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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EmperorRosko - Friday, October 11, 2013 - link
I really think you need to step back and read your comment. You make no sense whatsoever other than sounding like you are a complete and utter green team excitable mess because a card like this nearly beats a stupidly overpriced card like the 780.The reason they have put a stock GTX780 in the test (which even the vanilla card costs 499 UK POUNDS!!!!) is just to show that a card that costs as low as 260 quid is biting at its heels, of course a customised 780 is going to take another 10% lead but this test is just to show that if you are in the market for a 770/780, this card is something you should seriously considering before dropping cash nVidia's way!
No to mention that when Mantle drops for BF4, this card will more than likely blow a 770/780 out the water anyway and for that game a 290x wont be necessary to hold a massive frame rate.
just4U - Saturday, October 12, 2013 - link
When reviewing cards they usually throw them up against stock variants for comparison.mwildtech - Thursday, October 10, 2013 - link
Sucks this card has no overclock-ability, but at it's price point it makes a stock GTX 780 look like a horrible buy. I know the GTX 780 overclocks like a beast, so It can take a 30% lead pretty easily with an avg OC, but still it's $649 dollars.VaporX - Thursday, October 10, 2013 - link
mwildtech, Overclocking is a hit and miss in every product, especially one that is out of the box clocked at higher values than the competition can often overclock to. That being said two other reviews where able to get some very solid overclocks.MrSpadge - Thursday, October 10, 2013 - link
Agreed - if the card can't even stand 10 MHz more, it will loose stability at stock clocks as soon as the chip degrades a little - which happens exponentially faster with more voltage..just4U - Saturday, October 12, 2013 - link
that's one of my problems with overclocked cards.. I really don't trust them at all and simply prefer a stock card I can screw around with.. give it a great cooler and I am happy..jerrylzy - Saturday, October 12, 2013 - link
I think it can. mine 7970 can stand 1200/1700commissar0617 - Saturday, October 12, 2013 - link
my sapphire 7970/oc has overclock ability. after I change the TIM, i will probably be able to get it to 1.1ghzMombasa69 - Monday, October 14, 2013 - link
It comes with an OC utility....Mombasa69 - Monday, October 14, 2013 - link
Check out bjorn3d(dot)comMentions the OC Utility.