The Sapphire R9 280X Toxic Review
by Ryan Smith on October 10, 2013 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- Radeon
- Sapphire
- Tahiti
- Radeon 200
Gaming Performance
As far as gaming performance is concerned, as the highest clocked 280X card we’ve reviewed there’s actually not a lot to say about performance. The card will flat-out outperform every other 280X and it will even outperform NVIDIA’s GTX 770 on average. As we’ll see in our overclocking section, at stock it even outperforms our 280X cards when overclocked. So Sapphire certainly won’t be lacking in performance here.
Finally, please note that since we don’t have a reference 280X here, we’ll be using XFX’s 280X – a stock clockspeed part – as a proxy.
| 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: |
Sapphire Radeon R9 280X Toxic XFX Radeon R9 280X Double Dissipation Asus Radeon R9 280X DirectCU II TOP AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 |
| Video Drivers: |
NVIDIA 331.40 Beta AMD Catalyst 13.11 Beta 1 |
| OS: | Windows 8.1 Pro |
In the end Sapphire’s 280X Toxic is 13% faster than a stock clocked 280X. The stock 280X is usually boosting to near its maximum levels, so the performance gains from Sapphire’s overclock trends closer to the theoretical gains from the gains in the boost clock as opposed to the theoretical gains from the base GPU overclock. This also means it’s several percent faster than the GTX 770 on average, while still costing $50 less; though this won’t account for any factory overclocked GTX 770s that we’ve seen are out there.
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commissar0617 - Saturday, October 12, 2013 - link
never mind... that's the other cards... looks like some cards have a single DP, and put the bandwidth into the second DVI portslayernine - Thursday, October 10, 2013 - link
Try running three of them :PConduit - Thursday, October 10, 2013 - link
In the last paragraph of the first page it says " Sapphire has attacked to the card".Pretty sure you mean't attached.
;D
jdon - Friday, October 11, 2013 - link
I've heard it both ways....YazX_ - Thursday, October 10, 2013 - link
i'm not sure why there is no customized 770/780 in the gaming test, although it was pointed out in the article, but it felt like biased marketing for this card, all reviews show that the stock 280x are almost head to head with 770 GTX, but this one is biased as they are comparing a customized 280x with reference Nvidia Cards, for most of people, they will look up the charts and think this one actually beats the 780 GTX for half the price, shame on you anadtech.Spunjji - Thursday, October 10, 2013 - link
Yes. Boo to them for misleading all those poor theoretical other people who are more stupid than you.Yeoman1000 - Thursday, October 10, 2013 - link
In fairness. Isn't that always the case, I very rarely see OC cards compared in the same review. It's always the non reference being compared to reference...I don't think I saw any 7970GHZ OC's mixed in with any 770/780/titan reviews...Like...all non-reference reviews are biased, even against cards of the same make.So chill, and maybe hold off on the shaming.
treeroy - Thursday, October 10, 2013 - link
I agree - most reviews compare OC cards against stock reference ones. And quite rightly - it's much easier to compare them that way imo.Drumsticks - Thursday, October 10, 2013 - link
Yeah... Relax. In addition to the various reasons above me, they mentioned multiple times that an OC'd 770 would perform differently.devilskreed - Tuesday, November 12, 2013 - link
ANd would be priced even higher..Better to save $100 in an OCed 770 and invest in an OCed 280x