AMD Radeon R9 380

The Sapphire R9 380 Nitro 4GB is a solid option that delivers compelling 1080P performance for the price, and decent 1440P numbers with reduced image quality settings. The similarly-priced GTX960 solutions are competitive alternatives, so the purchasing decision boils down to varied aspects such as the games you play, FreeSync or G-Sync support, and possible multi-GPU options with your motherboard.

The R9 380 represents an attack on the more conservative and efficient approach of Nvidia's GeForce GTX 960, and on the whole, the AMD card does its job well. It's slightly faster than the GTX 960 in our tests and holds a steady if small advantage at...

MSI R9 380 Gaming 4G is a card for 1080p and 1440p gaming. It can run cool and silent any task you want to throw to it. The TwinFrozr V cooling system is powerful and quiet in any situation thanks to its well-designed heatsink and 2 types of blades, a Traditional one that maximizes downwards airflow and a Dispersion one that brings more air from outside.

Unfortunately, while the faster clock speed and extra memory give it a slight edge over the R9 285, there’s actually very little to differentiate the R9 380 from its predecessor now that AMD’s driver optimisations have made their way to the older cards. If you’ll be sticking to 1,920x1,080 or 2,560x1,440 gaming for the foreseeable future, with no plans to make the jump to 4K, the R9 380 will be more than sufficient for playing new games, but if you only recently upgraded to a 200-series graphics card there’s no reason to make the jump to AMD's new model.

The simple fact is not everyone can afford the high-end AMD Fury cards or NVIDIA’s 980 / 980 Ti cards. For that reason many gamers and enthusiasts are looking to spend in the $200-$250 price range. This gives them the best performance for their money. This card will be more than powerful enough to handle the latest titles at 1080p. Moving up to 1440p you will have to turn settings down a good bit. When it comes to 4K I would not recommend this card, even with its 4GB of VRAM 4K is a little out of reach if you want decent quality. Keep in mind this card was never made with 4K gaming in mind though.

Sapphire's R9 380 Nitro is designed to cover the needs of the mainstream gamer making use of a 1080p panel. However, the Sapphire R9 380 Nitro 4GB is strangely placed, as the 4GB of video memory holds a price premium over 2GB equivalents to the tune of around £20, or £180 compared to £160. That premium could make it a tougher to lure in mainstream gamers since Sapphire itself recommends the R9 380 Nitro for "1080P gaming at high detail levels in most games", yet 4GB of VRAM is arguably overkill for 1080p. A 2GB variation of the R9 380 Nitro would likely go down a storm and give it a much-needed value boost against Nvidia's GTX 960 which starts at £150.

AMD’s Radeon R9 380 may be a retread of last year’s Radeon R9 285, but with a higher core clock speed and twice the memory, this MSI version manages to perform a bit better than Nvidia’s GTX 960, making it a good choice for gamers with 1080p, 1440p, or 2,560x1,600 screens.