The Radeon R9 280X Review: Feat. Asus & XFX - Meet The Radeon 200 Series
by Ryan Smith on October 8, 2013 12:01 AM ESTLaunching This Week: Radeon R9 280X
The highest performing part of today’s group of launches will be AMD’s Radeon R9 280X. Based on the venerable Tahiti GPU, the R9 280X is the 6th SKU based on Tahiti and the 3rd SKU based on a fully enabled part.
| AMD GPU Specification Comparison | ||||||
| Asus Radeon R9 280X DCU II TOP | XFX Radeon R9 280X DD (Ref. Clocked) | AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition | AMD Radeon HD 7970 | |||
| Stream Processors | 2048 | 2048 | 2048 | 2048 | ||
| Texture Units | 128 | 128 | 128 | 128 | ||
| ROPs | 32 | 32 | 32 | 32 | ||
| Core Clock | 970MHz | 850MHz | 1000MHz | 925MHz | ||
| Boost Clock | 1070MHz | 1000MHz | 1050MHz | N/A | ||
| Memory Clock | 6.4GHz GDDR5 | 6GHz GDDR5 | 6GHz GDDR5 | 5.5GHz GDDR5 | ||
| VRAM | 3GB | 3GB | 3GB | 3GB | ||
| Typical Board Power | >250W? | 250W | 250W | 250W | ||
| Width | Double Slot | Double Slot | Double Slot | Double Slot | ||
| Length | 11.25" | 11" | N/A | N/A | ||
| Warranty | 3 Years | Lifetime | N/A | N/A | ||
| Launch Date | 10/11/13 | 10/11/13 | 06/22/12 | 01/09/12 | ||
| Launch Price | $309 | $329? | $499 | $549 | ||
In a nutshell, the R9 280X is designed to sit somewhere in between the original 7970 and the 7970 GHz Edition. For memory it has the same 3GB of 6GHz GDDR5 as the 7970GE, while on the GPU side it has PowerTune Boost functionality like the 7970GE, but at lower clockspeeds. At its peak we’re looking at 1000MHz for the boost clock on R9 280X versus 1050MHz on the 7970GE. Stranger yet is the base clock, which is set at just 850MHz, 75MHz lower than the 7970’s sole GPU clock of 925MHz and 150MHz lower than the 7970GE’s base clock. AMD wasn’t able to give us a reason for this unusual change, but we believe it’s based on some kind of balance between voltages, yields, and intended power consumption.
With that in mind, even with the lower base clock because this is a boost part it will have no problem outperforming the original 7970, as we’ll see in our performance section. Between the higher memory clocks and boost virtually always active, real world performance is going to be clearly and consistently above the 7970. At the same time however performance will be below the 7970GE, and as the latter is slowly phased out it looks like AMD will let its fastest Tahiti configuration go into full retirement, leaving the R9 280X as the fastest Tahiti card on the market.
As an aside, starting with the R9 280X and applicable to all of AMD’s video cards, AMD is no longer advertising the base GPU clockspeed of their parts. The 7970GE for example, one of the only prior boost enabled parts, was advertised as “1GHz Engine Clock (up to 1.05GHz with boost)”. Whereas the 280X and other cards are simply advertised as “Up to 1GHz” or whatever the boost clock may be.
As of press time AMD hasn’t gotten back to us on why this is. There’s really little to say until we have a formal answer, but since these cards are rarely going to reach their highest boost clockspeed (the fact that we can’t see the real clockspeed only further muddles matters) we believe it’s important that both the base clock and boost clock are published side-by-side, the same way as AMD has done it in the past and NVIDIA does it in the present. In that respect at least some of AMD’s partners have been more straightforward, as we’ve seen product fliers that list both clocks.
Getting back to the matter of 280X, let’s put the theoretical performance of the card in perspective. As R9 280X is utilizing a fully enabled Tahiti GPU we’re looking at a full 2048 stream processors organized over 8 CU arrays, paired with 32 ROPs. Compared to the original 7970 this gives R9 280X between 92% and 108% of the 7970’s shader/ROP/texture throughput, and 109% of the memory bandwidth. Or compared to the 7970GE we’re looking at 85% to 95% of the shader/ROP/texture throughput and 100% of the memory bandwidth.
Since this is another Tahiti part, TDP hasn’t officially changed from the 7970GE. The official TDP is 250W and the use of boost should keep actual TDP rather close to that point, though the use of lower clockspeeds and lower voltages means that in practice the TDP will be somewhat lower than 7970GE’s. For idle TDP AMD isn’t giving out an official number, but that should be in the 10W-15W range.
Moving on, the MSRP on the R9 280X will be $300. This puts the card roughly in the middle of the gulf between NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 760 and GTX 770 with no direct competition outside of a handful of heavily customized GTX 760 cards. Against AMD’s lineup this will be going up opposite the outgoing 7970 cards, depending on which the R9 280X can be anywhere between faster and equal to the outgoing cards, but unlike the 7970s the R9 280X won’t have the Never Settle Forever game bundle attached.
Finally, because the R9 280X is based on the existing Tahiti GPU, this is going to be a purely virtual launch. AMD’s partners will be launching custom designs right out of the gate, and while we don’t have a product list we don’t expect any two cards to be identical. AMD has put together some reference boards utilizing a newly restyled cooler for testing and photo opportunities, but these reference boards will not be sampled or sold. Instead they’ve sent us a pair of retail boards which we’ll go over in the following sections: the XFX Radeon R9 280X Double Dissipation, and the Asus Radeon R9 280X DirectCU II TOP.
