The Radeon R9 280X Review: Feat. Asus & XFX - Meet The Radeon 200 Series
by Ryan Smith on October 8, 2013 12:01 AM ESTBattlefield 3
Our major multiplayer action game of our benchmark suite is Battlefield 3, DICE’s 2011 multiplayer military shooter. Its ability to pose a significant challenge to GPUs has been dulled some by time and drivers, but it’s still a challenge if you want to hit the highest settings at the highest resolutions at the highest anti-aliasing levels. Furthermore while we can crack 60fps in single player mode, our rule of thumb here is that multiplayer framerates will dip to half our single player framerates, so hitting high framerates here may not be high enough.
Our Battlefield 3 benchmark is another game that traditionally favors NVIDIA, and that’s especially the case here. The 280X is generally well ahead of the GTX 760, but in this case the two are almost at parity. We’re essentially looking at GTX 760 performance for the 280X under BF3. If Battlefield 4 performs similarly, then AMD’s interest in Mantle and its performance improvements will be well placed.
Looking once more at our FCAT results, the delta percentages are extremely unremarkable. For most games this is going to be little more than a checklist; neither party has significant problems with single-GPU configurations at this time.
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Drumsticks - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
I'm glad you managed to screw up and then point out every single one of your perceived faults with Anandtech and blame it all on them. That was impressive.By the way, you could have read even the title.
rtsurfer - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
+1Perfectly summarized.
jasonelmore - Wednesday, October 9, 2013 - link
the title doesnt scream rebadge, and typically flagships are launched first, then the sister cards a few weeks later.Etern205 - Monday, October 14, 2013 - link
R8-280x is a rebadged HD7970GE, if they're based on the new architecture like the R9-290x then we won't be reading reviews on it until AMD lifts the NDA.rezztd - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Why can't they just use simple naming schemes? I've found AMD's names confusing and generally harder to remember than those from NVIDIA.piroroadkill - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Huh, for a long time I thought AMD's names were logical and ultra-simple, and it was NVIDIA who had the silly names with all their extra letters on the end.However, now the tables are clearly turning, and AMD's naming is terrible.
HisDivineOrder - Wednesday, October 9, 2013 - link
I find the RX 2xx/2xxX naming scheme to be really horrible imo. I have a feeling they did the shift as much to confuse and misdirect away from the fact they did a refresh as to begin a new naming policy because it doesn't really help the consumer.alwayssts - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
I'm just waiting for the XFX info/overclocking page to load...I think if they made their 280x similar to their 37th (only slight hyperbole) revision of the original 7970, that could be a rad product. The current version is 9.3 inches (for tiny cases/htpcs) but purposely very limited in overclocking capabilities...it also sells for around $300 +- $20. If they took that design and were allowed an upped/unlocked voltage/clock spec (with perhaps voltage tuning), that could be a sweet (and tiny) 1080p gaming part compared to anything else that size/price.
Slomo4shO - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
And I was looking forward to determining the overclock potential of this card...zeock9 - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
So there hardly isn't a performance gain over the 7970GE, perhaps less than 5% if that,and they didn't even bother to include the new TrueAudio or Never Settle bundle.
What's the effing point of this 'new' card when 7970GE can already be had for the same price?
Shame on you AMD.