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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rs2 - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Would still appreciate an explanation regarding what those FP64 ratings actually mean.Ryan Smith - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
FP64 execution speed relative to FP32 execution speed.aTaoZ - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Love how you guys posted the specs for R9 290X.Rogatti - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Mantle factor think is relevant (GCN any version)After R290..X review all the cards on the table...probably Christmas 2014 will be AMD
AMD is playing right...
swindmill - Wednesday, October 9, 2013 - link
"What AMD is doing is more than putting on a new coat of paint on the 7000 series but at the same time let’s be clear here: these products are still largely unchanged from the products we’ve seen almost 2 years ago."WTF does this even mean? It's a fracking rebadge, stop trying to make it seem otherwise! Anandtech is clearly on AMD's payroll...
HisDivineOrder - Wednesday, October 9, 2013 - link
Jet lag can make your writing skills unclear. Especially when from tropical island locales, even if it was weeks ago. It happens.Cut the man some slack. ;)
DMCalloway - Wednesday, October 9, 2013 - link
Asus' German site is already showing a R9 280X Matrix. If pricing follows the usual 1 to 1 conversion rate with the Euro then it should retail for a little over $300 here in the States. 12 phase power with an 1100 clock. Strong card for the money IMO. 7970 Matrix is still at $400.Soarta - Wednesday, October 9, 2013 - link
I'd like to know what are the core and memory freq. when the card is idle and connected to more than 1 display, not all of them being connected thru DP.narfsalot - Wednesday, October 9, 2013 - link
Any idea whether a Corsair VX550 will handle the 280x? no OC plannedDMCalloway - Wednesday, October 9, 2013 - link
41A on a single 12V line, you should be fine unless you're running a high OC on a 130W cpu. These cards like most 7970's have a 300W limit.