The Radeon R9 280X Review: Feat. Asus & XFX - Meet The Radeon 200 Series
by Ryan Smith on October 8, 2013 12:01 AM ESTHitman: Absolution
The second-to-last game in our lineup is Hitman: Absolution. The latest game in Square Enix’s stealth-action series, Hitman: Absolution is a DirectX 11 based title that though a bit heavy on the CPU, can give most GPUs a run for their money. Furthermore it has a built-in benchmark, which gives it a level of standardization that fewer and fewer benchmarks possess.
Hitman is another title AMD’s GPUs do rather well in, leading to the 280X surpassing the GTX 770 by just shy of 9%. It seems silly to be comparing a $300 video card to what’s currently a $400 video card – and in the process not a battle AMD is explicitly setting out to fight – but it just goes to show just how competitive these two cards really are.
Meanwhile if you throw in a factory overclocked card like the Asus, then we can just crack 60fps at 2560. Though on a percentage basis the performance lead over the stock clocked 280X is trending close to the average at 7%.
Moving on to minimum framerates quickly, the picture does not significantly change. Hitman bottoms out in the high 40s for the stock 280X, a bit more than 10fps below the average.
The FCAT delta percentages remain unremarkable.
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Drumsticks - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
I'm glad you managed to screw up and then point out every single one of your perceived faults with Anandtech and blame it all on them. That was impressive.By the way, you could have read even the title.
rtsurfer - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
+1Perfectly summarized.
jasonelmore - Wednesday, October 9, 2013 - link
the title doesnt scream rebadge, and typically flagships are launched first, then the sister cards a few weeks later.Etern205 - Monday, October 14, 2013 - link
R8-280x is a rebadged HD7970GE, if they're based on the new architecture like the R9-290x then we won't be reading reviews on it until AMD lifts the NDA.rezztd - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Why can't they just use simple naming schemes? I've found AMD's names confusing and generally harder to remember than those from NVIDIA.piroroadkill - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Huh, for a long time I thought AMD's names were logical and ultra-simple, and it was NVIDIA who had the silly names with all their extra letters on the end.However, now the tables are clearly turning, and AMD's naming is terrible.
HisDivineOrder - Wednesday, October 9, 2013 - link
I find the RX 2xx/2xxX naming scheme to be really horrible imo. I have a feeling they did the shift as much to confuse and misdirect away from the fact they did a refresh as to begin a new naming policy because it doesn't really help the consumer.alwayssts - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
I'm just waiting for the XFX info/overclocking page to load...I think if they made their 280x similar to their 37th (only slight hyperbole) revision of the original 7970, that could be a rad product. The current version is 9.3 inches (for tiny cases/htpcs) but purposely very limited in overclocking capabilities...it also sells for around $300 +- $20. If they took that design and were allowed an upped/unlocked voltage/clock spec (with perhaps voltage tuning), that could be a sweet (and tiny) 1080p gaming part compared to anything else that size/price.
Slomo4shO - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
And I was looking forward to determining the overclock potential of this card...zeock9 - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
So there hardly isn't a performance gain over the 7970GE, perhaps less than 5% if that,and they didn't even bother to include the new TrueAudio or Never Settle bundle.
What's the effing point of this 'new' card when 7970GE can already be had for the same price?
Shame on you AMD.