Gadgetory

last month I put together a video that looked at 1080p gaming performance using just AMD graphics cards with the aim to determine which GPU in their current lineup offered the best bang for their bark at the most commonly used resolution despite being what I felt was an interesting comparison in hindsight it was unfortunately poorly timed just two weeks after the release of that video md released another new sub $300 graphics card the r9 380 x and not only that but a week later the new AMD crimson suite was released offering a flashy new user interface and even better performance one would think AMD might have timed the 380 x and crimson driver released to coincide with one another not only would this maximize the impact of the 380 x but it would have also better showcase their news user interface it seems the more things change is AMD the more things stay the same but I digress so not only as AMD's GPU line not changed but so too is the performance if only slightly other changes include more aggressive pricing from both AMD and nvidia for the holiday spending season well we have a new range of game to test with as was the case with the previous 1080p gaming video we'll be focusing heavily on price versus performance prices will be based on what we can find at major US retailers such as newegg.com and therefore all prizes will be based on the US currency ideally we'll be looking for an average of 60 FPS though we understand the sum game is one upwards of 120 FPS for the 120 Hertz 144 hurts gammy monitors the testing we've selected nine games and almost all of them are very new the list includes the not so new battlefield 4 along with Tom Clancy's Rainbow six siege Just Cause 3 star wars battlefront fallout 4 mad max batman arkham knight call duty black ops 3 and game of the year the witcher 3 wild hunt for almost all of the games fraps was used to measure framerate performance and we recorded 90 seconds of game play in each game the only game where we didn't use fraps was very much succeed as the built-in bench mark works nicely finally all graphics cards use with clocked according to the default AMD specifications an overclocking performance way be taken into account here testing takes place exclusively at 1080p using a core i5 6600 k processor with the latest graphics card and system drivers under Windows 10 first up we have battlefield 4 which is the only game we've tested that wasn't released within the last nine months still despite being two years old now battlefield 4 is still extremely popular and visually stunning making it very demanding on the GPU bang for your buck the r9 380 2 gigabyte model looks like the best deal here with an average of 58 FPS and a minimum of 48 fps the same performance was also delivered by the 4 gigabyte model the 380 x was disappointing here is it delivered just 5 FPS more on average the 390 proved to be a huge step forward with 87 FPS and a minimum of just 72 FPS crazy to see the 390 minimum frame rate sitting above the 380 X's average frame rates in the section of batman arkham knight that we test the 2 gigabyte 380 is a good option for an average of 60 FPS though it does dip as low as 39 FPS at times while the 4 gigabyte model is really no faster the 380 x again only offers a few extra frames per second while the r7 370 is only just playable with an average of forty for FPS 390 is incredibly fast at 1080p with an average of 96 frames per second making it just for PS lower than the 390 X the fury was a lot faster again hitting 122 FPS while the fury X were just 6fps faster averaging 128 FPS the 382 gigabyte is considerably slower in call of duty black ops 3 dropping down to 47 MP staybridge with a 40 FPS minimum this time the 4 gigabyte model is able to offer a little extra performance is the average frame rate increased 252 FPS so the minimum was only slightly higher at 42 FPS again the 380 x offers a disappointing gained over the 380 particularly when looking at the four gigabyte model the 390 was again much faster as the 69 FPS minimum frame rate was much higher than the 380 X's average frame rate the 380 was able to deliver very playable performance in fallout 4 with an average of 60 FPS and a minimum of 50 FPS the 380 x was on average nine frames per second faster while the 390 was 27 frames per second faster and yet again we see that a 390 minimum frame rate which was 70 FPS this time was slightly higher than the 380 x is average Just Cause 3 is an awesome open-world game that plays surprisingly well on mid-range hardware the two gigabyte 380 is a perfect example of this with 50 FPS and the 4 gigabyte model wasn't able to improve upon this frame rate the r7 370 is struggled with 34 FPS and did dip down to 27 FPS but for what you pay this isn't bad performance one of the latest computer games with the quality settings maxed out of 1080p moving past 380 you we find the 30 DX delivering 5 FPS more on average at 55 FPS while the 390 brings us up to 66 FPS beyond that the games are pretty small given how much more than 3 90 x fury and fury ax costs Mad Max is probably the least demanding game that we test with and using the highest possible in game quality settings is still playable on the radeon r7 370 which is impressive given the game looks quite good the 380 provided excellent performance with the minimum of 60 2 FPS and an average of 75 FPS and again the 2 gigabyte and 4 gigabyte models delivered the same performance Rainbow six siege is the only game we didn't use fraps to record a section of gameplay and instead relied on the in-game benchmark which seems to represent demanding game play very well the r7 370 performs surprisingly well and the minimum frame rate never dipped below 30 FPS while an average of 46 FPS loud for relatively smooth and playable gaming performance something else he found interesting was the fact that the 4 gigabyte 380 was