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
Overclocking
Our final evaluation criteria is overclocking. And this will be short and sweet, as the 280X Toxic isn’t really designed for end user overclocking in the first place. Without voltage adjustment and already shipping at clockspeeds towards the tail end of the curve for the Tahiti GPU, there was absolutely no GPU overclocking headroom for our sample. It was rock solid at stock, but even 10MHz more would eventually result in artifacts when validating the overclock.
Every card will be different of course, and we certainly expect some 280X Toxic cards to have some unexploited headroom, but in the case of our card there was none to be found. Sapphire has fully exploited the available headroom of the GPU in their factory overclock.
Radeon R9 280X Overclocking | |||||
Sapphire Radeon R9 280X Toxic | XFX Radeon R9 280X DD | Asus Radeon R9 280X DCU II TOP | |||
Shipping Core Clock | 1100MHz | 850MHz | 970MHz | ||
Shipping Boost Clock | 1150MHz | 1000MHz | 1070Mhz | ||
Shipping Memory Clock | 6.4GHz | 6GHz | 6.4GHz | ||
Shipping Boost Voltage | 1.256v | 1.2v | 1.2v | ||
Overclock Core Clock | 1100MHz | 880MHz | 1010MHz | ||
Overclock Boost Clock | 1150MHz | 1030MHz | 1110MHz | ||
Overclock Memory Clock | 7GHz | 6.6GHz | 6.8GHz | ||
Overclock Max Boost Voltage | 1.256v | 1.2v | 1.263v |
Now the memory overclock on the other hand was more promising. We were able to get our card up to 7GHz, 600MHz (9%) over the shipping memory frequency and a full 1GHz over what the Hynix modules on the card are technically rated for. Of course the 280X already has so much memory bandwidth that the payoff from additional memory bandwidth isn’t quite as great as say a GTX 770, so coupled with the lack of a core overclock the performance gains are miniscule.
While we’re on the subject, it’s worth pointing out that the 280X Toxic has the highest PowerTune limit of any Tahiti card we’ve tested thus far. Unlike every other card, which tops out at +20% (for 300W or so), the Toxic can go to a full +50%, or somewhere north of 375W. For our testing purposes we stuck with 20% for consistency – the additional headroom wouldn’t be of any value in our games as far as we can tell, as opposed to letting FurMark go nuts – but if it were possible to do voltage adjustments on this card, hardcore overclockers would certainly have a lot of headroom for their water/exotic cooled setups.
Despite the lack of gains from overclocking, the 280X Toxic is still the fastest 280X card even at stock. Our second best overclocking 280X is the Asus card, which topping out at a boost clock of 1110MHz still falls short of what the Toxic can achieve, and that was after supplying the Asus card with additional voltage. Undoubtedly some 280X cards with voltage adjustment will do better, but our results do paint a very convincing picture for just running the 280X Toxic at stock and ignoring all other cards, with or without overclocking.
Since we can’t increase the GPU clock or the voltage of the 280X Toxic, the power/temp/noise hit is immaterial under Metro and other gaming workloads. You get almost nothing extra in performance for almost nothing extra in power/temp/noise. With our overclocked results thrown into the mix we can also see that while the stock 280X Toxic outperforms even our overclocked Asus 280X in gaming performance, it also does so while drawing more power than said overclocked Asus card. Clearly nothing is free here; more performance will cause a notable increase in power consumption.
Moving on to FurMark, with that 20% PowerTune increase FurMark absolutely goes nuts. 519W at the wall off of a single card is well out there, and the cooling performance also reflects this. This is all the more reason to leave the 280X Toxic at stock.
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NeatOman - Friday, October 11, 2013 - link
I get 47 average FPS in BioShock Infinite benchmark (2560x1440, very high) with my 7850 clocked at 1050 gpu and 1300 vram, and 8320 @4.5ghz... everything running very cool.In game with FPS showing, its at about 50+ most the time and dips to 35-40 every once in a while.
Cataclysm_ZA - Friday, October 11, 2013 - link
How on earth are your GTX780 scores so low?Ryan Smith - Friday, October 11, 2013 - link
What do you mean exactly?blank001 - Sunday, October 13, 2013 - link
I think he finds the < 10 FPS difference on average between the 280x and 780 surprising.Nikhilanand - Saturday, October 12, 2013 - link
This card is awesome for the price it asks.... Gaming performance getting near GTX 780.Mombasa69 - Monday, October 14, 2013 - link
I nearly wasted close to £800 on 2 770's a few month back, glad I didn't, glad I waited, sapphire radeon R9 280X Toxic is clearly about the best GPU price and awesome performance on the market today.Mombasa69 - Monday, October 14, 2013 - link
Next games ported from the new consoles are all optimised for Radeons, these will even outperform Titans when those games are released.Hrel - Monday, October 14, 2013 - link
This a great article for the Asus card. Clearly the best bang/buck. Shockingly lower noise levels. Once again, great article overall!araczynski - Tuesday, October 15, 2013 - link
good stuff, hopefully this brings on some serious 7970GE sales sooner or later :) i have a good 720W PS, but am not sure if it could even handle this reliably on top of everything else.tuklap - Tuesday, October 22, 2013 - link
wow this is somehow awesome for a $350 VC