Please note that for all practical purposes we’ll be treating the XFX R9 280X DD as our reference 280X board, as it ships at the 280X reference clocks of 850MHz base, 1000MHz boost, 6000MHz VRAM. We expect other retail cards to be similar to the XFX card, although there’s still some outstanding confusion from XFX on whether their card will be a $299 card or not.
| Fall 2013 GPU Pricing Comparison | |||||
| AMD | Price | NVIDIA | |||
| $650 | GeForce GTX 780 | ||||
| $400 | GeForce GTX 770 | ||||
| Radeon R9 280X | $300 | ||||
| $250 | GeForce GTX 760 | ||||
| Radeon R9 270X | $200 | ||||
| $180 | GeForce GTX 660 | ||||
| $150 | GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost | ||||
| Radeon R7 260X | $140 | ||||
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alfredska - Wednesday, October 9, 2013 - link
Yes, I made a couple mistakes in trimming the fat from Ryan's writing. I should have done another proof-read myself. This wasn't the point of my post, though.Ryan's review is littered with sentence pauses that drastically slow down your ability to read the article. Some examples are: starting too many sentences with words like "ultimately" or "meanwhile"; making needless references to earlier statements; using past or present perfect tense when just past or present tense is appropriate. I wrote the above example hoping that Ryan would put it next to his own writing and see whether he can 1) read it faster, and 2) retain more information from this version.
I can accept a misspelling here and there and even some accidental word injections of which I was guilty. The fluidity needs work though. If the reader cannot glide easily between paragraphs, they will stop reading and just look at pictures.
chuck.norris.and.son - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
tl:dr :( blablablaCan't you nail it down: AMD or Nvidia? Which GFX card should i buy to play Blockbuster like BF 4?
ShieTar - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
How about not buying any new GFX card and investing the savings into books in order to improve your reading skills?Will Robinson - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Radeon 280X will be the sweet spot card to get for BF4.R9 290X will be the open class champ over GTX780 I suspect.
piroroadkill - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
The best AMD card you can buy with your money, simply because Battlefield 4 will eventually feature the Mantle renderer which is for GCN cards only, and will probably be a killer feature.hrga - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Most moronic branding ever (at least the one to be overrun). They cutout vanilla 7850 or top end 7950 from the HD7000 lineup and call it with confusing R9/R7, unrealistically stupid marketing where nothing material stand behind those names.Another rebranding?
- Yes. [thinking. What the heck did you expect guys]
Not most successful?
- [thinking. depends on POV] Well, it's here to milk the most cash as our CPU business didnt produced anything valuable for three years. And we also must have something interesting to present in our slideshow presentation for investors. If we couldn't afford to produce whole new lineup we could always produce yet another rebranded line just like nvidia. We always learn from our (cartel) competition, and customers don't seem to have any objections on that matter.
So that's why you retain those moronically high prices?
- We just adjust that according to our competition (cartel)
But you never lower prices for HD7870 which today celebrates its second birthday and is produced on highly matured 28nm for at least six month. Instead you just rebranded it for second time after HD8860, so now we have R9 270X too. Don't you think you're customers would like to see some new designs while putting old products on discount prices?
Or at least you could introduce that R9 270, which is same old HD7870, with lower prices than todays HD7870 retail prices are?!
Instead of higher up prices for same performance (source Newgg http://imageshack.dk/imagesfree/xLh43741.jpg).
And why the heck R9 desination for this mediocre mainstream product?! You could weaselishly sell this c-rap at the end of 2011, but "Hello AMD!" It the end of 2013.
Pitcairn used in HD7800/HD8800 seriesis is smaller chip than Evergreen in HD5800, which only three years ago was produced on troublesome early 40nm process while this is two year old design now produced on highly mature TSMC 28nm-HK node for at least six month with far better yields? HD5850 had same or even lower prices at EOL (only year after introduction) than todays two year old Pitcairn desing. How do you explain that?
- Well ...Milking you know ... When you have good cartel environment like we have competing with nvidia we could sky rocket prices. And you know even crappy Intels Knights Corner chips today produced at 22nm would be any cheaper because Intel knows how to milk moneys on their tick-tock performance introductions and they certainly would gave up that experience in case of "Chip Previously Known as Larabee" (CPKL)
labodhibo - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Must read this.. totally different perspective:http://www.techspot.com/review/722-radeon-r9-270x-...
AssBall - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Well done review. I kinda like what Asus did with its 280x version.Typo: "Asus calls it “CoolTech” and it’s essentially an effort to build a fan that’s blow a an axial fan and a blower (radial) fan at the same time,"
[blow -> both?]
zlandar - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
This is why I wanted the Asus 770 card also in the recent 770 GTX roundup. The cooler design seems superior for single GPU purposes as long as you have the room for it in your case.AxialLP7 - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Not trying to be AFC, just want to make sense of this: "Asus calls it “CoolTech” and it’s essentially an effort to build a fan that’s blow a an axial fan and a blower (radial) fan at the same time, explaining the radial-like center and axial-like outer edge of the fan." Can someone help? This is in the "ASUS RADEON R9 280X DIRECTCU II TOP" section...