When it comes to picking out a video card for your PC, I think we would all go with the top end cards if it was possible. But the truth is when we are picking out our components it is all a balance. We have to make sure that no one component gets the biggest portion of the budget, the card has to fit the budget, and it also has to fit with your other components. In other words, you wouldn’t go with a Fury if you could only afford a power supply that would power an R7 370. Because of that it is nice to have options and for the most part AMD has done a good job filling in the gaps. The one glaring omission though has been the lack of a 380X to match the 370X and 390X’s in their product line. Well today they have filled that gap. So today I’m going to dig into the Asus R9 380X Strix and find out what sets the 380X apart from the competition as well as the 380 and 390 that it sits between.

Product Name: Asus R9 380X Strix OC

Review Sample Provided by: Asus

Written by: Wes

Pictures by: Wes

Amazon Link: HERE

AMD 380X

Before I dive into our normal review I did want to take a look at the R9 380X and find out where it fits in AMDs product lineup as well as take a closer look at its specifications. For starters the R9 380X is based on the same Tonga GPU as the R9 380. To expand the performance, they opened things up by going from 112 texture units to 128 texture units. This raised the number of stream processors from 1792 to 2048. This puts it directly in between the R9 380 and the R9 390 with its 2560 stream processors. In fact I think the most interesting thing is that this is the same number of stream processors as the R9 280X had only it was Tahiti based not Tonga. The R9 380 and R9 380X also share the same clock speed and power usage as well. The 380X has the same 256 bit memory interface but they did double the memory capacity moving it up to 4 gigs as bump up the memory clock speed slightly as well.

So now that we know the difference between the 380X and the 380 and 390 above and below it lets take a look at where it fits in the product lineup. First I was curious what the overall focus of the card was. While on our call with AMD they broke down each of their cards focus in an easy to read slide so I’m including it below. Basically the 370 and 360 are 1080p and Moba focused, the 380X and 380 are 1440p, the 390 and 390X are 4K focused, and the Fury line is for 4K and VR. When I get into my testing I will be curious to see if holds up, previous testing would have me inclined to say that the 380 only worked well with lower settings on 1440p.

To get an idea of the R9 380X’s direct competition I put together a chart showing the lowest prices available currently on Newegg for each card from AMD and Nvidia. Here we can see right away that AMD has spent more time having a bigger mix that covers every price range where Nvidia has a bit of a hole above the GTX 970. That said the R9 380X doesn’t really have a direct competitor, the GTX 970 is $60 more and the GTX 960 is $50 less. When I get into testing I’m going to be focused on seeing if the 380X falls closer to the GTX 970 or the GTX 960.

Packaging

Being a Strix card it’s no surprise that the packaging on the 380X Strix has a large owl right on the front of the box. Beyond that Asus was right to the point with the model name over on the right side, their logo up in the top left, and the Strix branding in the top right. Really the only information about the card on the front of the box is the “20% Cooler, 0dB Gaming” quote in bold. It isn’t until we get around to the back of the box that we start to see a little more information. On the back Asus has broken down four of the card main features with a photo and more information. That is where they talk about the DirectCU II cooling, the 0dB Fan, Super Alloy Power, and the new GPU Tweak II with Xsplit. Down along the bottom we actually see a small photo of the full card and next to it a line drawing of the rear connection options. There is a specification listing but it is extremely small and doesn’t tell us to much about the card.

Inside the packaging is another box, this time it just has the Strix logo up top and a few Strix quotes on the ends. Inside THAT box we find foam and a small accessory box with the Asus logo on it. Under the accessory box and a layer of foam we find the card wrapped up in its static protective bag and sitting in a cutout section in foam.

In the accessory box we have a software/drive disc. Along with it a speed setup guide and a world of ships paper. You also get a small Strix sticker as well as a power adapter cable.

Once I got the card out I also noticed that Asus wrapped up the rear backplate on the card in plastic to keep it from getting scratched up and getting finger prints on it. Remember to remove it before hooking everything up if you get the card!

