The Radeon R9 280X Review: Feat. Asus & XFX - Meet The Radeon 200 Series
by Ryan Smith on October 8, 2013 12:01 AM ESTThe Drivers, The Test & Our New Testbed
With the product introductions and specifications out of the way, let’s dive into the test.
The launch drivers for the 200 series sampled to the press are Catalyst 13.11 Beta 1, with a version number of 13.200.16, making them a newer build on the same branch as the current 13.10 Beta 2 drivers. As such there are no known functional differences between the current drivers for the 7000 series and the launch drivers for the 200 series. With that said we did encounter one specific bug in these drivers, which resulted in flickering lighting in Crysis 3 on high quality settings.
Note that this also means that these drivers also only contain Phase 1 of AMD’s Crossfire frame pacing fixes. This means frame pacing for Crossfire for single monitor displays is fully implemented, however frame pacing for multi monitor displays and 4K displays is not. Based on AMD’s most recent comments a fix is not expected until November, and while we don’t seriously see owners settling down to run Eyefinity or 4K displays off of 280X in CF – at least not until 290X arrives for evaluation – it’s unfortunate AMD wasn’t able to get this problem fixed in time for the 200 series launch.
| Catalyst 13.11B1 Frame Pacing | |||||
| Single Display | Eyefinity / 4K Tiled | ||||
| D3D11 | Y | N | |||
| D3D10 | Y | N | |||
| D3D9 | N | N | |||
| OpenGL | N | N | |||
Moving on, this article will mark the debut of our new testbed and benchmark suite. Both were due for a refresh so we’re doing so in conjunction with the launch of the 200 series.
For our testbed we have done a complete overhaul, the first one in 4 years. The trusty Thermaltake Spedo case that has been the skeleton of our testbed has been replaced with an NZXT Phantom 630. Similarly we’ve gone and replaced all of the internal components too; an IVB-E based 4960X operating at 4.2GHz for 40 lanes of validated PCIe 3.0 functionality, an ASRock Fatal1ty X79 Professional motherboard to operate our cards on, and 32GB of G.Skill’s lowest latency (CAS 9) DDR3-1866 RAM. Meanwhile storage is being backed by a Samsung 840 EVO 750GB, and power via a Corsair AX1200i PSU. Finally cooling is handled by a Corsair H110 closed loop cooler, and meanwhile the Phantom 630 leaves an open fan mount for us to tinker with closed loop GPU coolers (such as the Asus ARES II) in the future.
As for the new benchmark suite, we’ve gone through and appropriately updated our games list. New to the GPU 14 test suite are Company of Heroes 2, Total War: Rome 2, GRID 2, and Metro: Last Light (ed: Metro 2). With the holiday games season upon us, we expect to add at least one more game, along with swapping out Battlefield 3 for Battlefield 4 shortly after that is released.
Finally, though we won’t make use of its 4K capabilities in this review given the limited performance of R9 280X, Asus sent over one of their new PQ321 monitors for our testing needs. While still very much bleeding edge, we’ll be taking a look at 4K performance in the near future as appropriate cards arrive.
| CPU: | Intel Core i7-4960X @ 4.2GHz |
| Motherboard: | ASRock Fatal1ty X79 Professional |
| Power Supply: | Corsair AX1200i |
| Hard Disk: | Samsung SSD 840 EVO (750GB) |
| Memory: | G.Skill RipjawZ DDR3-1866 4 x 8GB (9-10-9-26) |
| Case: | NZXT Phantom 630 |
| Monitor: | Asus PQ321 + Samsung 305T |
| Video Cards: |
XFX Radeon R9 280X Double Dissipation Asus Radeon R9 280X DirectCU II TOP AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition AMD Radeon HD 7970 AMD Radeon HD 7950 Boost NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 |
| Video Drivers: |
NVIDIA 331.40 Beta AMD Catalyst 13.11 Beta 1 |
| OS: | Windows 8.1 Pro |
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AmdInside - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
I still say its rebadge. The NVIDIA G92 went from 65nm to 55nm and lost analog TV out so by your definition G92 is not rebadged.Jumangi - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Yea that makes these totally different...ninjaquick - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
What core difference exists between the 290X and the 280X? None really. The next gen's 370 is going to be a die-shrunk 280, and the 460 of the gen after that will be the same 7970 again. AMD is not going to bother releasing a new core design until the GCN is no longer apt for the task, which will only occur if HLSL/GLSL are retired completely.Gigaplex - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
TrueAudio, some GPGPU instructions from GCN 1.1 plus whatever the 290X introduces on top of that is basically the core difference between 290X and 280X.Cellar Door - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
I was looking forward to the R9 280X - simply because I hoped it would offer new features, revised silicon, maybe even new iteration of GCN. A REAL step forward - this is a let down. Because this hits my price point as I won't be able to afford their R9 290X, AMD was supposed to be a true champion of price - like always. It seems like I have no choice but to go with the green camp.silverblue - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Wait a minute... it trails the 770 on average by only a small amount and retails for $100 less. Sure, there's no game bundle, but how is this fleecing anybody?just4U - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
One would think (since it's still pre-order status) that it's done in co-operation with their partners to help get rid of excess stock on the 7x line.. so Never settle bundles won't be offered until after all that is nearly gone. I suspect that such bundles will start being offered on the new line just as the holiday season starts.ltcommanderdata - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/386899206..."9x draw calls is credible over stock D3D, but Nvidia OpenGL extensions can give similar I mprocements."
In regards to Mantle, do you have any comment about John Carmack's report that AMD's claim of Mantle providing 9x more draw calls is already achievable by nVidia using their OpenGL extensions? Console porting is still an unique feature of Mantle, but on the draw call issue, if DirectX is slow to improve on this, then maybe AMD, Intel, and nVidia coming up with cross-vendor OpenGL extensions to address the issue may be a better solution than Mantle, especially given it converges with increased interest in OpenGL with SteamOS.
Pantsu - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
AMD has made a similar statement. The new OpenGL extensions will bring similar improvements to what they advertise with Mantle, and that in the end the API will not be the bottleneck. As long as it's not Direct3D it seems. :D Perhaps even MS will eventually improve their game sooner or later.ananduser - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Have you not read Ryan's hunches on Mantle? Mantle is, or derived from, MS' low level Xbox API.