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AMD Launches Radeon R9 380X, Fastest GPU Under $250 (hothardware.com)

Posted by timothy on from the 250-gets-a-convertable-chromebook dept.

MojoKid writes: Although AMD's mid-range GPU line-up has been relatively strong for a while now, the company is launching the new Radeon R9 380X today with the goal of taking down competing graphics cards like NVIDIA's popular GeForce GTX 960. The Radeon R9 380X has a fully-functional AMD Tonga GPU with all 32 compute units / 2048 shader processors enabled. AMD's reference specifications call for 970MHz+ engine clock with 4GB of 1425MHz GDDR5 memory (5.7 Gbps effective). Typical board power is 190W and cards require a pair of supplemental 6-pin power feeds. The vast majority of the Radeon R9 380X cards that will hit the market, however, will likely be custom models that are factory overlcocked and look nothing like AMD's reference design. The Radeon R9 380X, or more specifically the factory overclocked Sapphire Nitro R9 380X tested, performed significantly better than AMD's Radeon R9 285 or NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 960 across the board. The 380X, however, could not catch more powerful and more expensive cards like the GeForce GTX 970. Regardless, the Radeon R9 380X is easily the fastest graphics card on the market right now, under $250.

14 of 110 comments (clear)

  1. Talk about drawing a fine line... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    They're really drawing a fine line on this one.

    The 380X, however, could not catch more powerful and more expensive cards like the GeForce GTX 970. Regardless, the Radeon R9 380X is easily the fastest graphics card on the market right now, under $250.

    Seeing as how the GTX 970 has broken under the $300 mark in the last few weeks, they're not doing much to sell me on the R9 380X.

    1. Re:Talk about drawing a fine line... by PIBM · · Score: 2

      Yeah, for 50$ more which is usually much less than 5% of your computer price (I include peripherals like monitors when I evaluate the effectiveness of an upgrade) you are getting 25%+ better performance with the GTX970... (shadow of mordor, low resolution of 2560x1440) Why would you want that card exactly?

      Even if you would only take that video card value in mind while evaluating, 300/250 still equals only 20% more.. Price point should have been less than 200$ to be in a different range alltogether for it to be somewhat interesting. Oh well, maybe someday AMD will bring something interesting again :)

    2. Re:Talk about drawing a fine line... by Ramze · · Score: 5, Insightful

      2560 x 1440 is not "low resolution" regardless of how many thousands of dollars you spent 8 years ago on the tech. Age is irrelevant. MacBook Gen 3 13" Retina Displays are 2560 x 1440. Those are being sold THIS YEAR as high-end displays.

      Blu Ray is 1920 x 1080
      4K is 3840 x 2160, but 4K has not made it out the showroom yet for TV or most monitors.

      IBM came out with some spiffy T220/T221 LCD monitors that you could buy way back in 2003 for about $8,500 each that had 3840 x 2400, but that doesn't mean that 3840 x 2400 is "outdated low resolution" simply because one could buy it 12 years ago.

    3. Re:Talk about drawing a fine line... by ArchieBunker · · Score: 2

      All I want is a display with a 16:10 ratio that doesn't cost triple what 16:9 displays do.

      --
      Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
  2. FPS per watt by jbssm · · Score: 2

    The performance per energy consumption still lags greatly behind NVIDIA offerings.

    Besides that, there is CUDA, yes I know it's a closed standard but there is a reason most GPU computing libraries, specially in Deep Learning fields use preferably CUDA: it's just easier to get more performance out of it with less hassle.

    If you just want to play games and electricity costs are not a concern to you (so, most teenagers I suppose) Radeon is ok, but if you are not in that category, I find it hard not to have to choose a GeForce.

    1. Re:FPS per watt by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'm always surprised to see this mentality in tech oriented groups. AMD's contributions to GPU tech are huge, and very community friendly. They use and produce open source software, and actively support Khronos group efforts. Their tech is always non-proprietary, and works across even non-AMD devices. For development of any kind debugging information provided by the AMD gear is just plain more useful. As for CUDA - it is almost directly inferior to OpenCL. CUDA's prevalence is largely due to NVIDIA's attempts to jam it down every available throat. Hell, NVIDIA is going so far now as to con monitor manufactures into buying expensive chips to sit sidelong in variable refresh rate monitors to give the same functionality AMD cards provide for free.

