GPU Choice: R9 280x 3GB vs R9 380 4GB

Hey everybody!

I've decided to finally ditch the consoles and build a gaming PC.
It's nothing too crazy but I think it's a decent first build.
I have all of the parts decided with the exception of the GPU.

I'm not sure whether to go for the R9 280x 3GB or the R9 380 4GB (Nitro).
They are roughly the same price where I live so it's purely down to the specs.
I've tried researching it but there seems to be no clear winner.

I'm a bit of noob when it comes to this stuff so any advice would be great appreciated!
Cheers folks

The RIG so far:
AMD FX-8350 processor
ASUS M5A78L-M/USB3 Motherboard
HyperX Fury 8GB RAM (2x4GB) 1866Mhz

EDIT: I'm in the UK, budget for gpu is around $250

Well what country, what budget? and what were the other parts?

In any case if they cost the same, 380

Worth considering second hand parts, I got the 280x Vapor X on eBay a while ago, that was before the 380 came out. No problems with it. I guess I could have been unlucky and ended up with something that's been used and abused but these days I'll take the risk. People selling high end cards are upgrading so chances are if they did abuse it, it wasn't for long until they discovered they need more power. A quality make of card should last until obsolescence, I can't bring myself to pay retail for this stuff. Then again I mostly use it as a space heater (Furmark burnin test) literally. I'm the kind of gamer who wants to look around at the graphics and quit at the first difficult boss. I played a couple of COD games through the story mode and spent a lot of time on Cities Skyline, running it overnight a couple of times. Works for me.

That depends on the brand of the 280x. I've had a total of 4 R9 280x/7970's. Three out of four of them died. Two of them were mined on.

Luckily, i was able to RMA the last one. MSI accepted the RMA without asking for a receipt and sent me an R9 390X.

Look at Driver issues with Crimson before doing anything. Sapphire Nitro Tri-X r9 390 here, it won't run without crashes, even Youtube videos, without putting the GPU back to factory GPU frequency. I haven't seen a lot here in the last month about the same issues and the drivers will get fixed Soon (TM). Just be aware of that fact. Also if you run linux, look at what Mantle will support as publicly stated in the close sourced release, when it get's released. Just my 2 cents from a Sapphire GPU owner.

i would go with the 380, 4GB would be prefered.
The reason is simple, les powerconsumption, newer architecture.
Probably better DX12 support.