Card layout and Photos

While the R9 380X is a little larger than the budget cards I have taken a look at recently, it does still have the same Strix styling. Basically this means that Asus included their standard DirectCU II cooling meaning their direct contact heatsink design with two fans. The fan shroud though is what gives the Strix all of its unique styling. You see, the Strix brand is built completely around the Strix mythology and Strix genus of owls. The Strix logo is designed into the shape of an owl face and all of the Strix products incorporate the owl design as well. For their video cards the fan shroud highlights the two fans as eyes with the angled areas on the left and right sides matching the Asus Strix logo. Seriously once you see the owl face in these cards you will never un-see it! The fan shroud is plastic and overall extends about an inch above the top of the PCI slot but not past the large heatpipe up top.

Asus kept the same styling with the two cooling fans. Both have a red and black sticker with a unique design on them that helps continue the owl theme, in this case the eyes. Then in the middle of the fan shroud they also slipped in two red and black stickers with a weird tribal design. Frankly every time I look at these on Strix cards I can’t think of anything but Darth Maul.

As usual though it’s the cooling that really sets Asus cards apart and the 380X Strix is no different. As I mentioned before it comes with the DIrectCU II cooling meaning the heatpipe has direct contact with the GPU and helps pull the heat out across the large heatsink. The heatpipes on the Strix though are huge. We have one up top that in centered on the GPU and pulls the heat out to the far end of the card and then two on the bottom that sit to the left and right of the top heatpipe on the GPU. These pull heat to the area about three inches to the left and to the right of the GPU. Then of course the thick heatsink has a large base that also transfers heat up into the heatsink. The two fans push air down across the heatsink then against the PCB. The design is efficient enough like most cards these days that it doesn’t actually have to turn the fans on until the card gets under load. This means the card runs dead silent most of the time. The design does mean that all of the hot air that the card generates will be pushed into your case, so keep that in mind when picking out your case.

Up on the top edge Asus did include a small Strix logo. It’s not backlit and it isn’t fancy like a lot of cards but it does help show what you have inside.

The 380X doesn’t have or need Crossfire bridge connections to run multiple cards so the only connections on the card are the two power connections. You need two 6-pin power cables to get things running. To help save room Asus has flipped the plugs around backwards and notched the PCB. This puts the clips on the back side of the card where they don’t need to leave room in the heatsink for fingers. Just under the plugs on the back Asus has also included red and white LEDs. When you put the 380X Strix in a PCI slot it will light both up red to show that you don’t have power hooked up yet and when you plug them in they switch to white. This makes diagnostics quicker and easier as well.

On the back of the card we can’t see much of the PCB because of the backplate but we can see that they went with a black PCB. In the center at the back of the GPU they have a hole in the backplate and we can see everything as well as give a little breathing room to keep things cool. The backplate is aluminum and is a little different. The top and bottom areas have angled lines carved for a little styling. Asus also included their logo and DirectCU II branding as well but upside down so that it can be read when the card is installed in a normal case.

On the end of the 380X Strix Asus opened up the ventilation as much as possible with thin margins between holes, extra wide holes, and vents tucked in around all of the connection ports as well. Speaking of connections, the card comes with a full sized DisplayPort, a full sized HDMI, and two DVI’s. This is similar to the 380’s and below where the newer 390’s and above are all moving to a single DVI and more DisplayPorts.

Our Test Rig and Procedures

Synthetic Benchmarks

To start off my testing I ran the Asus 380X Strix through all three of the 3DMark Fire Strike benchmarks to test performance in 1080p, 1440p, and 4k situations. In addition to that I also slipped in Unigine valley 1.0 for an additional look. In 3DMark it wasn’t a surprise at all that the 380X performed above the R9 380, but the 700 point gap was much closer than the 2100 point gap between the 380X and the GTX 970. That said the bump in performance over the 380 did put the 380X up over a stock GTX 780 and up close to the R7 370’s in crossfire at 1080p. Having twice the memory really helped when it came to the Ultra benchmark that runs at 4K. The Unigine Valley results were again very similar to 3DMark. The 380X pulled an additional 3FPS over the R9 380 but there is still a big gap between it and the next level of cards.

