The Radeon R9 280X Review: Feat. Asus & XFX - Meet The Radeon 200 Series
by Ryan Smith on October 8, 2013 12:01 AM ESTTotal War: Rome 2
The second strategy game in our benchmark suite, Total War: Rome 2 is the latest game in the Total War franchise. Total War games have traditionally been a mix of CPU and GPU bottlenecks, so it takes a good system on both ends of the equation to do well here. In this case the game comes with a built-in benchmark that plays out over a forested area with a large number of units, definitely stressing the GPU in particular.
For this game in particular we’ve also gone and turned down the shadows to medium. Rome’s shadows are extremely CPU intensive (as opposed to GPU intensive), so this keeps us from CPU bottlenecking nearly as easily.
With Rome 2 AMD and NVIDIA once again flip places, with 280X besting even the GTX 770 by a few percent. All of these enthusiast/high-end cards are just fast enough to keep Rome playable in this situation, with average framerates hovering just a bit over 30fps.
RTS games can be a mixed bag for frametimes as we’ve seen in the past, but Rome presents no such problem. Everyone stays below 3% here.
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maybeimwrong - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Perhaps I'm in the minority here, but I am concerned that I have to "Return to Anandtech" from a major new product review. This site is not AMDtech. If you want to have a special AMD section that aggregates relevant content, I'm fine with that. I am not fine with reviews being visible only in a place that presents no means of accessing general content on the site. Presenting review articles in this way is a terrible decision, and readers will stop trusting your content if you keep it up. I say this as a big fan of the site: please change the way "AMD" articles are handled immediately.SolMiester - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Hmmm, just noticed that....buy out complete?toyotabedzrock - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
TrueAudio might die because they didn't add it to all their cards, very lazy and half baked.rtho782 - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Can you Crossfire an R280 with a 7970? Would make for a cheap upgrade path as they are basically the same card...hodakaracer96 - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
I currently own a 2-way sli 770 setup so I may be biased. It seems NVIDIA can still charge a premuim (maybe $50) over the R9 280x due to much better SLI/crossfire capiblity (I know the newest AMD beta drivers fix latency issues, but the fact NVIDIA does frame pacing in hardware makes me feel better about it) and better performance/watt. My room gets pretty toasty and my 750 watt power supply is already on the edge. even an extra 50 watts from 2 - R9280x's would be unwanted.Frenetic Pony - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
When it was AMD was firing key positions I knew it was bad, but now we know specifically HOW bad. Not a singe new GPU. I don't want Nvidia to have a monopoly damn it, maybe AMD should be looking at plans to sell to someone like Qualcomm if this holiday season doesn't hit it big for them.FuriousPop - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Aren't these the reference cards? So won't there be more tweaks, different coolers, OC's etc when the rest of them get a hold of it and start making their changes?If these truelly are reference cards, i thought these looked pretty good considering...
I understand an Asus one is tested - to be fair i have 2xasus 7970's tops, they tend to be slighty slower then the rest of the pack by little numbers however with better temps/noise lvls...
Bring on the 7970 bring bro aka. Titan Killer!
bwat47 - Monday, December 9, 2013 - link
Nvidia has done re-badges like this too, they both do it.b3nzint - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
I see the cooler on r9-290x got 3 air tunnel at the back. Is ref. r9-280x will use the same cooler?Futureman666 - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
now let's see NVidia lower the price of the GTX 770 4 GB so I can buy two of them and upgrade my rig . The price of those card are not right at the moment they should have been way lower . hope that AMD R9 will put enough pressure on NVidia . The only sour on this review seems once again AMD drivers (which seems to suck time and time again ) maybe Ryan did not have enough time to try 2 R9 280x card in crossfire .. I would have been impressed to see a comparison between the NVidia offerings 2 x gtx 760 and 2 x Gtx 770 in sli versus ... Maybe the damn drivers where not ready again to support these 2 cards in crossfire .. i'm eager to see the results