Saphhire Nitro R9 380 4Gb vs Asus Strix GTX 960 2Gb

andy317 · Jul 25, 2015

Do you think it is better to invest in the Sapphire Nitro R9 380 4GB ($220) or the Asus Strix GTX 960 2GB ($206)? I really like the performance on the R9 380, but the GTX 960 consume a lot less power, and produce less heat. Will the R9 380 have an advantage with Directx 12? I'm on a tight budget, so I don't think I can afford the GTX 970.

damric · Jul 25, 2015

Faster and cheaper than either of those:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

Video Card: Sapphire Radeon R9 280X 3GB Video Card ($189.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $189.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-07-25 12:29 EDT-0400

Pyre · Jul 25, 2015

Well andy, the temps is not that that threatening there is no worries and the power consumption... your bill will not rise just cause of a r9 380. There have been utube videos about amd vs nvidia power consumption, their bills are not so different.

direct x12 will be good on either i guess, but a 4gb gpu i think will have the upper hand, 2gb is OK but 4GB is a better option since some games may need better vram.

Pyre · Jul 25, 2015

damric :

But r9 280x has its annoying artifacts that come up later in its life, hardly any solution helps. Or do you have one you know of...?

Wisecracker · Jul 25, 2015

...r9 280x has its annoying artifacts that come up later in its life...

The only 'artifacting' I'm aware of is from clocking the VRAM too high.

Otherwise, I like mine so much, I ordered another one

damric · Jul 25, 2015

Pyre :

That's usually caused from using a junk power supply with poor ripple filtering, and of course taking an overclock too far as wisecracker said.

andy317 · Jul 25, 2015

@damric, if I'm not wrong the R9 280x was a rebranded 7970, which is a pretty old tech; and the performance is not much better than the R9 380.

andy317 · Jul 25, 2015

@Pyre, do you have the link of the video? Based on what I read r9 380 consumes about 234W ( MAX) while the GTX 960 consumes about 140W(MAX). I think that is a big difference if I game a lot like 5 hours/day, 6 days/week. I also work on my computer all day long, so the power consumption( when system in idle) counts too.

Pyre · Jul 25, 2015

Wisecracker :

Haha nice, i never got 280x cause i was afraid of artifacts, thnx for clearing that up

Pyre · Jul 25, 2015

andy317 :

woah mate. 380 is 190 tdp, 234 must be system total wattage. Lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBeeGHozSY0 << here is the analysis i used, These are CPUs but the way the test is conducted will help show how GPUs from amd and nvidia will not have a big difference in bills.

Also take a look at these two, maybe u can conclude...

http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/asus-radeon-r9-380-strix-review,5.html

http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/msi-geforce-gtx-960-gaming-oc-review,7.html

YOU NEED TO SCROLL DOWN THE PAGES TO SEE THE BILL ESTIMATIONS

stl522013 · Jul 25, 2015

The R9 280x is better than both of these cards.

damric · Jul 25, 2015

andy317 :

The HD 7970 is more powerful than the R9 380 (rebranded R9 285). All of this is old tech.

velo3100 · Jul 26, 2015

Out of the 2 I think the amd is better.

Pyre · Jul 26, 2015

GET THE 280x or 380 but I think 380 will be more relevant to dirext x12 not sure yet...

andy317 · Jul 27, 2015

The Saphhire 280X ($209.0 with $20 mail-in rebate) is a great card for money, but it is not the card that I really wanna get in 2015. I agree with Pyre, the 380 might be a little slower, but it's a newer card, it got 4gb, consume less power and it might work better with direct X12. Call me a sucker if you want but I hate that blue on the 280x

. It would ruin the look of my rig( I got black-red theme). Again, thank you all of the inputs!

damric · Jul 27, 2015

The 4GB over 256bit bus is much less useful than 3GB over 384bit bus. Not to mention much more shader power on the 7970/280x. The DX12 thing what??? I think you pulled that out of thin air.

Pyre · Jul 27, 2015

damric :

Hahaha, DX12 will most likely operate well with 380 compared to 280x, it comes ready for it, the 280x is good but since it is 3 years old or so, I dont think it will be dx12 prepared.

Wisecracker · Jul 27, 2015

The R9 280X will support DX12

andy317 · Jul 27, 2015

damric :

Thanks for pointing the "bit bus" thing out !For the 280x,on paper the spec sounds very convincing. But when I look at the comparison video on Youtube, the difference in performance between the two is not very noticeable (1-5 fps). For me, that's not worth it to pick an older card.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY2_MFEsANg

damric · Jul 27, 2015

Pyre :

andy317 :

Again, where are you getting DX12 benches on these cards when there are no games or even preliminary benchmarks that feature DX12?

My peers have been testing the these cards extensively over the last two months.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1564304/r9-280-vs-r9-285

Also, notable is that in the testing my CFX HD 7850s defeated all three of those combinations and you can get those starting at $50 on ebay.

Pyre · Jul 28, 2015

damric :

Pyre :

andy317 :

Again, where are you getting DX12 benches on these cards when there are no games or even preliminary benchmarks that feature DX12?

My peers have been testing the these cards extensively over the last two months.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1564304/r9-280-vs-r9-285

Also, notable is that in the testing my CFX HD 7850s defeated all three of those combinations and you can get those starting at $50 on ebay.

Well DX 12 games are not out yet mate, but AMD have decalred 300/Fury seires to be DX 12 prepared, hence the reason I said what I adviced. I know no DX 12 benchmarks have not come out yet, but the r9 280x probably won't be as effective as R9 380 with DX 12 when it releases.

damric · Jul 28, 2015

Pyre :

damric :

Pyre :

andy317 :

Again, where are you getting DX12 benches on these cards when there are no games or even preliminary benchmarks that feature DX12?

My peers have been testing the these cards extensively over the last two months.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1564304/r9-280-vs-r9-285

Also, notable is that in the testing my CFX HD 7850s defeated all three of those combinations and you can get those starting at $50 on ebay.

Well DX 12 games are not out yet mate, but AMD have decalred 300/Fury seires to be DX 12 prepared, hence the reason I said what I adviced. I know no DX 12 benchmarks have not come out yet, but the r9 280x probably won't be as effective as R9 380 with DX 12 when it releases.

Can I see your AMD source?

Pyre · Jul 28, 2015

I have looked into it further, http://www.pcgamesn.com/amd-unveil-new-radeon-gpu-range-the-r7300-and-r9300-series, http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/anton-shilov/amd-reiterates-plans-to-introduce-new-radeon-r9-300-series-gpus-in-june/ << When reading these I thought 300 series willl be more effective with DX 12. I began looking at 200 series some speculate it will be supportive, and I cannot find any site that says 200 series is fully supported by DX 12 unlike 300 series which is. So, 200 series may use DX 12 but it will not be fully supportive compared to 300 series.

17seconds · Jul 28, 2015

AMD cards lack support for the full feature level of DirectX 12. The GTX 960 supports the full DirectX 12_1 feature level, which includes raster ordered views and conservative rasterization. These are GPU intensive tasks that require hardware implementation, rather than the software implementation found in non-Maxwell cards.

RobCrezz · Jul 28, 2015

damric :

Bus width is irrelevant. Effective bandwidth is what matters, which nvidia does rather well with due to clever compression - this is why the GTX 980 (256bit bus) outperforms the 290x (512bit bus) all the while using a lot less power due to having a much smaller bus (large memory bus consumes a lot of power).

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