In-Game Benchmarks

As always the synthetic benchmarks are great and all, but the real meat and potatoes is in the in gaming testing. The only reason most of us even get dedicated video cards is to play our games at the best possible settings. So to get an idea of how the 380X performs I ran it through our in game benchmark suite. I did run into issues with Bioshock Infinite not running on our test bench so our number of tests was cut down to 8 from our normal 9. I also test nearly all of those games at both 1080p and 1440p to see how the card handles both resolutions. To make things a little easier to consume, in addition to the full graphs I also break down the performance results from all of the tests into three categories, under 30 (unplayable), over 30 (playable), and over 60(ideal performance). This way we can quickly take a look at where the card stands at each resolution. So how did the 380X perform? Well at 1080p all of the games were playable at the highest possible settings with most of those falling into the 60+ FPS category. It was the 1440p testing that had my attention though, AMD suggested that the R9 380 and R9 380X were their 1440p focused cards. So how did the 380X do? Well with everything turned all the way up all but one game was playable but I would personally like to see more than just one game in the 60+ FPS category. That said the 380X would be a 1440p card, the only difference I would make in their chart would be to put the R9 390 and the 380X together as 1440p cards, dropping the R9 380 down into the higher 1080p category.

When looking at the results individually there were a few things that stood out. Specifically, in GRID Autosport the 380X pulled over 60FPS at 1080p and was just under at 1440p, but this is oddly slow compared to past testing. The 1440p results are spot on, but at 1080p it was on par with the R7 370. I will revisit this and find out if this is a driver or game issue. Beyond that everything was about normal with the 380X performing about on par with the GTX 780 in most tests, falling above the 960 but a big margin and below the GTX 970 by a good margin as well.

Compute Benchmarks

In addition to the normal in game and synthetic benchmark testing, I also wanted to see how well the R9 380X would perform in some compute benchmarks. To do that I ran it through our Fold @ Home testing as well as Cinebench. In Folding @ Home the single precision test reads almost exactly like all of the previous testing with the 380X pulling a 49 over the 46’s of the R9 380’s. The gap to the R9 390 is up there though with the 390’s pulling 56 and higher. In the double precision test, the R9 380X falls just above the GTX 980, a drastic change over the rest of our testing. This is because Nvidia has handicapped their cards in the double precision performance to keep their professional card market intact. In Cinebench though I think the 380X could use a little more refinement on its drivers, it falls in between two different R7 370’s that I have previously tested.

Cooling, Noise, and Power

In game and compute performance is important, but it is all for nothing if you don’t have enough power to push the R9 380X or if the card overheats. Because of that I make sure to dig into the cooling, power, and noise performance of all cards that come into the office as well. This is also a great way to spot differences between cards that share the same base GPU. In this case this is the first R9 380X that I have tested so I will be focusing on how it compares to the 380 and 390 from AMD and the GTX 960 and GTX 970 from Nvidia. To start things off I ran the card through Valley Benchmark and noted the peak wattage draw of the R9 380X Strix. This isn’t the highest possible power draw, but it is a good idea of what you can expect in the average game. The 380X Strix pulled a peak 404 watts, this is of course including the hard drive, ssd, and 6 core CPU in our test bench. That is just slightly more than the R9 380 pulled and well below the 390 with its light dimming 502 watts. Sadly, with our new power test I haven’t had the chance to retest the 960 and 970. Our old test had the 970 at 389 and the 960 at 327, I would expect them to be a few watts higher in the new test but without a doubt the 960 would still be well below the 380X.

For noise testing I test at both 50% fan speed and 100% fan speed to get a range of what to expect. Typically, Strix cards are very quiet but this time around the 380X Strix was a little noisier than normal with the fan speed turned up. It is rare that I even notice fan noise when testing but I can say that our sample seemed to be louder than any other Strix card tested in the past. Thankfully most of the time the card runs with the fans turns completely off anyhow so this is only an issue when you are pushing things in game.

For temperature testing I ran our standard test where I run Valley Benchmark for up to 30 minutes or until the temperature levels completely off to get a real world in game temperature. The 380X Strix fell right in the middle of the pack with its 68-degree result. This is impressive given the higher power draw I saw in previous tests. The only problem with this test is that it doesn’t give us a true idea of the performance of the DirectCU II cooling as fan profiles to keep noise down have a large impact on the running temperature. So I have added a new benchmark where I run through the same test but with the cards fan turned to 100% the entire time. Here the 380X Strix dropped from 68 down to 53.

