Question 1

What is the wattage of this card?

Accepted Answer

At idle, AMD's Radeon R9 380X consumes approximately 13W, and this number stays essentially the same when two monitors are connected.

Max setting on game hit 252 watt.

Question 2

How many watts does the Sapphire R9 380x use?

Accepted Answer

System Requirement 500 Watt Power Supply (Suggestion)
2 x 6-pin AUX Power Connector
4 x 6-pin AUX Power Connector is required for CrossFireX™ system.

Why newegg doesn't give the wattage on their page is beyond me

Question 3

I currently have a 350w psu in my computer so i was wondering if i could still use this card and overclock it or do i REALLY need to get a higher power psu? (i don't have much money to spend and this card seems really good to play fallout 4 for a lower cost) thanks

Accepted Answer

You are going to need somewhere between a 500-600W PSU if you plan on OC. AMD recommends a minimum of 500W for this PSU.  It's rated TDP is 225W, but given AMD's track record of misleading TDP reporting this is an understatement.  Let's assume the rest of your system has a 150W TDP (HDD+CPU,+Mobo) then you add this card stock no OC...you're already at 375W which is way more than your current PSU can handle.

Look at Nvidia cards like the GTX 950 or 960 that are more power efficient than this card to stay with your current PSU. Those are good enough to play FO4 on medium to high settings.

Question 4

How will this card perform with Flight Simulator Software (FSX; Prepar3d & X-Plane) and will it support at least 3 24 inch displays?

Accepted Answer

Depends on the flight simulator software you are using but I have used it with the best and latest action games, runs flawlessly. I currently got 3 screens hooked up at 2k resolution (1980x1080), this card can go up to 4k resolution  (3840x2160), but since most software are still not very compatible with that resolution I use 2k.

Question 5

I am trying to figure out this graphics card will work with my system (Size, Power, and PSU connections). It is a small form factor that is being repurposed into a entry level gaming rig. 
i5-4670k
MSI Z97M-G43
Corsair CX600M
Corsair 1600 MHZ 
Silverstone Grandia GD05-USB
WD 1TB 6700RPM
ASUS Bluray drive
Does it work? Thanks for the help

Accepted Answer

Your case supports GPUs up to 11 inches and this card is 9.35 inches, so you're good in size.

Power wise, I have an AMD FX6300 CPU and the same exact modular Corsair CX600M PSU, and my Sapphire 380x Nitro runs smoothly even when my CPU is overclocked to 4.5GHz and FX CPUs tend to draw quite a lot of power. You don't have to worry about power, 600w is more than enough even with both CPU and GPU overclocked. But if you do have extra cash to spend then I would highly consider the Corsair SF600 as they are smaller and made for small form factor builds, a bit more efficient, and overall more durable. As some say, the CX600M usually dies after 2-3 years of usage because it's a budget PSU and the internals aren't made to last as premium PSUs.

The Corsair CX600M comes with 2 6+2 pins for GPU and 6x SATA and 4x peripheral cables which are more than enough, so you're set on that.

Btw, I hope you will get an SSD with that hard drive so you don't have to worry about your hard drive bottlenecking every thing else, very crucial. But if you're on a budget and cant afford an SSD, then don't buy the regular WD hard drive and buy the Seagate 1TB SSHD Hybrid drive which is way faster than a regular hard drive and kinda close to SSD performance and cheap too at $70. Goodluck on the build man.

Question 6

would this card work with a Fatal1ty 990FX Killer? this card is PCI-Ex16 3.0 but the boards slots are only PCI-Ex16 2.0

Accepted Answer

Yes it will work with pcie 2.0. Pcie  3.0 is backwards compatible with 2.0. I have this same card running on a AMD 970 chipset with pcie 2.0 x16. Works flawlessly. There is still plenty of bandwidth on pcie 2.0 to handle all modern graphics cards. Hope that helps.

Question 7

How much better is this than a sapphire 270x? Which is what I currently have.

Accepted Answer

In short, about 25-35% in real-world performance if I did the numbers right by pure FLOPS count (3,973 GFLOPS vs 2,816 GFLOPS, 41% theoretical increase in performance). The 4GB frame buffer allows for better texture quality, and the increased core count (2,048 vs 1,280) helps tremendously with pure computation which counts for model complexity increases or higher frame rates using the identical settings between the two cards.

Your attained performance increase may vary between games based on support for AMD or Nvidia cards, but you should see a significant boost in performance going up to R9 390X from the R9 270X.

I personally bought this card for my brother's first computer, and this specific card rivals one of my two GTX 780s in terms of performance, with its larger frame buffer capacity winning out in either high resolutions or textures (you can't have both at the same time unfortunately).

This card is no slouch for the price.

Question 8

I didn't think to check when I purchased this card but wanted to know if it is crossfire capable? If so, how does it work cause there's no crossfire bridge on the card.

Accepted Answer

From what I have been able to find, you would just put both cards in next to each other and then set up crossfire through AMD software.

Question 9

How do I know it will fit in my case?

Accepted Answer

Look at the Form Factor under the Specification tab of the 380X Nitro at sapphiretech dot com (Newegg won't let me post links, sorry)

Also trust me this card is pretty short compared to other cards in this same range. It was shorter than my Gigabyte 7790. Hope that helps!

Question 10

I'm currently running an Athlon x4 860k @ 4.2GHZ, 16gb 2400mhz RAM and an MSI R9 270. I am getting less than preferable results on many games. Would this be a solid upgrade choice? Or is my CPU going to be a bottleneck for this GPU?

Accepted Answer

I have personally run this card in a system with an Athlon X4 760K. That little chip runs just fine with this card, and even my older but just-as-powerful GTX 780. You won't see a bottleneck using that CPU with a single GPU, but don't think that any FM2+ CPU will handle Crossfire or SLI.

My FX-8350 is currently my bottleneck for my GTX 780s in SLI, and rightly so using a 4-year old architecture.

Questions & Answers