The Radeon R9 280X Review: Feat. Asus & XFX - Meet The Radeon 200 Series
by Ryan Smith on October 8, 2013 12:01 AM ESTMetro: Last Light
Kicking off our look at performance is 4A Games’ latest entry in their Metro series of subterranean shooters, Metro: Last Light. The original Metro: 2033 was a graphically punishing game for its time and Metro: Last Light is in its own right too. On the other hand it scales well with resolution and quality settings, so it’s still playable on lower end hardware.
The first benchmark in our revised benchmark suite finds our 280X cards doing well for themselves, and surprisingly not all that far off from the final averages. Setting the baseline here, as we expected the Tahiti based 280X performs in between the original 7970 and 7970 GHz Edition, thanks to the 280X’s use of PowerTune Boost but at lower clockspeeds than the 7970GE. Consequently this isn’t performance we haven’t seen before, but it’s very much worth keeping in mind that the 7970GE was a $400 card while the 280X is a $300 card, so approaching the 7970GE for $100 less is something of a significant price cut for the performance.
As for the immediate competitive comparison, we’ll be paying particular attention to 2560x1440, which should be the sweet spot resolution for this card. At 2560 we can see that the reference clocked 280X doesn’t just hang with the $400 GTX 770 but actually manages to edge it out by just over a frame per second. As a preface we’re going to see these two cards go back and forth throughout our benchmarks, but to be able to directly compete with NVIDIA’s fastest GK104 card for $100 less is a significant accomplishment for AMD.
Finally, let’s quickly talk about the Asus 280X versus the XFX 280X. Asus winning comes as no great shock due to their factory overclock, but now we finally get to see the magnitude of the performance gains from that overclock. At 2560 we’re looking at just shy of a 9% performance gain, which is in excess of both the boost clock overclock and the memory overclock. The specific performance gains will of course depend in the game in question, but this means that the performance gains in at least one instance are being impacted by the base clock overclock, the larger of Asus’s factory overclocks.
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Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Exactly. I helped get the GPU14 data in bench (we'll toss it live at anandtech.com/bench once the smoke cleans) and inserted graphs while Ryan was finishing up the conclusion.Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
er smoke clears.just4U - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
You guys have to use your noggin a little bit here and "THINK" This isn't about being told by AMD to get anything out.. Or special relationships. All the review sites (which are likely under restriction) are trying to get their articles out as soon as their allowed. There's a push of initial interest that they capitalize on and being late to the game disappoints the readers who are noticing a new product launch at their shops and etailers and wanting info about it.HisDivineOrder - Wednesday, October 9, 2013 - link
Plus, the free trip to Hawaii has made all the review sites a lot more forgiving lately. That's the best part of the free trip to Hawaii for AMD.They managed to make all the gaming review sites who went look fishy in their bias. In particular, AMD has targeted Anandtech to make them look especially fishy with their "AMD Center." Then when eventually these sites turn against them, they'll have by then had months of Intel and/or nVidia doing what AMD has always wanted: making the review sites look biased.
Then they cut funding in a few months and scream at the top of their lungs how biased review sites are. Shrugging, they'll say, "Just look how AMD, Intel, and nVidia all agree." And it'll all have started with a special advertising arrangement around an "AMD Center" and a free trip to Hawaii.
AMD may not have many resources, but they're savvy in how they're undermining review sites. Of course, they were testing the waters last year with the "review in parts" review of Piledriver. That was just the opening act.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
We prioritized getting performance data and pages of tech analysis out first before the tables and finishing touches. We have done this in the past with previous AMD/NV reviews, and we always show up in the comments mentioning what we're still working on. The complexity of the launch skyrocketed as we used it as an opportunity to switch to a new (IVB-E) testbed, which meant re-running everything.For whatever reason, in the second half of the year we've been given a ton of stuff to review in a very short period of time (two iPhones in a week, three Samsung devices in 5 days). There's no ad impact here, just our desire to have something up when the NDA lifts. It's an internal policy, nothing more or less.
just4U - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
and it's a good policy..They just listed these products at the computer shop I deal with (under new releases) a few hrs ago.. and my first thought was to come here and see if something was posted as nothing was up 8 hrs ago when I was looking at another article. Sure as hell.. You folks got something up for us to look at. It's timing really.. NDA lifts shops put up pre-orders sites try to get their articles out. Logical progression..
That being said, I don't see to many of these types of articles going up in real time like this.
haha.. I just want to get a look at the XFX card to see if they've made changes.
Da W - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
People just use the comment section or social medias to bitch and moan and cry and criticize at people, yet they don't do shit themselves. Web 2.0 is like a cancer and I'm growing sick of these crybabies.Don't listen to them Anand and keep up the good work.
dragonsqrrl - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Baseless accusation that doesn't even make any sense.Dug - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
You lead with 'no disrespect' and finish with unfounded accusations.Please worry about yourself and not Anandtech.
Jumangi - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
These aren't new cards. They are basically the same GPU's AMD has been shipping for almost 2 years now and it looks like they are going to try and pass them off again for another year. Why was this treated as some big new thing with a long article and a bunch of benchmarks? This whole thing could have been done in a little 2 paragraph news blurb.Man has PC hardware become so stagnant and boring lately...