Overclocking

For my last bit of testing I wanted to see how much I could push the 380X Strix with its stock cooling. To do that I break the testing down into three sections. I overclock the GPU first and find the highest possible GPU overclock on a stock setup. Then I do the same with the memory clock speed. Then I put both together and see if they will run together. Starting on the GPU Clock I ran the stock clock then jumped immediately up to 1200 MHz to see if the card could handle it. I picked 1200MHz because that was about where I was able to overclock with the R9 380. This failed, but as I stepped back to 1100 MHz I got a passing result. From there I just had to work to pinpoint how far I could go. Sadly, I wasn’t able to get past 1110 MHz. I did see a 4 FPS jump in performance though.

Going off of the R9 380 that is based on the same Tenda GPU as the 380X I expected my memory testing to go very quickly as the 380 maxed out the software. I jumped through a few tests quickly but the 7000 MHz test failed. More testing found that the 6500 MHz test I ran was the highest memory clock I was able to reach. This only gave me about .4 of an FPS over the stock tests. The lack of a result and the high risk that memory overclocking has means this isn’t really worth it at all. I did still run my combined testing though and had no issues. Combining the overclocked memory into the overclocked GPU gave me a total of 66.74 FPS in the final test.

Software

Typically, I don’t need to talk too much about any software on a video card. This is because the software available from a few manufactures hasn’t really changed in a few years. That said Asus did introduce a new version of their GPU Tweak software so I’m including a quick look here. I actually have been using their software when doing overclock testing for a long time because it consistently works with every card that comes into the office. The new software changes the styling a little and now includes the Strix logo up top. The opening page now includes a few profiles where we can tune the card for overclocking, gaming, or noise performance. Beyond that when we get to the advanced page we have the same sliders as the previous software where we can toy with the GPU and memory clock speeds as well as voltage, power, and fan speeds.

The info tab up top loads an integrated GPUZ page on the left. The right side is live update where it will scan and make sure the software is up to date. It also scans the drive and VBIOS as well. This should help keep cards a lot more up to date in the future for people who don’t check often.

The software also integrates with XSplit. It doesn’t come preinstalled, you will have to click and head to the XSplit website to download their software. It’s great to see Asus recognize that streaming is a huge growing market.

Overall and Final Verdict

When going into testing on just about any Asus product I can expect a few things, namely their attention to detail and their software. In the case of the R9 380X Strix the attention to detail showed in the cooling performance and the nice backplate. The new GPU Tweak software isn’t overly complicated, but it does everything you might need and more. Integrating with XSplit shows that Asus knows that a lot of gamers are starting to stream as well. The 380X Strix impressed me with its performance, it gets the job done when playing at 1080p and 1440p without blowing up your budget like higher end cards. This seems to be a good sweet spot, going much past the 380X starts to really only benefit people running multiple monitor setups or running at 4k. Really the only downsides I ran into with the Strix was in the noise testing. Generally, all Strix cards have been nearly silent for me but this card seems to be a fluke. I’m also still on the fences with the owl styling but Asus seems to have gone all in at this point.

Before jumping into our performance testing when going over the new R9 380X specifications I noted that I was especially curious how it would perform in comparison to the GTX 970 and GTX 960. The reason was because the R9 380X falls into a weird price point that is right in the middle of the two cards. Because of that I don’t really feel the 380X has a direct competitor, but I was curious where it would end up falling in the performance testing. In the end the 380X Strix fell again near the middle in tests like 3DMark. To help visualize it all I put together a quick scatter graph that shows the cards 3DMark Performance in comparison to the MSRP. Because the 380X Strix has such a drastic price difference from the MSRP of the 380X I went ahead and graphed both, obviously a no-overclocked 380X’s 3DMark numbers will be slightly lower but I didn’t have those numbers to include. In the end I feel that the 380X is a good value that falls directly between Nvidia’s offerings.  The Strix tested does have a bit of a high MSRP when compared to the R9 380X’s base MSRP though and that does push the card a little closer to the GTX 970, lowering the value slightly.

Live Pricing: HERE

Author Bio

Author: garfi3ldWebsite: http://lanoc.org

Editor-in-chief

You might call him obsessed or just a hardcore geek. Wes's obsession with gaming hardware and gadgets isn't anything new, he could be found taking things apart even as a child. When not poking around in PC's he can be found playing League of Legends, Awesomenauts, or Civilization 5 or watching a wide variety of TV shows and Movies. A car guy at heart, the same things that draw him into tweaking cars apply when building good looking fast computers. If you are interested in writing for Wes here at LanOC you can reach out to him directly using our contact form.