The Radeon R9 280X Review: Feat. Asus & XFX - Meet The Radeon 200 Series
by Ryan Smith on October 8, 2013 12:01 AM ESTCrysis: Warhead
Up next is our legacy title for 2013/2014, Crysis: Warhead. The stand-alone expansion to 2007’s Crysis, at over 5 years old Crysis: Warhead can still beat most systems down. Crysis was intended to be future-looking as far as performance and visual quality goes, and it has clearly achieved that. We’ve only finally reached the point where single-GPU cards have come out that can hit 60fps at 1920 with 4xAA, never mind 2560 and beyond.
As a fairly old single player game we don’t put too much stock into Crysis’ performance, but we do like to track it for historical purposes and to see how well newer cards handle a somewhat older game. To that end it’s always interesting to note just how well AMD’s cards do here; Crysis loves memory bandwidth and 280X has plenty to spare.
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Pantsu - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Can't say for these cards, but at the very least if you're using multi monitor setup, you can forget about zero core. Actually I've never managed to get my 7970 to go zero core in any circumstance.Pantsu - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Rebadge may be a bit of a harsh word, but ultimately these cards bring very little change over what was offered before. The only significant changes are the price and the I/O setup, unless you care about the cooler shroud in the cheapo skus. I'd say now is the time to go bargain hunting for 7000 series cards while supplies last. You get a nice game bundle and practically the same cards for less. I've already had my eye on a 249€ 7970 for CF purposes, but I'm still hesitant since AMD hasn't released the new frame pacing driver for eyefinity.Now what I'd really like to know is if these 200 series "definetely not a rebadge" cards will work in crossfire with the 7000 series "cousins".
Pantsu - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Oh they in fact do move in herds...err work in Crossfire.Impulses - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
I had been thinking about going with two GTX 760 in SLI for a budget 5760x1200 setup... It might not handle every game maxed but it's still faster than my cutter 6970x2 setup (and for a similar amount of money as what I paid for it a few years ago)... The 280X is tempting at only $100 more for two cards tho. I can afford two GTX 780 if I really wanted, I'm just nor sure I can justify spending that kinda money on GPU... And two 770 just didn't seem like a large enough jump for an extra $300 over a $500 setup (760x2). Decisions, decisions...Impulses - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Heh, started writing that reply and forgot about the main reason I did, AMD's slow progress with frame pacing for EF is the one thing holding me back. Guess I'll hold out for some moreDdriver releases an possibly the BF Mantle patch.AWilco - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Is there an explanation of the poor performance of the ASUS card at 1080p + 4x MSAA in BF3? Looks to be an aberration comparing it to most other graphs (haven't done an exhaustive look).Ryan Smith - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
That would be your fat fingered editor making a typo. Fixed.blanarahul - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
I just read that you guys had only 24 hours to test these GPUs. Is that true?Ryan Smith - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Oh goodness no. We had much longer than that. But a week goes by very quickly when you need to generate your results from scratch and write a 20K word article.Samunosuke - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
The 290 and 290X are going to be really intriguing especially on a price/performance scale. The price will be the determining factor for the 290X, undercut GTX 780 and you have a winner.