AMD Radeon R9 380 2GB CrossFireX Graphics Cards Review

Introduction

Here at eTeknix, we strive to give the consumer the best possible advice in every aspect of technology. Today is no different, we are extremely keen to bring you the CrossFireX review of the recently released AMD Radeon R9 380 2GB graphics cards. In most consumers minds, the R9 380 2GB is just a rebranded R9 285 with slightly increased specifications and shiny new cooling designs. While this is the case, the matured manufacturing process has allowed AMD to reap every bit of performance from the Tonga GPU and then handed it to sub-vendors and given a boosted overclock.

In the test bench today, we have the ASUS STRIX R9 380 (review available here) and MSI Gaming R9 380 2GB (review coming soon). In the independent reviews, these cards proved that there was still some performance in the aging architecture, but didn’t give us the impression that this would be a viable upgrade option for those already with the R9 280 or R9 285 GPU’s.

We inserted both graphics cards onto our Core i7 5820K and X99-based test system, ensuring adequate spacing for optimum cooling and that both have access to sufficient PCI-e bandwidth for CrossFire operation. Due to the variations in the cards themselves such as power inputs and clock speeds, this isn’t an ideal scenario for CrossFireX; however, both GPU’s have been downclocked to as close as possible to each other to give the best possible results.

Test Systems and Procedures

Before we delve into any testing we would like to take this opportunity to overview our test system.

Test System

• Motherboard – Gigabyte X99-Gaming G1 WiFi LGA 2011-3 Motherboard
• Processor – Intel Core i7 5820K at Stock 3.3GHz
• RAM – 16GB (4 X 4GB) Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4 2400MHz
• CPU Cooler – Thermaltake Water 3.0 with Gelid GC-Extreme
• Power Supply – Be Quiet Dark Power Pro 11 1200W
• Main Storage Drive – Crucial M550 512GB
• Chassis – Lian Li T80 Test Bench
• Displays – AOC U2868PQU 4K
• Operating System – Windows 8.1 Pro 64 Bit

Driver Details

Hardware Used

• “Killawatt” style electricity usage meter wall plug
• Precision Gold N05CC  Decibel meter

Games Used

• Batman Arkham Origins
• Battlefield 4
• Bioshock Infinite
• Grand Theft Auto V
• Hitman Absolution
• Metro Last Light
• Tomb Raider

Benchmarks Used

• 3DMark
• Unigine Valley

Other Software Used

• Unigine Heaven
• CPU-ID HWMonitor
• TechPowerUp GPU-Z
• Luxmark

3DMark

“The new 3DMark includes everything you need to benchmark your hardware. With three, all new tests you can bench everything from smartphones and tablets to notebooks and home PCs, to the latest high-end, multi-GPU gaming desktops. And it’s not just for Windows. With 3DMark, you can compare your scores with Android and iOS devices too. It’s the most powerful and flexible 3DMark we’ve ever created.” From Futuremark.com

Jumping straight into the testing and we can see that the CrossFire (CF) combo really has what it takes to scare the competition. Sadly the 2GB of VRAM really proves a hindrance at 4K.

Battlefield 4

“Battlefield 4 is coming to PC, powered by the advanced technology of DICE’s proprietary Frostbite 3 engine. Blur the line between game and glory in Battlefield 4. With dynamic destructible environments, vehicular combat, and the chaos of all-out-war with 64 players, Battlefield 4 on PC will be an unmatched interactive experience. In addition to its hallmark multiplayer, Battlefield 4 features an intense, dramatic character-driven campaign that starts with the evacuation of American VIPs from Shanghai and follows your squad’s struggle to find its way home. There is no comparison. Immerse yourself in the glorious chaos of all-out war, found only in Battlefield.” From Battlefield.com

Similar story again in Battlefield 4.

Bioshock Infinite

“BioShock Infinite is a first-person shooter like you’ve never seen. Just ask the judges from E3 2011, where the Irrational Games title won over 85 editorial awards, including the Game Critics Awards’ Best of Show. Set in 1912, players assume the role of former Pinkerton agent Booker DeWitt, sent to the flying city of Columbia on a rescue mission. His target? Elizabeth, imprisoned since childhood. During their daring escape, Booker and Elizabeth form a powerful bond — one that lets Booker augment his own abilities with her world-altering control over the environment. Together, they fight from high-speed Sky-Lines, in the streets and houses of Columbia, on giant zeppelins, and in the clouds, all while learning to harness an expanding arsenal of weapons and abilities, and immersing players in a story that is not only steeped in profound thrills and surprises, but also invests its characters with what Game Informer called “An amazing experience from beginning to end.” From Bioshockinfinite.com

Despite the lack of VRAM, the CF set up almost matches a GTX 970 at 4K.

