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Sapphire R9 380 Nitro 4GB Review

Rating: 8.0.

For many, the R9 Fury X and GTX980Ti are fantasy solutions – dream cards most of us will never be able to afford. What if you only have £200 to spend and need a new graphics card that can handle resolutions up to 1440p? Today we look at the latest Sapphire R9 380 Nitro which is priced to go head to head against Nvidia's GTX960.

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The matte black finished Nitro series is new for Sapphire – and KitGuru had very positive experiences with their R9 390 Nitro 8GB back in July. The R9 380 is a lower cost solution aimed at a much wider enthusiast audience – after all £200 is seen as an affordable sweet spot for many gamers.

The Sapphire R9 Nitro 4GB we are analysing today is priced at £179.99 inc vat at Overclockers UK.

GPU R9 390X R9 290X R9 390 R9 290 R9 380 R9 285
Launch June 2015 Oct 2013 June 2015 Nov 2013 June 2015 Sep 2014
DX Support 12 12 12 12 12 12
Process (nm) 28 28 28 28 28 28
Processors 2816 2816 2560 2560 1792 1792
Texture Units 176 176 160 160 112 112
ROP’s 64 64 64 64 32 32
Boost CPU Clock 1050 1000 1000 947 970 918
Peak GFLOPS (SP) 5914 5632 5120 4849 3476 3290
Memory Clock 6000 5000 6000 5000 5700 5500
Memory Bus (bits) 512 512 512 512 256 256
Max Bandwidth (GB/s) 384 320 384 320 182.4 176
Memory Size (MB) 8192 4096 8192 4096 4096 2048
Transistors (mn) 6200 6200 6200 6200 5000 5000
TDP (watts) 275 290 275 275 190 190

The Antigua Pro (formerly Tonga) core on the Sapphire R9 380 Nitro is clocked at 985mhz and the 4GB of GDDR5 memory is running at 1,450MHz (5.8Gbps effective). Sapphire have opted for minor increases on both core and memory clocks, compared against the reference design.

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5 comments

  1. Can you try to make a CF (4GB) review?

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  3. To add perspective, this 380 was up against a 3-Slot Über OC Palit GTX 960 Super Jetstream 2Gb, and this even with cost disparity of being a 4G unit is just £4 more right today. I see a good purchase or a high priced 960!

    Considering the Palit GTX 960 Super Jetstream 2Gb you tested back Feb ’15 only provided 6% more OC it’s fairly spent in what it can provide in more FpS. Also, for the 3-Slot Palit cooler and Maxwell efficacy, the Nitro cooler is offering excellent cooling under gaming, even with the Palit having a big chunk of its cooler hanging out in the clear through flow air, because of it’s short PCB.

    As they stand they’re close competitors, but when the Sapphire Nitro truly pedestrian, while hardly any huge factory OC (985MHz) version. I say it held up excellent against what is one of the “preeminent 960” offered… which anymore seems overpriced. Perhaps a more proper vying would be something like XFX Black 380 4G with a 1030MHz, that would give a clear picture of what are the “ultimate versions” from either side.

  4. Hello! I have just received my r9 380 4g. Didn’t expect thechanges from the review product… The version I have received now have 1010 Mhz default core clock. And an unexpected backplate. Yes a backplate that looks similar to the r9 390 version. Plus a free Dirt 3 game. Although I was wondering, r9 380 is under Gold Reward group which was listed as to receive 3 games but I only got 1. (Is this only for reference cards? see AMD Never Settle Promo).

    Anyway Photos of the backplate could be seen at the link below.

    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12208225/20151029_211102.jpg

    https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12208225/20151029_212041.jpg

    A great deal anyway! Thanks AMD and Sapphire!

  5. It deems Sapphire started to supply all the 300 series with Backplates now. And they have a nice design to them too, like yours.
    IMO, these little things make the 380 worth every penny.