AMD Radeon R9 380X

The fastest graphics card you can find for under $250, but not substantially different from other...

The Radeon R9 380X is a solid mid-range GPU, and offers some significant benefits over the previous 380X, and hold up well against other mid-range GPU's from the liked of NVidia. For the amount you pay for the 380X, you'll be hard pressed to find a...

The biggest problem for the R9 380X might be those two dots in the upper-right corner of our scatter plot. Some variants of the GeForce GTX 970 can be had for under $300 right now, and the R9 390 is right there with it. If you've been paying attention to our test results, you know that the extra cash or so buys you a lot more graphics card.

The extra $10 that ASUS is asking for their STRIX OC are well invested, the highlight here is definitely the excellent cooler with the good fan settings, but the overclock out of the box, helps, too. Overall the R9 380X is a good measure at the price point it is at, but I would have wished for more competitive pricing, so that it can really capture this price-bracket, and not just cannibalize NVIDIA sales until they launch a GTX 960 Ti or drop GTX 970 pricing even further.

If you are looking to choose between the 960 and 380X for 2560×1440 gaming then it’s a pretty easy decision. AMD gives the best framerates, for 1080p gaming the two cards offer playable results so price may come into it a little more. Looking up the stack, the GTX 970 is £249 currently, so a good deal on that could make life a little tough for the more expensive versions of the 380X but, for now, assuming retailers/manufacturers hit the £180-ish price point which AMD were quoting in the run up to launch, the 380X is an ideal choice for gaming up to 2560×1440 resolution.

The AMD R9 380X GPU carves out a currently untouched pricing segment between the GTX 960 and the GTX 970/R9 390 cards, but that pricing window is very narrow. Once you get out of that pricing segment or to the edge of it however, its weaknesses quickly come to the surface. Why AMD sent us a $260 R9 380X to evaluate is a bit confusing to us. We would have much rather of reviewed a "reference" card at MSRP pricing today.

En general creo que es un buen chip, compite bien con la Nvidia Geforce GTX 960, pero la versión de este chip de Nvidia con 4GB de VRAM es más barata que la Radeon R9 380X. No sé si la diferencia de rendimiento compensará la inversión, un 10% superior, pero estoy seguro que los precios de este modelo se normalizarán en pocas semanas hacia una posición más competitiva.

The R9 380X is a solid performer when it comes to 1080p, but for an extra $50, grabbing a R9 390 instead is just too tempting.