Grand Theft Auto V

“Grand Theft Auto V is an open world, an action-adventure video game developed by Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games. It was released on 17 September 2013 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. An enhanced version of the game was released on 18 November 2014 for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and 14 April 2015 for Microsoft Windows. The game is the first main entry in the Grand Theft Auto series since 2008’s Grand Theft Auto IV. Set within the fictional state of San Andreas (based on Southern California), the single-player story follows three criminals and their efforts to commit heists while under pressure from a government agency. The open world design lets players freely roam San Andreas, which includes open countryside and the fictional city of Los Santos (based on Los Angeles).” From Wikipedia.

GTA V is a new addition to the test line-up. It proves a tough match for most of our GPU’s.

Hitman Absolution

“Hitman: Absolution is the fifth title in the Hitman series by producer, IO Interactive, published by Square Enix and co-published by Eidos. The game was released for thePlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows on November 20, 2012. Hitman: Absolution runs on IO Interactive’s proprietary Glacier 2 game engine, combining classic Hitman game mechanics with new mechanics.” From hitman.wikia.com

Hitman is a very difficult game to correctly run in CrossFire. It renders the set up worse than a single R9 380 in our tests.

Metro Last Light

“Metro: Last Light (formerly Metro 2034) is a first-person shooter and horror video game developed by Ukrainian studio 4A Games and published by Deep Silver for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It was released in May 2013. The game is set in a post-apocalyptic world and features a mixture of action-oriented and stealth gameplay. The game exists in the universe of the novel, Metro 2033, and its sequels, written by Russian author, Dmitry Glukhovsky, but does not follow any direct storylines from the books. Metro: Last Light takes place one year after the events of Metro 2033, proceeding from the canonical ending of the novel, ending where Artyom chose to call down the missile strike on the Dark Ones.Metro: Last Light features technology which boasts of lighting effects and improved physics claimed to set a new graphical benchmark on the PC and consoles.” From Wikipedia.org

Wow, I was not expecting that; however it does fall in line with the virtually perfect scaling we have been seeing in all of our tests.

Tomb Raider

“On 5 March 2013, Square Enix released Tomb Raider, billed as a reboot of the franchise. In Tomb Raider, the player is confronted with a much younger Lara Croft who is shipwrecked and finds herself stranded on a mysterious island rife with danger, both natural and human. In contrast to the earlier games Croft is portrayed as vulnerable, acting out of necessity, desperation and sheer survival rather than for a greater cause or personal gain.” From Wikipedia.org

After numerous re-tests, I am shocked at how close the R9 380 CF is to the Titan X.

Unigine Valley

“Valley Benchmark is a new GPU stress-testing tool from the developers of the very popular and highly acclaimed Heaven Benchmark. The forest-covered valley surrounded by vast mountains amazes with its scale from a bird’s-eye view and is extremely detailed down to every leaf and flower petal. This non-synthetic benchmark powered by the state-of-the art UNIGINE Engine showcases a comprehensive set of cutting-edge graphics technologies with a dynamic environment and fully interactive modes available to the end user.” From Unigine.com.

Valley is a very demanding benchmark, but that doesn’t stop the CF set-up offering almost 100% scaling.

Luxmark (OpenCL Compute)

LuxMark is a OpenCL benchmark tool. The idea for the program was conceived in 2009 by Jean-Francois ‘Jromang’ Romang. The idea was quite simple, wrap SLG inside an easy to use graphical user interface and use it as a benchmark for OpenCL. From LuxRender.net.

The compute performance proves that there is almost perfect scaling from the CF set-up.

Noise Levels

The noise levels produced by a graphics card is an increasingly important consideration for PC users and Gamers these days. While fan noise is unlikely to ruin the gaming experience, no one likes a noisy graphics card and no one will argue with the fact that quieter is better. Many users are willing to sacrifice temperatures to gain a silence advantage, but with better cooling solutions being developed it is increasingly common to be able to get both better cooling and better acoustic performance than a reference solution on most custom cooled graphics cards from Nvidia and AMD partners. That said both AMD and Nvidia have stepped up their game too with regards to acoustics on their reference coolers. Ultimately, acoustics will always be a big deciding factor when there is often very little differentiation between graphics cards using the same GPUs. To acquire the noise levels of graphics cards in our benchmarks we run three different load scenarios for 5 minutes and take an acoustic reading using our decibel meter at the end of those load scenarios. The measurement is taken approximately 30cm horizontally away from the graphics card and the CPU fan is disabled and other background noise minimised to reduce interference. The three load scenarios are desktop idle, Furmark load and Unigine Heaven load. The reading in Unigine Heaven is always taken in the first scene of the sequence after one loop is completed.

