AMD Radeon R9 380X Review: Fastest GPU Under $250

Name: AMD Radeon R9 380X
Brand: AMD

by Marco Chiappetta — Thursday, November 19, 2015, 09:00 AM EDT

Before bringing this article to a close, we'd like to cover a couple of final data points -- namely, power consumption and noise. Throughout all of our benchmarking and testing, we monitored acoustics and tracked how much power our test system was consuming using a power meter. Our goal was to give you an idea of how much power each configuration used while idling and also while under a heavy workload. Please keep in mind that we were testing total system power consumption at the outlet here, not the power being drawn by the graphics cards alone.

Total System Power Consumption

Tested at the Outlet

power

At idle, all of the graphics cards we tested used similar amounts of power, give or take just a few watts. Under load, however, the field really spreads out. The Radeon R9 380X consumed a bit more power than the Radeon R9 285, as you'd expect, and almost hit the mark set by the GeForce GTX 970.

Temperatures and noise were non-issues with the Sapphire Nitro R9 380X we tested. The card idles in the high 40'C range and under load stayed in the mid-70's. And throughout testing, the card remained nice and quiet. It's not silent, but by no measure would anyone consider the card loud under normal operating conditions.

Tags: AMD, Radeon, Gaming, graphics, GPU, 380x

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com