Gadgetory

with the continuing trend of more capable GPUs and higher resolution monitors falling in price gaming at 1440p is becoming an attractive option for people who want to go beyond the now standard 1080p experience but don't want to fork out tons of cash for a 4k setup with that in mind today we're looking at AMD's new Radeon r9 380 X an upper mid-range card squarely focused on the 1440p market how does it stack up to the competition in terms of performance and value stay tuned to find out and if you guys like the video once you're done hit that like button up Corsair is RMI series power supplies feature premium components for great performance with very low noise click the link in the video description to learn more let's start off by having a look at the important specs of our 380 X like it's slightly cheaper little brother the r9 380 the 380 X features a tonga GPU but packs more stream processors for a performance boost you also get a fairly standard allocation of 4 gigabytes of gddr5 memory a 256-bit memory interface and at least a 970 megahertz core clock with support for DirectX 12 Vulcan and mantle api's our review sample is a sapphire nitro edition featuring a 70 megahertz out-of-the-box overclock a dual fan open aired cooler and a plastic backplate reference cards aren't available quite yet but you'll get a similar look to other recent generate Aeon cards with a black shroud and blower style fan you'll need to 6-pin PCI Express power connectors to give your card enough juice to properly run as well for testing we compared the 380 X to a number of other mid-range to high-end ish cards from an AMD to Nvidia standpoint excluding the gtx 980ti and the r9 fury series as those cards are priced well above the target market for the 380 X we use our standard test bench inside of a cooler master master case profile you can see the specs of the test bench here on the screen so let's have a quick look at the results our first test was to check the power draw and temperatures at load the 380 X performed about exactly where we expected it smack in the middle of the AMD product stack at 288 watts its power draws about 70 watts higher than its closest competitor on the nvidia side the GTX 960 but is still by no means unreasonable the GPU stayed at a respectable 69 degrees Celsius so you shouldn't have to worry too much about temperatures north of the 80 degree kind of mark that we've been having some issues with with the r9 290 and 390 series for our game benchmarks we started off with the notoriously resource-hungry crysis 3 running at 1440p on the very high preset with FX AAA enabled here we saw the 380 X pushed 34 frames per second beating out its closest competitor that in on the nvidia side the gtx 960 by 6 FPS moving on to far cry 4 at Ultra settings at 1440p the 380 X mustard at 39 frames per second beating out the GTX 960 by 4 fps and in Tomb Raider at the same resolution and ultimate settings we got 49 frames per second compared to the 40 from the 960 but while these frame rates are certainly playable they may not be quite as smooth as you'd like so we put the 380 X through our suite of games again but this time turn the graphics down to one step below the maximum here we saw a pretty substantial improvement especially in Tomb Raider and Crysis 3 with the 3d X now pushing 75 and 50 for FPS respectively Far Cry 4 saw a more modest yet still noticeable bump at 44 FPS but just because this is a 1440p focus card doesn't mean that's what you have to use it for if you're rocking a 1080p monitor and want to say just max out your games you can do so so we did and the 3d X managed between about 53 and 70 FPS overall but what about value the after mentioned performance gained over the 960 does come at a cost at the time of this video the cheapest gtx 960 on new a cost 55 dollars less than the cheapest 380 X due to sales prices yes but you'd normally be looking at a closer to 25 to $30 Delta so does the 380 X make sense from a value-for-money perspective our sapphire 3 the X is selling on Newegg for 230 dollars well you can pick up the same a sue Strix GTX 960 that we used for 210 looking at the graph you can see a slight but not earth-shattering advantage for the 3 DX in terms of dollars per frame at 1440p which may make the $20 premium a worthwhile investment unfortunately we didn't have an r9 318 on X to test against but independent testing that we have seen has shown that the X Edition only gives you a boost of 2 to 3 FPS in many cases so the plain vanilla 380 may be a better choice if you don't care about squeezing every last frame from your wallet including every last dollar so our conclusion is that while the 3d X doesn't change the game in the 200 to 250 - ish dollar price point it's still a solid entry for AMD for those who want to game at 1440p with the settings cranked too high or those you want to get close to that 60 FPS holy grail at 1080p with everything cranked up if you really want to max out games at 1440p though and approach 60 frames per second spending the extra 70 to 100 bucks on a GTX 970 or r9 390 might have been a wise decision if you have the extra cash updesk has a wide range of powered standing desks available on up desk comm what almost all of them have in common is the high quality dual motor electronically controlled height adjust system that lets you either manually raise or lower the desk top surface or pre-program three different heights for sit-stand or maybe a ride on a stationary bike or a walk on a treadmill the one I've been using since updesk equipted our office is the large size squared up it's been a great solution for me due to needing to sit at a corner desk and I actively use the different profile modes as I have back problems so being able to rotate between sitting and standing is great so whether you're trying to just get in the habit of shifting positions periodically or if you want to get some real health benefits out of your new desk by putting a treadmill or stationary bike under it so I go to up desk / up desk comm / Lynas it's linked in the video description down below thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do but if it was awesome get subscribed hit that like button or even consider supporting us directly by using our affiliate code to shop at Amazon buying a cool t-shirt like this one or the direct monthly contribution through the forum now that you're done doing all that kind of stuff you're probably wondering what to watch next so look here and look no further for part 1 of the mineral oil build if you guys haven't seen that yet you probably have but if you haven't it's awesome