Thanks to the new passive feature implemented on the R9 380 series, these cards didn’t require fans at idle and the incredible cooling solutions provided adequate cooling to keep temperatures down at load.

Power Consumption

With electricity becoming increasingly expensive across most parts of the world the need for computer components to become power efficient has never been more relevant. Graphics cards are often the most power-hungry components inside a desktop system so having an efficient graphics card is very important to keeping power bills under control. Power is often correlated to heat and so lower power consumption means a graphics card is likely to run slightly cooler and put out less heat into your system meaning your other components will run cooler with improved longevity. AMD and Nvidia have both made power consumption an integral part of the way graphics cards dynamically overclock so the need for graphics card vendors to use efficient VRM and PCB designs is becoming important to maximise performance. We take power readings after 5 minutes of three different load scenarios: desktop idle and Unigine Heaven load.

Previously we have known AMD cards to be rather power demanding, just look at the R9 390 and 390X hitting over 330W. This set-up is more powerful than both of those and requires much less energy.

Temperatures

The cooling solution which graphics card vendors choose to implement is one of the main differences that consumers have to contend with when choosing a graphics cards. Apart from their acoustic properties, the thermal properties of graphics card coolers are extremely important. Lower temperatures are always better and with AMD and Nvidia opting to use dynamic overclocking algorithms that take temperature into account it is important that graphics card vendors use high performance cooling solutions in order to maximise performance. The era of graphics cards reaching dangerous temperatures are now in the past but the importance of lower temperatures still remains. Lower temperatures mean better stability, longer component longevity and lower fan speeds .We take temperature readings after 5 minutes of three different load scenarios: desktop idle, Furmark load and Unigine Heaven load. We always record actual temperatures and make a note of the ambient. In the case where more than 1 GPU is used an average is created.

Due to the passive feature, these cards didn’t require the fans until the low 60’s. In search of silence, a compromise had to be made.

Final Thoughts

So today I had in two R9 380 graphics cards to put through CrossFireX punishment and I can only say I am extremely impressed. In the past, AMD has lost face compared to NVIDIA with the lack of driver update; they always seemed to be a step behind when it came to graphics card performance and many people jumped ship to join the green team. However, things have started to change recently, the R9 300 series is more than a match for the NVIDIA GTX 900 range (excluding GTX 980Ti) and for the first time in a while; they have released a single GPU card that can comparatively match what NVIDIA has to offer.

I can only say good things about what I have experienced today. Firstly the cost; an R9 380 2GB graphics card would set you back around £160, so this set-up would cost in the region of £320; that is incredible considering you are getting so much performance for so little money. Secondly the performance, so near to toppling the mighty NVIDIA Titan X on multiple occasions during our testing. That is around £800 worth of technology being put through its paces by a set-up that costs well under half of the price. What I particularly like about this is that the R9 380 on its own produces some great performance figures; so if you chose to purchase that and then waited for prices to reduce, you could have a very cheap gaming bundle.

One bad point which many of you would likely have guessed already is the poor drivers. In my testing today; the drivers I had (15.15.1004) failed to provide consistent CrossFire support. Thankfully I had already run my full testing procedure, but this doesn’t fill me with confidence if I had needed to re-run a test or implement a new game.

With the progression of graphics cards, performance on the lower end is perfectly matched to the amount of VRAM provided. However, when combined in a CrossFire set-up, the VRAM than becomes an issue. In the near future, we aim to bring you an AMD R9 380 4GB CrossFire review to analyse if the extra VRAM makes a difference at 4K.

Pros

• Outstanding performance
• Silent operation at low load levels
• A cheap option to high FPS 1080p gaming

Cons

• Drivers proved problematic
• 2GB limited potential performance

“The perfect solution for the budget conscious gamer in need of high FPS at 1080p and 1440p resolutions.”

AMD Radeon R9 380 2GB CrossFireX Graphics Cards Review

Thank you to ASUS and MSI for providing these review samples.