R9 380(2gb) vs gtx 960(2gb)

[antronix19]

Hey guys, well it's exactly as I have said it I was originally planning to get the 2gb msi Armor 2x gtx 960 but a few days ago the new r9 300 series came out and I have my eye on the 380 and I have found the perfect one for me

They are the exact same price(€180)
Exact same vram(2gb)
And they are even the exact same model, both are the msi Armor 2x edition cards

So yeah I need help on which one to go with power consumption is not a problem

I do however hear that the 300 series is having horrible driver issues at the moment but my build will be bought in 2 months so I assume they'll be fixed however yep that covers everything, help me decide please

 

[DasHotShot]

The 380 wins in almost every scenario, as proven by benchmarks done by Tom's themselves

 

[LokkenJP]

As DasHotShot said.

R9 380 is a more powerful card, not only due to his stronger core, but because of the wider memory bandwidth (256bits vs 128bits on the 960 GTX).

Difference is not as big as it may seem, thanks to the highly optimized Maxwell core on the 960 GTX, nevertheless, the AMD 380 has more raw muscle than the nVidia card almost everywhere.

This, of course, means a lot more power consumption, but if wattage is not an issue, R9 380 wins on every scenario, with not huge but noticeable differences nonetheless...
Check:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-radeon-r9-390x-r9-380-r7-370,4178-6.html

Regards

L

 

[whassup]

Obviously R9 380 is a better choice. Since R9 380 is a rebrand of the older R9 285 with higher clocks so no specific driver issues are there because it's not a brand new GPU architecture.

 

[StarChief]

Both cards are identical in performance as far as I can tell. The 960 is far more efficient in power and memory bandwidth, the 128 doesn't mean it's slower. I also tend to notice much more reliable and steady drivers from Nvidia these days. I own a 960 in one of my rigs and I absolutely love it, overclock like it doesn't even care. It's quiet and cool. 380 and 960 also have roughly the same core speed, depending on model some are faster some are slower, but that is trivial as you can overclock the cards yourself.

 

[johnnyb105]

R 280 R 285 R 380 and higher are better then the 960 ...The 960 uses less power tho but you can see very many youtube vids out there showing you that you would have to run a entire year on lower power usage and the savings are very slim if your PSU Can handle a card listed above the r cards then this would be your best route ..

 

[JustNatural]

Question: what would you chose between the two, if the gtx 960 was 24euros cheaper?

 

[LokkenJP]

Question: what would you chose between the two, if the gtx 960 was 24euros cheaper?

Depends on your priorities.
If you want the absolute best performance in that price class, the R9 380 is a bit faster on almost every scenario.

If budget or power consumption is the limiting factor, the GTX 960 provide unmatched value. Given that you are getting the nVidia card 24€ cheaper, I would choose this if you can live with a few FPS less on your games,

On a 180€ card, 24€ is almost a a 15% price difference, and the performance gap is usually lower than that, so I would pick the GTX card myself.

But as I said, this depends on your priorities, both options are pretty solid performers for the price; it's hard to go wrong with either option.

L

P.S. Also, take into account the manufacturer specs for each card, not only the chip itself. Notice that both AMD and nVidia have a pretty wide array of partners/resellers (MSI, Sapphire, Asus... ) which can provide cards with some differences with the default reference boards.
A good GTX 960 factory overclocked card may be faster than a reference R9 380 board, and on the other hand a top level R9 380 factory overclocked board can wipe the floor with pretty noticeable performance advantage over a basic GTX 960 card.