Home / AMD / AMD Radeon R9 380X: Performance and Specs

AMD Radeon R9 380X

AMD Radeon R9 380X in 2025: Is This Graphics Card Worth Considering?

Review for Budget-Conscious Gamers and Enthusiasts

Introduction

In 2025, the AMD Radeon R9 380X is a relic of the past, having been released back in 2015. Despite its venerable age, it still appears in budget builds and on the second-hand market. But is it still relevant today? Let's examine who this model might be useful for and what potential drawbacks to consider.

Architecture and Key Features

Architecture: The R9 380X is built on the GCN 3.0 (Graphics Core Next) microarchitecture with a 28 nm manufacturing process. This is the third generation of GCN, which back in its day supported DirectX 12, asynchronous computing, and the Mantle technology (the precursor to Vulkan).

Unique Features:

- DirectX 12 and Vulkan — optimization for modern APIs (as of 2015).

- TrueAudio — sound processing through the GPU.

- Lack of modern technologies: The card does not support ray tracing or FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR). In 2025, this is a significant downside, as most games require upscaling or enhanced graphics.

Conclusion: The architecture is outdated, but for basic tasks and older games, its capabilities are sufficient.

Memory: Size and Bandwidth

- Memory Type: GDDR5.

- Size: 4 GB.

- Bus Width: 256-bit.

- Bandwidth: 182 GB/s.

For games from 2015 to 2020, this is enough at medium settings in Full HD (1080p). However, by 2025, even indie projects and AAA titles with open worlds (such as Cyberpunk 2077 or Starfield) will consume more than 4 GB of VRAM, leading to FPS drops and low-quality textures.

Gaming Performance

In 2025, the R9 380X is suitable only for casual gamers:

- CS:2 — 60–70 FPS at medium settings (1080p).

- Fortnite — 45–55 FPS (1080p, low settings, without FSR).

- The Witcher 3 — 40–50 FPS (1080p, medium settings).

- Hogwarts Legacy — less than 30 FPS (1080p, low settings).

Resolutions above 1080p (1440p, 4K): Not recommended — the graphics card won't manage even at minimum settings.

Ray Tracing: Lacks hardware support. Software methods (e.g. through Proton on Linux) won’t provide playable performance.

Professional Tasks

- Video Editing: In Adobe Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve, the card can handle rendering simple projects (1080p, 30 FPS), but for 4K or effects, a more powerful GPU is needed.

- 3D Modeling: Blender and Maya work via OpenCL, but rendering speeds are 3–4 times slower than modern cards (e.g., RX 7600).

- Scientific Calculations: OpenCL support is available, but due to the limited number of stream processors (2048) and outdated architecture, efficiency is low.

Conclusion: The R9 380X is suitable only for beginners or as a temporary solution for professional tasks.

Power Consumption and Thermal Output

- TDP: 190 W — quite high even for 2025.

- Cooling Recommendations: A system with good ventilation is essential (2-3 fans in the case). The optimal setup is a case with a mesh front panel (e.g., Fractal Design Meshify C).

- Power Supply: Minimum of 500 W with an 80+ Bronze certification. Consider the age of the card: if it's used, the power supply should be reliable (for example, Corsair CX550M).

Comparison with Competitors

- NVIDIA GTX 970 (2014): Comparable in performance, but the GTX 970 has fewer driver issues in older games.

- NVIDIA GTX 1650 (2019): Consumes 75 W, supports FSR and DLSS, wins in energy efficiency. A new one costs $150–170.

- AMD RX 6400 (2023): 30% more powerful, supports FSR 3.0, consumes 53 W. Price — $160–180.

Conclusion: The R9 380X falls short even against budget newcomers in 2025 but may be cheaper in the second-hand market.

Practical Tips

1. Power Supply: Don’t skimp — older cards often require more power.

2. Compatibility:

- PCIe 3.0 x16 (backward compatible with PCIe 4.0/5.0).

- Check the card's length (up to 26 cm) and case size.

3. Drivers: Use the latest version of Adrenalin 2021 (newer OS versions, such as Windows 11, may not work properly).

Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Low price (on the second-hand market — $50–80).

- Support for DirectX 12 and Vulkan.

- Sufficient for older games and office tasks.

Cons:

- High power consumption.

- No FSR or Ray Tracing support.

- Only 4 GB VRAM.

Final Verdict: Who is the R9 380X For?

This graphics card is a choice for:

1. Owners of older PCs looking to extend their system's life without significant investment.

2. Enthusiasts building retro computers for playing games from the 2010s.

3. Office builds where gaming performance is not required.

Why you shouldn’t get the R9 380X in 2025: If your budget is $150–200, it’s better to look at new budget models like the Intel Arc A580 or AMD RX 6500 XT — they will support modern technologies and save on electricity.

Conclusion

The AMD Radeon R9 380X in 2025 is a "workhorse" for very narrow tasks. It is unsuitable for modern gaming or professional work but can serve as a lifeline for those seeking the cheapest upgrade possible. Remember: sometimes it’s better to pay extra for a modern card than to settle for the limitations of the past decade.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

November 2015

Model Name

Radeon R9 380X

Generation

Pirate Islands

Bus Interface

PCIe 3.0 x16

Transistors

5,000 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.

128

Foundry

TSMC

Process Size

28 nm

Architecture

GCN 3.0

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

4GB

Memory Type

GDDR5

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.

256bit

Memory Clock

1425MHz

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.

182.4 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.

31.04 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.

124.2 GTexel/s

FP16 (half)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable. 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.

3.973 TFLOPS

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.

248.3 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.

3.894 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.

2048

L1 Cache

16 KB (per CU)

L2 Cache

512KB

TDP

190W

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

OpenCL Version

2.0

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 (12_0)

Power Connectors

2x 6-pin

Shader Model

6.3

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.

Suggested PSU

450W

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)

Score

3.894 TFLOPS

3DMark Time Spy

Score

3111

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Playstation 4 Pro GPU

4.114 +5.6%

Arc Pro A30M

4.014 +3.1%

Radeon R9 380X

3.894

Radeon HD 8970 OEM

3.713 -4.6%

Arc Pro A40

3.552 -8.8%

3DMark Time Spy

GeForce GTX 1070

5933 +90.7%

Radeon RX 5500M

4406 +41.6%

Radeon R9 380X

3111

GeForce GTX 1050 Max Q

2037 -34.5%

Iris Xe Graphics 80EU

1216 -60.9%