The Sapphire R9 280X Toxic Review
by Ryan Smith on October 10, 2013 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- Radeon
- Sapphire
- Tahiti
- Radeon 200
Final Words
Bringing our review of Sapphire’s R9 280X Toxic to a close, our experience with the card and our results prove that Sapphire has fundamentally achieved what they have set out to do: they’ve put together the fastest R9 280X card. It’s 13% faster than a stock 280X and it’s still 5% faster than the factory overclocked Asus card we looked at earlier this week. Out of the box the Toxic even maintains a hair’s lead over the Asus card when the Asus card is overclocked, which means we’re looking at a card that’s arguably competitive at stock with end user overclocked cards.
With that said while this isn’t necessarily a head-to-head article between the 280X Toxic and the Asus 280X DirectCU II TOP, it’s a logical comparison we have to make given the fact that both are factory overclocked 280X cards shooting for strong out of the box performance. For gaming workloads the 280X Toxic cleanly and clearly beats the Asus card here by a meaningful performance amount. However Asus is absolutely a spoiler here due to their aggressive pricing and their very quiet cooler. Their 280X DCUII TOP can’t match the Toxic, but it’s $40 cheaper and over 5dB quieter. Consequently if all you want is the fastest 280X on the market then Sapphire’s 280X Toxic is clearly the card to get, otherwise the Asus card is worth a consideration for its better price/performance ratio and cooling performance. As is almost always the case for factory overclocked cards there is a price to pay for the very fastest card, both in literal cost and in power and acoustics.
Meanwhile we’ll also quickly point out that the 280X Toxic ends up being faster than a stock GTX 770 by several percent for $50 less. But that’s a tricky comparison at best since we’re now comparing different cooler types (blower versus open air), a significant difference in power consumption, and it doesn’t take into account any of the customized GTX 770 cards. But it’s at least food for thought.
On a final note, since we’re looking at AMD’s second-tier cards – 290X is still due to arrive – given Sapphire’s $349 MSRP any purchasers may want to hold off for a bit until we have pricing and performance information for AMD’s new top-tier lineup. If they were to deliver a strong $400 card then the 280X Toxic likely wouldn’t make as much sense. But that’s something we won’t know for sure until the 290X is launched. It is however something to at least consider given the significant mark-up on the 280X Toxic over a standard 280X.
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marc1000 - Thursday, October 10, 2013 - link
wow, really nice factory OC there, I liked the cooler performance! still waiting fot 290/290x to show up... I bet we will have "non-X" versions of the smaller cards too, but launched a few months from now.anyway, this is mostly just curiosity. I just purchased one GTX660 (non-TI) as it is the fastest card with just 1 PCIe power connector, and I believe this keeps noise and heat manageable with smaller cases for casual gaming.
ShieTar - Thursday, October 10, 2013 - link
Technically, the 660Ti has a TDP and should also run perfectly well with a single connector. I think it only comes with 2 connectors to provide a bit of security versus bad PSUs, or in order to give you a little head room for overclocking. But yeah, for casual gaming the 660 gives the best price-performance ratio for anybody who needs more than iGPU performance.Of course the fastest card within a 150TDP would be an underclocked and/or undervolted Titan.
marc1000 - Thursday, October 10, 2013 - link
yeah, the hd7870 also seems to eat the same amount of power than gtx660, but also has 2 connectors for "safety". too bad nothing changed in 150wTDP world with this new re-spin of products - we will have to wait for 20 or 14nm for that. not a problem for me :)The Von Matrices - Thursday, October 10, 2013 - link
Since when is having an 80mm fan surrounded by two 90mm fans "asymmetric." That's the very definition of symmetry. Asymmetry would be if the 80mm fan was on one side of the card and the 90mm fans were in the other two places.piroroadkill - Thursday, October 10, 2013 - link
Fact.treeroy - Thursday, October 10, 2013 - link
The Asus is more expensive and is notably slower, and I don't have to worry about overclocking with the Sapphire.I wonder which one I'll buy.
Nice review by the way - glad to see a review of this card at last, this one hasn't got a lot of coverage but it's the one I've been eyeing.
Skiddywinks - Thursday, October 10, 2013 - link
What? The Asus is $40 cheaper.treeroy - Thursday, October 10, 2013 - link
Here in the UK, the Sapphire card is $430 and the Asus one is $440 [USD]Skiddywinks - Thursday, October 10, 2013 - link
I'm actually in the UK myself and assumed you were a Yank. My bad. Where are those prices btw, cause I am looking to upgrade my GPU and these 280X are tempting as sin itself.treeroy - Thursday, October 10, 2013 - link
Those are on Overclockers UK - http://www.overclockers.co.uk/search_results.php?k...I can't find many places selling the cards, but OCUK was the cheapest of what I saw.