Over a year ago, AMD released the Tonga-based R9 285 video card. It had a mission to take over the fight for the $250 MSRP price segment from the R9 280, with the prime target being the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760. Back then I looked at the PowerColor R9 285 TurboDuo version which performed nicely, accomplishing its main objective and establishing a solid offer from the Red team in a critical market segment. Fast forward a few months and the Tonga GPU was reborn as Antigua during the controversial Radeon 300 series release. The chip was at the heart of the R9 380 which traded blows with the GTX 960 without managing to steal the spotlight from the competition.

Today, AMD - or should I say the Radeon Technologies Group - will be launching the new R9 380X. The refined GCN 1.2 GPU brings more to the table than what was offered with the R9 380. It sports 2048 Stream processors, 128 Texture units, and 32 ROPs. In terms of memory configuration, we get 4GB of GDDR5 running at up to 1,425MHz on a 256-bit interface. The TBP (Typical Board Power) stays unchanged however at 190W. The feature set is also quite impressive, with support for DirectX 12, FreeSync technology, Frame Rate Target Control, Virtual Super Resolution, and PowerTune Technology.

Looking at the beefed up specs and 190W TBP, I wasn't really surprised that AMD will not release a reference card for the R9 380X. Instead, multiple board partners will be releasing stock and factory overclocked cards. It was already confirmed that ASUS, Gigabyte, HIS, PowerColer, VTX3D, Sapphire, and XFX will have cards available by the time this article goes live. Officially, the AMD Radeon R9 380X retail prices will start at $229 USD with OC models expected to start at $239 USD. AMD is going after the obvious gap in the midrange market, aiming to establish its product between NVIDIA's GTX 960 and GTX 970. The Red Team is confident that the price/performance ratio of the R9 380X will make it an appealing choice for gamers still running GTX 660 and GTX 760 cards.