With pretty much every Radeon R9 3xx series released, it’s finally the R9 380X’s turn which is AMD’s latest GPU that fills the gap between the R9 380 and R9 390.
Below are the specs of the R9 380X (click to enlarge) – it’s based on the Tonga GPU found on the R9 380 and R9 285.
The R9 380X is expected to be performing faster than the GTX 960 by some 25% according to AMD.
For more details, download the 11-paged Press Deck HERE.
Initial Impression
AMD’s certainly heading the right path, considering that the R9 380X is not just a rehash of the R9 280X that was the HD7970. The R9 280X was Tahiti-based and commonly with 3GB VRAM but the R9 380X now is Tonga based, which according to my experience is more efficient in memory usage and it now comes with 4GB RAM. Unlike the R9 280X, the R9 380X is now faster than before and consumes far less power at 190W according to the Press Deck. Of course bear in mind that FASTER is quite subjective, the R9 380X will likely perform better on games that demand more VRAM but the aged R9 280X will hold its grown very well.
What’s more interesting is that an R9 280X could be acquired for less than half the price of a new R9 380X and performs just as good and in some cases, possibly match or outrun the R9 380X.
The R9 380X cards is expected to be available from 19th November 2015 and the pricing at launch is $229 USD with AIB partner OC models expected to start at $239 USD but based on my speculation, the price should hover between the R9 380 and R9 390 which is around RM 1,200 – 1,300 which is slightly higher than the expected price based on conversion rate.
