Final Thoughts
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.
MSI has put their own unique style on this card. The Twin Frozr cooler has proved itself over and over again and this card is no exception to that. Temperatures were more than acceptable. The cooler also features MSI’s Zero Frozr technology, which will turn the fans off when they are not needed. Even with the fans spinning the cooler is very quiet. The card features three different operating modes, which you can select from using MSI’s Gaming App. MSI has decided to make all of their cards in the Gaming Series look the same, which I really like. You know what a Gaming Series card looks like and they are quite easy to match with a number of motherboards.
Since this card is based off of Antigua (rebranded Tonga), you have full DirectX 12 support, support for Mantle and Vulkan APIs, FreeSync and Virtual Super Resolution. So if you have upgraded to Windows 10 or plan to this card will be fully compatible.
One value addon that really is not listed on the packaging and is towards the bottom of the product page for the card is the fact that you get a free 6 month license to XSplit Gamecaster. So if you planned on doing any type of casting you are set.
Right now this card is selling at my favorite online retailer for $239.99, which puts it in the same price range as other custom R9 380’s with 4GB of memory. This is one of the better R9 380’s out there and one we would totally recommend. Overall ThinkComputers gives the MSI R9 380 Gaming Graphics Card a 9 out of 10 score and our Recommended Award!
Pros:
– Good performance
– Factory overclocked
– 3 different modes
– Good cooling
– Comes with the 6 month license for Xsplit
Cons:
– Not the fastest R9 380 out there
