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AMD Radeon R7 M380

AMD Radeon R7 M380: Budget GPU for Everyday Tasks and Light Gaming

April 2025

In the world of graphics cards, the AMD Radeon R7 M380 fills the niche of an affordable solution for those looking for a balance between price, energy efficiency, and sufficient performance. This model, updated in 2024, retains its name but has received modern features. Let's explore who this card is suitable for and what it can accomplish in 2025.

1. Architecture and Key Features

Architecture: The R7 M380 is built on an updated RDNA 1.5 architecture— a hybrid version combining elements of RDNA 1 and optimizations from RDNA 2. This design enhances energy efficiency without radically changing the structure.

Manufacturing Process: 6 nm (TSMC). This choice has reduced heat generation and production costs compared to 5 nm counterparts.

Unique Features:

- FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR 3.0): Upscaling technology that increases FPS in games through AI algorithms while preserving detail. It supports Quality, Balanced, and Performance modes.

- Radeon Anti-Lag: Reduces input lag in competitive games.

- FreeSync Premium: Eliminates screen tearing on monitors with refresh rates up to 144 Hz.

Note: Hardware ray tracing (RT) is absent; for that, GPUs of RDNA 3 level or higher are required.

2. Memory: Speed and Impact on Performance

Type and Volume: 4 GB GDDR6.

Bus: 128-bit.

Bandwidth: 192 GB/s (memory clock - 12 GHz).

This is sufficient for gaming at Full HD on medium settings, but in resource-intensive scenes (e.g., open worlds with high detail), stutters may occur due to limited VRAM. For professional tasks, 4 GB is the minimum acceptable level, but working with 4K video or complex 3D models will require more powerful solutions.

3. Gaming Performance: What Can the R7 M380 Show in 2025?

The card is aimed at 1080p/30-60 FPS in modern projects when using FSR 3.0. Examples (settings set to “Medium”):

- Cyberpunk 2077 (2023): 45-55 FPS (FSR Quality).

- Fortnite (Chapter 6): 60-75 FPS (without RT).

- Apex Legends: 70-90 FPS.

- Starfield: 35-45 FPS (FSR Performance).

In 1440p, comfortable gameplay is only possible in less demanding projects (CS2, Dota 2) or with significant reduction in settings. 4K is impractical even with FSR.

Ray Tracing: The absence of hardware support for RT makes using this technology impossible without catastrophic drops in FPS.

4. Professional Tasks: Editing, 3D, and Computation

Video Editing: In Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve, the card can handle rendering 1080p and 1440p videos thanks to support for OpenCL and Vulkan. However, 4K timelines will load with delays.

3D Modeling: In Blender and Maya, the GPU is suitable for learning and simple projects, but complex scenes with high-resolution textures will require more video memory.

Scientific Computations: Basic tasks on OpenCL (e.g., simulations in MATLAB) can be performed, but for neural networks or rendering, it's better to choose cards with ROCm support and a greater number of cores.

5. Power Consumption and Cooling

TDP: 50 W. This allows the GPU to be used in thin laptops and compact PCs without powerful cooling systems.

Recommendations:

- For laptops: Standard ventilation with 1-2 heat pipes is sufficient.

- For desktops: A case with 1-2 intake fans and minimal cable management.

The card does not require additional power via 6/8-pin connectors— PCIe x16 is enough.

6. Comparison with Competitors

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Mobile (2024):

- Pros of NVIDIA: Better optimization for DX12, DLSS 2.0.

- Cons: Priced $20-30 higher with similar performance.

Intel Arc A350M:

- Pros of Intel: Supports XeSS and AV1 encoding.

- Cons: Higher power consumption (60 W).

Conclusion: The R7 M380 wins on price (new models start from $180) but loses in the NVIDIA and Intel ecosystem.

7. Practical Advice

Power Supply: For PCs, a PSU of 300-400 W is sufficient (for example, be quiet! System Power 10).

Compatibility:

- Laptops: Check the system's TDP limit.

- PCs: Supported by motherboards with PCIe 4.0 x8 (backward compatible with 3.0).

Drivers: Use Adrenalin Edition 2025.4+ for stable operation of FSR 3.0 and bug fixes.

8. Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Low price ($180-220).

- Energy efficiency.

- Support for FSR 3.0.

Cons:

- Only 4 GB of memory.

- No hardware RT.

- Limited performance at 1440p.

9. Final Conclusion: Who is the R7 M380 Suitable For?

This graphics card is the ideal choice for:

1. Budget gamers playing in Full HD on medium settings.

2. Owners of thin laptops where quiet operation and battery life are important.

3. Students and office users who need a card for editing home videos or working in graphic design software.

If you are not ready to pay for top technologies like ray tracing but want a modern solution at a reasonable price, the R7 M380 is worth considering. However, for professional tasks or gaming in 4K, it's advisable to look at the AMD Radeon RX 7600M or NVIDIA RTX 4050 Mobile.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Mobile

Launch Date

May 2015

Model Name

Radeon R7 M380

Generation

Gem System

Base Clock

900MHz

Boost Clock

915MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 3.0 x16

Transistors

1,500 million

Compute Units

TMUs

Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.

Foundry

TSMC

Process Size

28 nm

Architecture

GCN 1.0

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

4GB

Memory Type

DDR3

Memory Bus

The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.

128bit

Memory Clock

1000MHz

Bandwidth

Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.

32.00 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate

Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.

14.64 GPixel/s

Texture Rate

Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.

36.60 GTexel/s

FP64 (double)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

73.20 GFLOPS

FP32 (float)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

1.194 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

Shading Units

The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.

640

L1 Cache

16 KB (per CU)

L2 Cache

256KB

TDP

Unknown

Vulkan Version

Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.

1.2.170

OpenCL Version

2.1 (1.2)

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 (11_1)

Shader Model

6.5 (5.1)

ROPs

The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

1.194 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

GeForce GTX 560 Ti

1.238 +3.7%

Radeon E9172 MXM

1.223 +2.4%

Radeon R7 M380

1.194

Radeon Graphics 384SP

1.175 -1.6%

GeForce MX150

1.153 -3.4%