The Radeon R9 280X Review: Feat. Asus & XFX - Meet The Radeon 200 Series
by Ryan Smith on October 8, 2013 12:01 AM ESTOverclocking
With our look at the stock performance of our 280X cards complete, let’s take a brief look at overclocking.
When it comes to overclocking this is going to be a somewhat unfair competition for the two cards. The Asus card has by the very necessity of its existence already been binned. Furthermore while the Asus card supports voltage adjustments the XFX card does not (MSI Afterburner says it does, but adjusting the value has no effect). As such we get to drive what’s already a better GPU harder and with more voltage than the other. Still, this will give us the chance to see where everything will top out at.
| Radeon R9 280X Overclocking | ||||
| XFX Radeon R9 280X DD | Asus Radeon R9 280X DCU II TOP | |||
| Shipping Core Clock | 850MHz | 970MHz | ||
| Shipping Boost Clock | 1000MHz | 1070Mhz | ||
| Shipping Memory Clock | 6GHz | 6.4GHz | ||
| Shipping Boost Voltage | 1.2v | 1.2v | ||
| Overclock Core Clock | 880MHz | 1010MHz | ||
| Overclock Boost Clock | 1030MHz | 1110MHz | ||
| Overclock Memory Clock | 6.6GHz | 6.8GHz | ||
| Overclock Max Boost Voltage | 1.2v | 1.263v | ||
As it turns out, neither card overclocked by very much. The XFX card, lacking additional voltage, could only do 30MHz more, for a 4% base/3% boost overclock. Better luck was found on the memory with a 600MHz (10%) overclock there. The Asus card meanwhile was good for 40MHz more, for a 4% base/4% boost overclock, while its memory could do an additional 800MHz (13%). But at the same time this required dialing the voltage up to 1.263v – as high as we’re willing to go for this card. The power cost of doing that will be extreme.
With our 280X cards primarily bottlenecked by GPU performance as opposed to memory performance, the performance gains from our overclocking adventure is limited. 3% on average for both cards is 3% for free, but it’s barely a useful overclock. We typically need 5% before overclocks start becoming interesting and significant enough to improve playability or make higher graphical settings practical.
To the credit of the Asus card and its cooler, despite the increased clockspeeds, voltage, and power consumption, it’s able to keep GPU temperatures and load noise to reasonable levels given the circumstances. Still, with the increase in power required to achieve this overclock (particularly in the worst case scenario of FurMark) it’s hard to argue that the additional overclocking was worth the performance gains. With such an extensive factory overclock this is a card that may be better off left at factory clocks.
The XFX card meanwhile suffers much less of a power ramp up due to the lack of voltage control, but we’re still looking at something of a wash on the power/performance front.
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Ryan Smith - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
That's the first I've seen of that, so I can't really comment.But when I was discussing Mantle with AMD, they did discount using OpenGL. There was a specific desire to have a pure API that was completely free from legacy cruft (and there's nothing cruftier than OGL) while also being free to quickly evolve the project without having to involve the ARB.
konondrum - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Well this is one of the most disappointing products launches I've ever seen. At least the nVidia 700 series was more then a sticker change. This isn't even really a price drop as $300 7970s and $200 7870s (with game bundles) have been available for a while. Tell me AMD, why am I supposed to care? If these included TrueAudio at least that would be a differentiating feature, but there is seriously nothing new here at all.The only good thing I can say about this is that it makes me much more comfortable about my current 660ti 3gb. Looks like it will be strong though 2014 at least.
just4U - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
I've yet to see a 7970 GHZ Ed. for under $360.. Hell until a month and a half ago you were lucky to get it under $400 on sale.just4U - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
At any rate this may put some pressure on Nvidia for their 7x series.. I think it's going to be incentive for those still rocking it out on Amd's 6000 series or Nvidia 500 series and earlier to maybe upgrade.Personally I figure if you got a 570/80 or a 6950 (or better) the new stuff by both companies is a bit of a hard sell unless your playing at crazy resolutions... most still sit comfortably in 1080P or 1920/1200 resolution and the old standby 1600/1050.
matagyula - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
I have been looking to replace my now 2 year old HD6870 with something a little beefier, and I was eagerly awaiting AMDs new product launch.But now I am left with even more questions than before - most importantly, should I upgade at all in the upcoming 8-12 months? The card is still putting in solid work, and while I have to settle for mid-high detail settings when it comes to titles like BF3 or Crysis 3, other games perform just fine /DotA 2 and CS:GO @ 1920*1200/.
At the 170-200eur price range I am looking at HD7870, or waiting a couple months for the HD7950 to drop bellow 200eur, while the HD7970 is still at 330eur in Slovakia.
The more I think about it the more I am inclined towards holding off for another year or so :|
ShieTar - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Stop buying locally. You can order a 7970 for ~240€ from Germany, and delivery to Slovakia should not cost more than ~15€ :http://www.heise.de/preisvergleich/eu/?cat=gra16_5...
Of course an Austrian or Polish shop may be even cheaper for some cards, if the postage is less than for a delivery from Germany. Or depending on where you live, maybe you just go and have a daytrip into either country and bring the card back home ;-)
just4U - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Well Matt, I sold my 6950 2G and really wanted a 670 or a 7950-70 as I figured that was a decent upgrade. I settled for the 7870 and noticed some ok gains. It's a tough call for you though..The 280X is going to give you 7970GHZ Ed like performance according to reviews.. but basically in the price range of a 7870. Tempting.. but you might get lucky with close out deals on the 7970 or even see price drops on the 770 from Nvidia. that are more attractive. All worthwhile upgrades over the 6870 but not night/day differences.. We really haven't seen a chip come out yet that raises the bar to a whole new level.
piroroadkill - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Wow. This is a boring card launch.The ASUS card itself is a good SKU, but absolutely nothing that could not have been done branded as 7970.
I understand they have a lot of old GPUs they want to re-use, so they don't want to re-tool them for the TrueAudio DSP, but it is downright stupid that they didn't at least add another small package to the card with the DSP in, so the new range can have feature parity.
AMD, your new card names are terrible, and this launch is pretty bland and watered down.
ninjaquick - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Well, that is inevitable. AMD's GCN design is not top-down, it is fully modular. IMC / ROP / ShaderClusters are all their own modules, each 'TMU' is attached to 16 'compute cores'. The entire point of the GCN design is that it scales up infinitely. This is why AMD is releasing Mantle. There is no reason to abandon the GCN design in the near future.It is not like AMD is releasing a brand new never seen before design that is the culmination of years of design work. The 290X is literally a 7970 with 12 more ROPs and an extra 128bit memory path which are only needed to accomodate the extra 48 rendering clusters. If you were to take the 7970 and add 48 clusters at the same clock speed you would get *exactly* the same perf as what the 290X delivers. Simple as that.
thylboy - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
I saw on AMD´s homepage that these cards support their "Zero Core" technology. Can anyone confirm whether cards like this actually turn off the fans completely when in the long idle mode or not?