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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NeatOman - Friday, October 11, 2013 - link
I get 47 average FPS in BioShock Infinite benchmark (2560x1440, very high) with my 7850 clocked at 1050 gpu and 1300 vram, and 8320 @4.5ghz... everything running very cool.In game with FPS showing, its at about 50+ most the time and dips to 35-40 every once in a while.
Cataclysm_ZA - Friday, October 11, 2013 - link
How on earth are your GTX780 scores so low?Ryan Smith - Friday, October 11, 2013 - link
What do you mean exactly?blank001 - Sunday, October 13, 2013 - link
I think he finds the < 10 FPS difference on average between the 280x and 780 surprising.Nikhilanand - Saturday, October 12, 2013 - link
This card is awesome for the price it asks.... Gaming performance getting near GTX 780.Mombasa69 - Monday, October 14, 2013 - link
I nearly wasted close to £800 on 2 770's a few month back, glad I didn't, glad I waited, sapphire radeon R9 280X Toxic is clearly about the best GPU price and awesome performance on the market today.Mombasa69 - Monday, October 14, 2013 - link
Next games ported from the new consoles are all optimised for Radeons, these will even outperform Titans when those games are released.Hrel - Monday, October 14, 2013 - link
This a great article for the Asus card. Clearly the best bang/buck. Shockingly lower noise levels. Once again, great article overall!araczynski - Tuesday, October 15, 2013 - link
good stuff, hopefully this brings on some serious 7970GE sales sooner or later :) i have a good 720W PS, but am not sure if it could even handle this reliably on top of everything else.tuklap - Tuesday, October 22, 2013 - link
wow this is somehow awesome for a $350 VC