considerably faster than the two gigabyte model delivering almost thirteen percent more performance this meant that the 380 x was just six FPS faster than the four gigabyte 380 but 13 frames per second faster than the two gigabyte 380 star wars battlefront is another new game that despite looking amazing isn't overly demanding especially at 1080p here the r7 370 average 44 FPS while the 382 gigabyte and 4 gigabyte models much faster with 60fps the 380 axe was only able to average 66 FPS making it much slower than the 390 which rendered 87 FPS on average the r7 370 fails to provide playable performance in the witcher 3 wild hunt the visual settings maxed out this isn't entirely surprising as we're using rendering technologies such as hair works even the 380 struggled with an average of just 35 FPS for the 2 gigabyte model while both the 2 gigabyte and 4 gigabyte models dip down to the same 23 FPS minimum ideally gamers are want at least a 390 for this game as this graphics card ensured that the frame rate never dipped below 30 looking at the power consumption and fallout 4 we see that a 382 gigabyte and 4 gigabyte models are reasonably efficient particularly when compared to the 380 x which consume almost the same amount of power is the 390 the fury and fury acts are also reasonably fuel-efficient given the performance they deliver while the 390 X is a bit of a power Pig as the entire system consumption reached 351 wats in this title the star wars battlefront consumption figures are interesting and don't really make that much sense these are the kind of figures i would expect to fire them from a game such as the witcher 3 where the fury and fury ax weren't a great deal faster than 390 for example the reason being that the fury graphics cards are seen to consume less power than the 380 x 3 90 and 3 90 X the margins aren't drastic but it is unexpected that a fury graphics card would consume less power than say the 380 x in any game again the 380s consumed considerably less power than the 380 x3 90 and fury graphics cards and as expected the r7 370 consumes the least amount of power initially I hadn't planned to redo this video with the 380 x as was already quite clear the 380 and 390 were the best options for 1080p depending on how much you want to spend again we found on average that 380 x was just ten percent faster than the vanilla 380 and given a COS almost thirty percent more than the two gigabytes 380 it just doesn't make sense that said the 380 x isn't bad value or a bad graphics card the 380 is just an incredibly good bye and the 3 DX failed to change that the plan initially was to move on and create another 1080p gaming performance video using the nvidia geforce 900 series in the end it made sense to start over using the latest games and drivers and well now that we've achieved that you can expect the nvidia version next week pricing is another reason to update this video before the holiday season there's been quite a few changes to the AMD lineup since the 380 x is arrival the 370 380 of 39 TX and now all twenty dollars cheaper the 390 doesn't appear to have moved in price and this is probably due to the fact that it was already much better value than the 390 X the biggest price cuts have been made to the fury of fury X both a fifty dollars cheaper than they were a month previously before we look at the cost per dollar numbers let's just summarize the performance seen in the nine games tested on average the radeon r7 370 was good for 41 FPS which isn't bad considering every game was tested using the maximum quality settings still for smooth lag free gaming you want the 380 which averaged a healthier 56 FPS of the nine games tested the four gigabyte 380 was noticeably faster than the two gigabyte model in just two of them which include a call of duty black ops 3 and most notably Rainbow six siege given the 4 gigabyte model will cost us twenty dollars more it's probably worth getting over the 2 gigabyte model though be aware for the most part there's little to be gained at 1080p but of course this could change in the future the 380 x offers only a very minor performance bump over the 380 while the three 90s worlds faster we found more often than not the minimum frame rate was higher than the 380 x is average so with all the new pricing data taken into account which graphics cards represent the best value at 1080p as you can see despite being slow the 370 actually represents the best price per frame ratio so those are a tight budget this is your best option just be prepared to scale down a few quality settings the two gigabyte 380 also represents excellent value as we found previously and with an average of almost 60 FPS it comes into the cost of three dollars 21 / frame while the 4 gigabyte model costs three dollars fifty per frame here we see that despite being seventy dollars cheaper 380 x actually cost slightly more than the 390 per frame thanks to the 390 superior performance as we found last time the 390 X fury and fury X all come at a serious price premium and aren't really worth it for 1080p gaming unless you're chasing big frame rates for monitors with extreme refresh rates this again leaves us with the 380 and 390 is the best value options named is product staff and both work very well with all the latest triple-a titles released over the past few months the revised crimson drivers not only look great but seem to be working very well delivering small performance boosts across the board finally for those of you who want to study the graphs in a more practical format we've uploaded them in our forum at harborough inbox calm so be sure to check that out I'll provide a direct link in the video description thanks for watching another hardware unbox comparison i'm your host Matt and I'd love to hear what you guys think in the comments don't forget to hit like hit subscribe and I'll see you guys next time yeah