AMD Radeon R9 380X Review: Fastest GPU Under $250


Test System and Unigine Heaven v4.0

How We Configured Our Test Systems: We tested the graphics cards in this article on a Gigabyte X99 Gaming 5P motherboard powered by an Intel Core i7-5960X octal-core processor and 16GB of Corsair DDR4 RAM. The first thing we did when configuring the test system was enter the system UEFI and set all values to their "high performance" default settings and disable any integrated peripherals that wouldn't be put to use. The memory's X.M.P. profile was enabled to ensure optimal memory performance and the solid state drive was then formatted and Windows 10 Professional x64 was installed and fully updated. When the installation was complete, we d installed all of the drivers, games, and benchmark tools necessary to complete our tests.

HotHardware's Test System
Intel Core i7 Powered
Hardware Used:
Intel Core i7-5960X
(3GHz, Octa-Core)
Gigabyte X99 Gaming 5P
(Intel X99 Chipset)

Radeon R9 380X (Sapphire Nitro)
Radeon R9 390
Radeon R9 285
GeForce GTX 970
GeForce GTX 960

16GB Corsair DDR4-2133
OCZ Vertex 4
Integrated Audio
Integrated Network
Relevant Software:
Windows 10 Pro x64 (10586)
AMD Catalyst 15.11.1 Beta
NVIDIA GeForce Drivers v358.91

Benchmarks Used:
Unigine Heaven v4
3DMark "Fire Strike"
Thief
MIddle-Earth: Shadow Of Mordor
Metro Last Light Redux
FRAPS

Unigine Heaven v4.0 Benchmark
Pseudo-DirectX 11 Gaming

Unigine's Heaven Benchmark v4.0 is built around the Unigine game engine. Unigine is a cross-platform, real-time 3D engine, with support for DirectX 9, DirectX 10, DirectX 11 and OpenGL. The Heaven benchmark--when run in DX11 mode--also makes comprehensive use of tessellation technology and advanced SSAO (screen-space ambient occlusion). It also features volumetric cumulonimbus clouds generated by a physically accurate algorithm and a dynamic sky with light scattering.


Unigine Heaven

u1


u2

The Radeon R9 380X finished well out in front of the Radeon R9 285 and GeForce GTX 960 in our Unigine Heaven tests. If you take a step up to the more expensive cards like the R9 390 or GTX 970, however, there is a lot of additional performance to be had...

Tags:  AMD, Radeon, Gaming, graphics, GPU, 380x

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