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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Galidou - Saturday, October 12, 2013 - link
If he really has to whine about high end video card prices, he's new to this because many generations before, the top of the line was often sold for 800$. Anyway, if you simply run 1080p(which most of us does) you can be totally satisfied with a 150-300$ video card and two or three graphical options not maxed(you won't notice it unless you stop playing to just look at the graphics) which is quite different from older generations where you had to pay big bucks to run at higher resolution/graphical settings.I bought a 660ti for 300$ when it came out a year ago and I still run everything at very high/max settings in 1080p PERFECTLY. No reason to whine at all nowadays unless you're a kiddo that is new to the gaming industry and pc gaming gear.
Etern205 - Monday, October 14, 2013 - link
Many generations before top of the end graphic cards like ATi Radeon 9700 Pro, the best card of its time cost $300, and the 2nd best, ATi Radeon 9500 Pro cost just $200.High-end card is the past don't cost a arm and a leg, you can get one and still have enough to feed yourself for a week. Now they cost a arm and a leg, where you have to starve yourself for a month just to have enough to buy one.
hansmuff - Tuesday, July 14, 2015 - link
The Matrox MGA Millennium 4MB was $549 at launch and became a somewhat legendary performer in DOS VESA modes. That's 1995.bwat47 - Monday, December 9, 2013 - link
Yeah, a 280x was a steal for 299, excellent card.Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
We're working on it :) AMD gave Ryan very little time to go through four new cards, it's being added in real time here.Sunrise089 - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
No disrespect Anand, but 'special relationship' with AMD notwithstanding, if they're asking you to have your article up at midnight for a launch but you can't even have product specs available by then I worry the advertising side of things is encroaching a bit into the editorial side.zanon - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Have to agree. I've always appreciated in the past that Anandtech would take the time to do reviews right, even if it very, very often meant that they'd come in days or more after the early rush. We've already got plenty of early rush stuff on the net that is of poor quality, please do not go that route. Just do a pipeline piece with early conclusions as you have before. You've got this going up across all twitter/rss/whatever feeds, everyone sees it and comes in, and it's a really poor showing.If AMD tells you to hit a certain launch window please kindly tell them to get stuffed or get your hardware earlier next time. If you're letting them rush you to their own schedule that feels like a really bad sign.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
See the above response, but I'd add: you don't have to worry about us going down the path of lowest common denominator. I hardly think that what was posted here at midnight was even close to fitting that description.Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
er below response :)chizow - Tuesday, October 8, 2013 - link
Easy guys, it's happened with other non-AMD reviews too in the past, I know other staff writers will often chip in and help with some aspects of the reviews, like tables and graphs, and sometimes the entire piece comes together online in real-time. It's like a big group project or presentation, sometimes it just doesn't go off perfectly on such short deadlines.