Gadgetory

hi and welcome back to hardware unboxed I'm your host Matt and today we'll be doing an ultimate comparison of the gtx 960 and the r9 380 to see which is the best sub $200 GPU as exciting as the geforce gtx 980ti and Radeon r9 fury X are the sub $200 GPU market is where the real battles take place let's be honest around $200 has always brought your GPU plenty of power and today things are no different the gtx 960 and r9 380 offer plenty of rendering power and a more than sufficient for 1080p gaming which is the most popular resolution of the gamers if you jump on any computer forum and ask the question which should I buy the geforce gtx 960 or the Radeon r9 380 you're bound to get varying opinions coming your way at a great note of speed as both have their strengths and weaknesses the geforce gtx 960 is hands-down the more efficient GPU consuming anywhere from twenty to forty percent less power this typically means that the 960 will also run a little cooler though overclockers can expect to extract around 20% more frequency from each GPUs core the Radeon r9 380 on the other hand should be a little faster which will help offset that extra power consumption testing with just a few select games doesn't really give you the full picture so for this head-to-head battle we've selected 22 of the latest and most popular graphically intense games to run the 960 and 380 through testing takes place at 1080p as well as the more desirable 2560 by 1440 resolution on top of that we'll be testing each game with two different quality settings for example battlefield 4 was tested using the maximum in-game quality settings with two times multi sample anti-aliasing enabled and then again with a a disable completely The Witcher 3 has been tested with hair works enabled and then disabled while Tomb Raider was tested with and without tress affects both GPUs were tested using a core i5 6600 K processor under a fresh install of Windows 10 with the latest drivers install all that being said let's jump into the benchmarks in Metro redux the 960 enjoyed an 8 frame per second advantage at 1080p with tessellation set to very high with tessellation disabled is the 380 that's faster by 5 frames per second though both GPUs exceeded 60 frames per second on average in Tomb Raider with tress effects enabled the 380 has an obvious advantage and we see at rendering 18 frames per second more than the 960 at 1080p disabling tress-fx reduces the performance margin significantly in yet now the 380 is just 5 frames per second faster with both GPUs rendering over 70 frames per second on average at 1080p battlefield 4 is a close fight though the 380 is able to take the lead beating the 960 by 4 FPS at 1080p with MSAA enabled turning off anti-aliasing Brewster 960 to an average of 70 frames per second though the 380 was slightly faster with 73 frames per second the 380 was significantly faster in thief delivering 9 frames per second more at 1080p with super sampling anti-aliasing enabled disabling SSA a reduced the deficit to just 4 frames per second and both GPUs rendered over 70 frames per second on average just 3 frames per second and favored to 380 at 1080p and watchdog's with HBO plus set to high as expected with HBO completely disabled the 380 pulled further ahead of the 960 increasing the margin out to 8 frames per second testing kipman absolution with FXAA we see that the 380 is significantly faster than the 960 producing an extra 40 frames per second the exact same 40 frames per second margin can be seen when testing with two times msaa as the Radian I know 380 proves it's the best option for hitman the GTA 5 performance is extremely competitive a 1080p the 380 was just a single frame faster than the 960 similar margins were seen when reducing the quality settings to higher though both were very smooth near the GPU had any trouble delivering highly playable performance and civilization beyond Earth delivering over 70 frames per second on average still the 380 was 4 frames per second faster disabling anti-alias boosted performance slightly and extended the three eighties lead after six frames per second using the highest possible in-game quality settings with MLA I enabled the frame rates using these mid-range graphics cards are very low still the 380 was 2 frames per second faster of 1080p lowering the quality settings to the ultra preset with MLA enabled we see that performance improves drastically and now the 960 is 5 frames per second faster than 380 witcher 3 wild hunt results are surprising as the 380 is faster than the 960 with hair works enabled 5 frames per second faster in fact the latest version of The Witcher 3 is improved hair works performance and AMD has obviously made great strides with their drivers as well turning off hair works actually reduced the margin to just 4 frames per second still favoring the 380 the 960 didn't enjoy Middle Earth shadow of Mordor with an average of just 39 frames per second making it 15 frames per second slower than the 380 reducing the quality settings