris enhanced rein and enhanced lights are the Radeon r9 380 air has over 72 frames per second with a minimum of fifty nine frames of man arcanite making it six frames per second or nine percent faster than the 380 that said it was a whopping 29 percent slower than the 390 which worked out to be a 29 frame per second gap to bench my father field for we're using perhaps to measure 60 seconds of the opening sequence of the campaign sixth level of kashgar it's a very demanding section as it's fast paced and features plenty of draw distance numerous lighting effects and shadows high resolution textures as well as particle effects from fire and smoke anti-aliasing has been set to 2 times msaa and the HB AO ambient occlusion mode has been used all other settings have been maxed out testing with battlefield 4 we again find that the 380 X is just 8% faster than the 380 while losing to the 390 by a rather substantial 28% margin as it falls short by 25 frames per second I've only just purchased Mad Max and therefore haven't had time to play through the game to work out where I should benchmark that being said for now I'm testing with 60 seconds of the intro cutscenes the game doesn't appear particularly demanding even with the quality settings maxed out the 380 X blitzed Mad Max up to 81 fps though this meant it was just 8% faster than the 380 and 960 graphics cards while it was again miles behind the 390 losing by a 24% margin fallout 4 benchmarking takes place in the small town of Concord where we use perhaps to measure 60 seconds of gameplay the ultra preset was used for testing which means taa was enabled along with features such as SSAO and godrays an average of 68 frames per second meant that 380 X was 13% faster than the 380 and 10% faster than the GTX 960 meanwhile it only trailed the 390 by more respectable 14% margin this time around for testing The Witcher 3 we benchmark 60 seconds of gameplay in the large town of novigrad the maximum in-game quality settings we use which meant that Nvidia hair works was enabled and set to the maximum level currently I am the Adam video delivers similar performance with this setting enabled here the 380 accents good for 38 frames at 1080p with all the eye candy turned on this meant that the 380 X was 9% faster than the 380 but crucially 21% slower than 390 next we test the power consumption while playing Battlefield the 380 excess consumption was very high certainly much higher than we were expecting it's difficult to compare the efficiency of non-reference cars as voltage profiles are often changed causing certain graphics cars to consume more power this could very well be the case with the Sapphire 380 ft nitro OC whatever the case the sapphire 3 DX consumes roughly the same amount of power as the HIAS r9 390 in battlefield 4 and considerably more power than H is 380 interestingly this sapphire 9 285 was also quite power-hungry the power consumption figures in fallout 4 were quite similar to those seen when looking at battlefield 4 the standard 380 consumes a bit more power here which helped to reduce the huge margin between the 3 DX and 380 although overall the story is much the same with the bulk of the AMD 300 series in a video GeForce 900 series graphics cards have you already been released it's quite clear where the 3d X slots in and how good of a job it does so how good of a job just do exactly well that really depends on the price initial estimate suggests an MSRP of 250 dollars though we find that hard to believe given the 380 X was an average just 9% faster than the 380 and over 20% slower than the 390 this means the 380 X is an incremental upgrade over the 380 and given the performance we've seen a $220 asking price seems reasonable the 380 X is a fairly poor job of bridging the gap between the 380 and 390 s so $250 price should be out of the question on paper the 380 X features 25% fewer SPU's and the 390 so isn't entirely surprising that we found it to be on average 23% slower something I found interesting and wanted to share with you guys was how the 380 X compared to the almost four-year-old Radeon HD 7970 a graphics card that features the same core configuration the 79 70 years of the original GC & 1.0 architecture but features a wider 384 bit memory bus for 288 gigabyte per second memory bandwidth although the 380 X features are slightly more efficient GCM 1.2 architecture is 256 bit memory bus limits the memory bandwidth - just 180 gigabytes per second as you can see performance wise the old 7970 and 380 X have rather evenly matched the only game to show a significant difference in performance is fallout 4 although we don't believe the 380 X is actually 24 percent faster here rather AMD is yet to optimize the 79 seventies performance something they've obviously done in other recently released titles such as Mad Max Batman Arkham Knight and The Witcher 3 so essentially if you spent $500 on a 7970 almost four years ago it seems your graphics card is only devalued by 50% not a bad investment if you look at it that way getting back to the 380 X we'd hoped for more performance but looking at it realistically the 380 X was never going to be more than 14% faster than the 380 the specifications simply wouldn't allow it so keeping expectations in check the Radeon r9 380 X is a mild bump up from the 380 offering slightly better performance at 1080p AMD is hinting at 1440p performance with the 380 X but we feel it's a little too slow for that leaving the 390 is the best option for the higher resolution finally if you're in the market for a 200 to $250 graphics card right now we suggest you try and snap up one of the remaining r9 290 s incredibly there still seems to be plenty of them out there and right now you egg comm is showing stock for a sapphire r9 290 or $220 after $20 rebate performance wise you can expect very similar if not the same numbers to that of the i9 390 as we've demonstrated in previous videos thanks for watching another Hardware box release day review did you have high hopes to the 380 X let us know in the comments or f4 my Hardware on box comm for more videos like this one remember to hit like hit subscribe and we'll see you next time you