      Unfortunately AMD is trying to fight a war on three fronts - and losing all of them. It makes me sad to see them lagging behind when they are worth supporting on sheer principle alone. The performance and cost differences aren't nearly enough to make up for the business practices.

  3. Is AMD Better Now? by Galaga88 · · Score: 2

    It's been a long time (relatively speaking) since I've played the graphics card game. I remember that AMD's cards were technically solid, but often plagued with driver issues. Even now I'm reading about performance issues with Fallout 4 (which is probably Bethesda's fault because it's an unpatched Bethesda game.)

    Has the situation improved? Am I holding onto old biases?

    (Alas, for the heady days of my Voodoo2.)

    1. Re:Is AMD Better Now? by netsavior · · Score: 4, Informative

      AMD has better hardware, nvidia actually writes good drivers. Look at Fallout 4, the nvidia minimum system requirements...

      Minimum card to play fallout 4 Radeon HD 7870 or GeForce GTX 550 Ti:
      when you compare the two cards it is insane, the difference in the driver is not to be taken lightly.
      Radeon HD 7870 vs GeForce GTX 550 Ti
      2,560 GFLOPS vs 691.2 GFLOPS
      23,592 vs 9,923 3dMark Vantage score
      80 GTexel/s vs 28.8 GTexel/s


      Basically at this point the general advice is: If you want to play games, buy nvidia... if you want to mine crypto currency block chains, buy Raedon.

    2. Re:Is AMD Better Now? by alvinrod · · Score: 2

      Fallout 4 runs terribly on AMD cards right now (although there was a recent update that bumps performance quite a bit) but it doesn't do that much better on NVidia hardware either. The biggest culprit seems to be the Godrays that are part of GameWorks (A proprietary NVidia set of effects that developers can use in their games) where the visual difference between the ultra and low setting is practically non-existent to most people, but the performance penalty (even on NVidia cards) is huge.

      The new Star Wars Battlefront benchmarks show what an absolute mess the game engine being used for Fallout 4 is. Not only does it look a lot better, but the frame rate is significantly better no matter which company's GPU is being used. Fallout 4 is still a great game, but the performance is crap for what the game looks like graphically.

    3. Re:Is AMD Better Now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You're missing the entire point here.

      nVidia is intentionally segmenting THEIR customers into consumer and professional grade, byt INTENTIONALLY LIMITING compute functionality of consumer grade products.

      ATI(or AMD if you want to maintain the fiction) segments them in a similar fashion as well, however they do no limit compute functionality and consumer grade cards.

      In either case you're missing out on ECC memories, so I guess it's down to how important it is that your results are as accurate as possible. So, in crypto currency it probably doesn't matter, but being realistic here bitcoin the only winner so far and it's going to take a helluvalot of 7870s to be even slightly useful.

      Lastly, this also show that ATI does NOT in FACT have superior hardware in that a card of a similar generation, but of much lower end is capable of running a particular game meanwhile it takes a relatively high end ATI card. Add to this fact that ATI has added auxiliary space heating functionality to ALL of their offerings, along with AMD parent products. Right here, now, that's a handy feature to have, but it won't be in a few months again.

  4. On Windows but not on Linux by Jodka · · Score: 4, Informative

    A good deal except for that AMD's Linux drivers are pretty bad. Link.

    --
    Ceci n'est pas une signature.
  5. The power Intel would have as sole x86 vendor by tepples · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why doesn't AMD just shut down and leave all the work to Intel?

    Because AMD is the only way we have to keep Intel from going full monopolist. The qualitative effect on the market from the difference between one and two makers of a particular product, such as CPUs that run a particular instruction set, is far greater than that between two and three.

  6. Re:OT: power use question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    But that's assuming 190W draw, 24/7... So how much power do video cards really use? Assuming in typical use; mostly normal apps, some gaming, a lot of screen asleep time... does anyone have an idea?

    Typical idle draw is around 20W. Much like a CPU, the GPU underclocks and undervolts when idle so as to reduce heat and power requirements.

  7. Re:Good enough for Rift? by Spy+Handler · · Score: 2

    No. Minimum requirement for Rift is GTX 970. This card is slower than that.