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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Ryan Smith - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
That's the first I've seen of that, so I can't really comment.But when I was discussing Mantle with AMD, they did discount using OpenGL. There was a specific desire to have a pure API that was completely free from legacy cruft (and there's nothing cruftier than OGL) while also being free to quickly evolve the project without having to involve the ARB.
konondrum - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Well this is one of the most disappointing products launches I've ever seen. At least the nVidia 700 series was more then a sticker change. This isn't even really a price drop as $300 7970s and $200 7870s (with game bundles) have been available for a while. Tell me AMD, why am I supposed to care? If these included TrueAudio at least that would be a differentiating feature, but there is seriously nothing new here at all.The only good thing I can say about this is that it makes me much more comfortable about my current 660ti 3gb. Looks like it will be strong though 2014 at least.
just4U - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
I've yet to see a 7970 GHZ Ed. for under $360.. Hell until a month and a half ago you were lucky to get it under $400 on sale.just4U - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
At any rate this may put some pressure on Nvidia for their 7x series.. I think it's going to be incentive for those still rocking it out on Amd's 6000 series or Nvidia 500 series and earlier to maybe upgrade.Personally I figure if you got a 570/80 or a 6950 (or better) the new stuff by both companies is a bit of a hard sell unless your playing at crazy resolutions... most still sit comfortably in 1080P or 1920/1200 resolution and the old standby 1600/1050.
matagyula - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
I have been looking to replace my now 2 year old HD6870 with something a little beefier, and I was eagerly awaiting AMDs new product launch.But now I am left with even more questions than before - most importantly, should I upgade at all in the upcoming 8-12 months? The card is still putting in solid work, and while I have to settle for mid-high detail settings when it comes to titles like BF3 or Crysis 3, other games perform just fine /DotA 2 and CS:GO @ 1920*1200/.
At the 170-200eur price range I am looking at HD7870, or waiting a couple months for the HD7950 to drop bellow 200eur, while the HD7970 is still at 330eur in Slovakia.
The more I think about it the more I am inclined towards holding off for another year or so :|
ShieTar - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Stop buying locally. You can order a 7970 for ~240€ from Germany, and delivery to Slovakia should not cost more than ~15€ :http://www.heise.de/preisvergleich/eu/?cat=gra16_5...
Of course an Austrian or Polish shop may be even cheaper for some cards, if the postage is less than for a delivery from Germany. Or depending on where you live, maybe you just go and have a daytrip into either country and bring the card back home ;-)
just4U - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Well Matt, I sold my 6950 2G and really wanted a 670 or a 7950-70 as I figured that was a decent upgrade. I settled for the 7870 and noticed some ok gains. It's a tough call for you though..The 280X is going to give you 7970GHZ Ed like performance according to reviews.. but basically in the price range of a 7870. Tempting.. but you might get lucky with close out deals on the 7970 or even see price drops on the 770 from Nvidia. that are more attractive. All worthwhile upgrades over the 6870 but not night/day differences.. We really haven't seen a chip come out yet that raises the bar to a whole new level.
piroroadkill - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Wow. This is a boring card launch.The ASUS card itself is a good SKU, but absolutely nothing that could not have been done branded as 7970.
I understand they have a lot of old GPUs they want to re-use, so they don't want to re-tool them for the TrueAudio DSP, but it is downright stupid that they didn't at least add another small package to the card with the DSP in, so the new range can have feature parity.
AMD, your new card names are terrible, and this launch is pretty bland and watered down.
ninjaquick - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Well, that is inevitable. AMD's GCN design is not top-down, it is fully modular. IMC / ROP / ShaderClusters are all their own modules, each 'TMU' is attached to 16 'compute cores'. The entire point of the GCN design is that it scales up infinitely. This is why AMD is releasing Mantle. There is no reason to abandon the GCN design in the near future.It is not like AMD is releasing a brand new never seen before design that is the culmination of years of design work. The 290X is literally a 7970 with 12 more ROPs and an extra 128bit memory path which are only needed to accomodate the extra 48 rendering clusters. If you were to take the 7970 and add 48 clusters at the same clock speed you would get *exactly* the same perf as what the 290X delivers. Simple as that.
thylboy - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
I saw on AMD´s homepage that these cards support their "Zero Core" technology. Can anyone confirm whether cards like this actually turn off the fans completely when in the long idle mode or not?