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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Pantsu - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Can't say for these cards, but at the very least if you're using multi monitor setup, you can forget about zero core. Actually I've never managed to get my 7970 to go zero core in any circumstance.Pantsu - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Rebadge may be a bit of a harsh word, but ultimately these cards bring very little change over what was offered before. The only significant changes are the price and the I/O setup, unless you care about the cooler shroud in the cheapo skus. I'd say now is the time to go bargain hunting for 7000 series cards while supplies last. You get a nice game bundle and practically the same cards for less. I've already had my eye on a 249€ 7970 for CF purposes, but I'm still hesitant since AMD hasn't released the new frame pacing driver for eyefinity.Now what I'd really like to know is if these 200 series "definetely not a rebadge" cards will work in crossfire with the 7000 series "cousins".
Pantsu - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Oh they in fact do move in herds...err work in Crossfire.Impulses - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
I had been thinking about going with two GTX 760 in SLI for a budget 5760x1200 setup... It might not handle every game maxed but it's still faster than my cutter 6970x2 setup (and for a similar amount of money as what I paid for it a few years ago)... The 280X is tempting at only $100 more for two cards tho. I can afford two GTX 780 if I really wanted, I'm just nor sure I can justify spending that kinda money on GPU... And two 770 just didn't seem like a large enough jump for an extra $300 over a $500 setup (760x2). Decisions, decisions...Impulses - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Heh, started writing that reply and forgot about the main reason I did, AMD's slow progress with frame pacing for EF is the one thing holding me back. Guess I'll hold out for some moreDdriver releases an possibly the BF Mantle patch.AWilco - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Is there an explanation of the poor performance of the ASUS card at 1080p + 4x MSAA in BF3? Looks to be an aberration comparing it to most other graphs (haven't done an exhaustive look).Ryan Smith - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
That would be your fat fingered editor making a typo. Fixed.blanarahul - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
I just read that you guys had only 24 hours to test these GPUs. Is that true?Ryan Smith - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Oh goodness no. We had much longer than that. But a week goes by very quickly when you need to generate your results from scratch and write a 20K word article.Samunosuke - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
The 290 and 290X are going to be really intriguing especially on a price/performance scale. The price will be the determining factor for the 290X, undercut GTX 780 and you have a winner.