from ultra to high didn't really help out the 960 much at least in terms of caching the 380 the 960 is now 17 frames per second slower than the 380 Assassin's Creed unity is another game where AMD dominates as the 380 average 19 frames per second more than the 960 at 1080p using percentage closest soft shadows and screen space ambient occlusion testing again with pcs s and s sao disabled we see that a 380 is now just 9 frames per second faster than the 960 using sub pixel morphological anti-aliasing the 960 averaged 36 frames per second at 1080p in Crysis 3 while the 380 was 5 frames per second faster with 41 frames per second changing the fast approximate anti-aliasing allowed for quite a lot of extra performance from these GPUs and the 380 was now just three frames per second faster than the 960 testing Dragon Age Inquisition with true by MSAA enabled the 380 was found to be five frames per second faster than the 960 with 50 frames per second on average disabling AAA and changing from H Bao to SSAO source similar margins as the 380 was faster by 4 frames per second first up we tested ARMA 3 using FXAA and this gave the 380 a 4 frame per second advantage with 53 frames per second on average disabling all forms of AAA didn't change the performance margin as the 380 was still 4 frames per second faster than the 960 in grid Autosport even with four times msaa enabled both GPUs easily cracked 60 frames per second at 1080p the 380 was 5 frames per second faster dropping msaa the CMA a boost performance further though this time it is the 960 that's faster winning by 4 frames per second in f1 2015 the 960 delivered a rare victory over the 380 though we should point out that it was just a mere 1 frame faster turning SMA a and ti a off didn't change the performance trends really is both GPUs delivered the exact same performance with 74 frames per second each the 380 was 3 frames per second faster than 916 far cry 4 at 1080p with an average of 35 frames per second using H Bao and 2 times MSAA testing with s SBC and SMA where you gain found that the 380 is 3 frames per second faster than the 960 dying light is another game that provides a rare win for the 960 as it was 4 frames per second faster than 380 at 1080p turning off anti-aliasing depth of field and horizon based ambient occlusion helped the GTX 960 extended lead over the 380 to 6 frames per second the 380 average 49 frames per second in Sleeping Dogs at 1080p making 6 frames per second faster than the 916 reducing the fxaa level and disabling SSA a the frame rates increased significantly to over 100 frames per second the 960 was still 5 frames per second slower than the 380 though at these frame rates the difference will certainly go unnoticed as expected the geforce gtx 960 was faster in project cars this game is a bit of a sore point for AMD still with 53 frames per second the 960 were just four frames per second faster than the 380 disabling msaa and changing from SMA a to fxaa greatly improves performance of both GPUs though the 960 is now 7 frames per second faster The Brady on i-93 80 average 62 frames per second in Call of Duty advanced warfare at 1080p making it 3 frames per second slower than the 960 changing SMA for FXAA as well as disabling SSA a we see that both GPUs deliver considerably better performance the 960 was just 4 frames per second faster than 380 though again with well over 100 frames per second on average this difference of go unnoticed for years now aimed is consistently provided the best value mainstream graphics cards and this is again the case when comparing the r9 380 to the GTX 960 for those not concerned with power consumption and let's be honest when it comes to mid-range graphics cards consumption isn't really a big issue the Radeon r9 380 is the obvious choice AMD drivers didn't appear to throw up any issues either with consistent performance in all titles in fact with 22 games tested the r9 380 was faster in over 80% of them on average the GTX 960 was 6 percent slower than the r9 380 when looking at the 44 results recorded by each GPU at 1080p using the two different test settings breaking those results down we find that when using the more demanding quality settings the gtx 960 was an average 9% slower for an average of 49 frames per second as opposed to 54 frames per second from the r9 380 the less demanding quality setting saw the gtx 960 trail by just a 4% margin with an average of 67 frames per second opposed to 70 frames per second for the r9 380 so while the Radeon r9 380 is clearly a faster choice gtx 960 users don't have much to worry about as the margins I noticed blew most games three months ago we selected two gtx 960 for our entry level gaming PFC build as it was the best value option at the time though today we would substitute it for the punchier Radeon r9 380 well I hope that settles the $200 mainstream GPU battle for now I'd love to hear what you guys in the comments this has been Matt for harbor unboxed don't forget to hit like hit subscribe and we'll see you next time you