Introduction
Here at eTeknix, we strive to give the consumer the best possible advice in every aspect of technology. Today is no different and we are excited to bring you the CrossFireX review of the newly released R9 380X graphics cards.
Based on the R9 380, which was based on the R9 285, the R9 380X was designed to fit the gap that was obvious between the R9 380 and R9 390. Priced at just under £200, sales have proven strong in the first weeks and board partners have given their models the usual overclocking treatment with the average clock speed of around 1030MHz being around 50MHz higher than the ‘reference’ design.
Through our testing of both the XFX DD and Sapphire Nitro models, it was evident that performance wasn’t as high as I hoped and still left a gap to fill under the R9 390. Reviewing the Rx 200 series lineup, the R9 285 was an extremely late arrival. It was based on architecture we were familiar with, but it introduced GCN 1.2 which is the foundation of the brand new R9 Fury range. To me, this leaves a gap for an R9 385 to be introduced to the market and the next step in the graphics card race for late 2016.
When we test in CrossFireX, we aim to use two identical graphics card to ensure that everything is as similar as possible. When using the same cards, you can almost guarantee the same cooling capabilities, power draw, core clock and other variables. This then gives us the best possible outcome for maximum performance as the computer does not need to compensate for any differences.
This is amazing. It costs less than half what a GTX980 costs, beats it horribly in crossfire, and even competes with the GTX980Ti and Fury X both $650. Two R9 380Xs are less than $500. For those users that just want a machine that can do 1080P max settings and a 4K TV you could run most games at 1080P for the monitor and max out the most demanding games at 1440P on your TV. Your framerate would be almost perfect even at max
cant wait to crossfire mine for 4k battlefield 4 sickkkk had to look at this again loll
There are a lot of advantages to this GPU compared to the competition. For starters power consumption is completely reasonable. A 500w total system power draw in a mid to high end crossfire system is great especially when running Furmark. Then you have the larger memory capacity and bandwidth which are serious advantages to have in VR gaming which show over 100% gains when in crossfire systems. Everything Nvidia offers in this price range has gimped memory bandwidth.
The R9 380X is held to higher quality standards than the R9 380 and R9 390. The fully enabled Tonga chips were meant for expensive iMacs and gaming laptops. That means these chips were originally binned to sustain higher clock speeds at lower power draw. These chips should inherently be more efficient and run cooler than other 28nm AMD chips.
They should respond very well to under volting. I would love to test these chips to see if they run stable at reasonable clock speeds with a significant reduction to TDP. The benefits would be slower wear on the GPUs while running cooler and decreasing the stress on the power supply; all without a significant drop in performance from stock
Wowwwww. I just bought the xfx 380x black edition with overclock. looks like ill be getting a duel gpu mobo in the future and getting another lol. cant believe the performance from this card for the price!
The best part is that you can buy a 380x for now and then when you want to upgrade, buy another one for the performance boost. That way you don’t have to eat $440ish all at once. Much better than paying for a 980ti or Fury X all in one piece.
Those minimum frame rates are brutal though. It isn’t so bad in bf4 but gta v would drive me mad trying to play that with sub 30fps dips.
Usually all this “bugs” are solved with driver updates. You see often in driver updates things like “50% increase performance in GTA V, 35% increase performance in Tomb Raider” etc. That’s what driver updates are there for.
please help me i have 2 r9 380x.i7 3770k. psu not a problem.but still gpu load do not go beyond 70%.even if cpu load is just 50%.please help me.i am so messed up
This is not necessarily bad. As long as your frame rates are correct, you don’t have to worry about the utilization of your CPU and GPU
thanks for this review. It convinced me to crossfire my 380X and i love it. I actually get much higher FPS and firestrike scores then you listed here. I can easily get a 18.5k graphics score just at factory overclocks and easily crack 20k when overclocked. Get over 10-20 fps extra with new drivers for battlefield 4. it also seems like AMD took this as a sign to market the cards in crossfire like they just did at computex.
thanks! too bad those minimums are so bad.. hopefully this gets ironed out in the future!
Hi all, what do you recommend as a power supply for this R9 380X CF? Will be enough 620W? (i5 6500)