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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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.