In performance terms, there's a big gap between the mid-range and high-end graphics cards on the market. GTX 970 is a substantial leap over its GTX 960 stablemate, while the Radeon R9 390 is also far more capable than the R9 380. There's room in the market for an 'inbetweener' - a keenly priced newcomer that can sit comfortably at the £200/$230 area in the market. AMD has got there first with the R9 380X and it's a fascinating product.
In effect, it's an unlocked version of the existing R9 380, based on the Antigua processor previously known as Tonga when it debuted in 2014's Radeon R9 285. The differences are straightforward enough - the 1792 shaders in the standard R9 380 are augmented with an additional 256 cores, opening up the full 2048 complement. Texture units also see an increase from 112 to 128. In theory at least, that's an additional 15 per cent of processor power assuming like-for-like clocks.
The card also ships with 4GB of GDDR5 RAM as standard, with no 2GB option. Memory consumption in gaming is only moving in one direction, and the R9 380 in particular has struggled in certain titles. At both 1080p and 1440p, 4GB of video RAM has proved sufficient thus far in containing almost every game we've tested at max settings. However, looking at chip photography of the Antigua chip, there is evidence to suggest that it has a 384-bit memory bus, suggesting it may have been originally designed for 3GB/6GB configurations. Assuming that's true, we're not surprised that AMD stuck with a 256-bit interface here - 3GB would be too little for a product in this price-range, while 6GB would have been complete overkill.
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