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AMD Radeon R9 M385X

AMD Radeon R9 M385X: Review of an Outdated Mobile GPU in 2025

April 2025

Although the AMD Radeon R9 M385X was released nearly a decade ago, this mobile graphics card can still be found in used laptops and budget systems. Its relevance in 2025 is debatable, but for specific tasks, it can still be useful. Let's explore who this model is suitable for and what compromises one will have to accept.

1. Architecture and Key Features

Foundation: 3rd Generation GCN

The Radeon R9 M385X is built on the 3rd Generation Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture, which at the time provided a good balance between performance and energy efficiency. The manufacturing process is 28 nm, which by today's standards (5–3 nm for 2025 flagships) looks outdated.

Unique Features

The card supports AMD technologies like Mantle (the predecessor to Vulkan) and TrueAudio for enhanced sound in games. However, it lacks modern features such as FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) 3.0 or hardware ray tracing. For performance improvement in older projects, Radeon Image Sharpening can be utilized, but its effectiveness is limited due to weak computational power.

2. Memory: Modest Specifications for 2025

- Memory Type: GDDR5.

- Capacity: 4 GB.

- Bus: 128-bit.

- Bandwidth: 96 GB/s (memory frequency — 1500 MHz).

This is sufficient for games from the 2010s at medium settings, but in modern projects (e.g., Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty or Starfield), 4 GB of VRAM becomes a bottleneck. Even when using FSR 2.0 (if supported by the game), high-resolution textures can lead to FPS drops due to a lack of VRAM.

3. Performance in Games: Nostalgia for the Past

The R9 M385X is a choice for casual gamers. Here are examples of FPS in popular games (settings Medium, 1080p):

- CS:GO: 90–110 FPS.

- GTA V: 45–55 FPS.

- Overwatch 2: 40–50 FPS (with FSR 2.0 — up to 60 FPS).

- The Witcher 3: 30–35 FPS.

At resolutions above 1080p (1440p, 4K), the card is impractical: even in Fortnite at 1440p, FPS will drop to 20–25. There is no hardware-level ray tracing, and emulation through drivers (if available) will significantly reduce performance to unacceptable levels.

4. Professional Tasks: Minimal Capabilities

The card is still suitable for basic tasks:

- Video Editing: Working in DaVinci Resolve or Premiere Pro with 1080p/30 FPS footage is possible, but rendering will take a lot of time.

- 3D Modeling: Blender and AutoCAD will run, but complex scenes will lag. It's better to use OpenCL mode instead of CUDA.

- Scientific Computations: Support for OpenCL 1.2 allows for simple simulations, but there is insufficient power for machine learning or rendering neural networks.

5. Power Consumption and Heat Dissipation

- TDP: 75 W.

- Cooling Recommendations: Dust cleaning of the cooling system in laptops with this card is critically important. For desktop PCs (if the card is used in an external box), cases with 2–3 fans will suffice.

6. Comparison with Competitors

Analogues of the R9 M385X from 2015–2016:

- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M: Better optimized for DirectX 11 but lags in OpenCL tasks.

- AMD Radeon R9 M395X: 15–20% more powerful but more expensive.

- Intel Iris Xe (2025): Integrated graphics of modern Intel processors are already catching up with the R9 M385X in gaming while consuming less power.

7. Practical Tips

- Power Supply: For laptops — the original 90–120W adapter. For external use (via Thunderbolt), ensure the PC's power supply delivers at least 300W.

- Compatibility: The card works only with PCIe 3.0 x8. There may be limitations on motherboards with PCIe 5.0.

- Drivers: Official support by AMD ended in 2021. Use the latest available version (Adrenalin 21.5.2) or community projects (like AMDVLK).

8. Pros and Cons

Pros:

- Low price on the secondary market ($50–80).

- Supports MultiMonitor (up to 4 displays).

- Sufficient for office tasks and older games.

Cons:

- No support for modern APIs (DirectX 12 Ultimate, Vulkan 1.3).

- High power consumption for its capabilities.

- Limited compatibility with new OS (e.g., Windows 11 requires workarounds).

9. Final Verdict: Who is the R9 M385X Suitable for in 2025?

This graphics card is an option for:

- Owners of old laptops who want to prolong their life for office applications.

- Retro gaming enthusiasts looking to run projects from the 2000s-2010s without upgrades.

- Budget users seeking a temporary solution until purchasing a modern PC.

However, for gaming in 2025, professional video editing, or working with AI, the R9 M385X is hopelessly outdated. If your budget allows, consider the integrated graphics of Ryzen 8000G or budget discrete cards like the Radeon RX 7600M.

Conclusion

The Radeon R9 M385X is a relic of the past, a reminder of the GPU progress over the last decade. It should only be considered as a temporary solution or part of a nostalgic project. For any serious tasks in 2025, more modern solutions are required.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Mobile

Launch Date

May 2015

Model Name

Radeon R9 M385X

Generation

Gem System

Base Clock

1000MHz

Boost Clock

1100MHz

Bus Interface

PCIe 3.0 x16

Transistors

2,080 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 2.0

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.

128bit

Memory Clock

1200MHz

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.

76.80 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.

17.60 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.

61.60 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.

123.2 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.

1.932 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.

896

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

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 (12_0)

Shader Model

6.5

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

1.932 TFLOPS

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

Radeon Pro 560X

2.015 +4.3%

Radeon HD 6870 X2

1.976 +2.3%

Radeon R9 M385X

1.932

GeForce GTX 675MX Mac Edition

1.894 -2%

Radeon HD 7950M

1.828 -5.4%