gigabyte R9 280 review

[Lawliet93]

Introduction:

I got this card back in September 2014 as a replacement for my R9 280 dual x OC from sapphire (i got that for 200 EURO and three free games, so I actually payed around 150EURO). At that time, I was building a budget pc, I got an i5 2500k and a Z68 board for 170 euro and the R9 280 was the card with the best price/performance ratio in the market (it was around 20 EURO cheaper  than a gtx 760 in my area, but it was and still is faster). Ou, well I should say, that I did not pay more than 560 EURO for my pc.

 

 

 

Specs:

Process technology: 28nm

Core clock: 950MHz, Boost clock: 1072MHz

Memory Clock: 5000MHz

Memory Size: 3072MB

Memory Type: GDDR5

Power requirement: 6-pin + 8-pin.

I/O: DVI-I, 2x Mini display port, HDMI.

Dual BIOS Switch.

 

Photos:

 

 

The card looks pretty big, bud I didn´t have any problems fitting it into my very (very) small case. It uses a reference  PCB (yeah, it is black, not blue!!! But i don´t really care about the PCB color) so no fancy VRM and PCB design.

 

Test rig:

CPU: intel core i5 2500K oc @ 4,2GHz.

CPU COOLER: cooler master TX3

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA Z68MA D2H-B3

RAM: 2X Kingston 1333MHz 4GB.

HDD: western digital caviar blue 1tb 7200rpm

PSU: seasonic 600W 80% Bronze

 

Benchmarks.

 

Just a reminder, I have used different clock speed to simulate the reference hd 7950, the reference r9 280. my factory overclocked version and a high overclock (it is not my highest overclock, but it is a good achievable overclock for most people).

 

Unigine Valley (ultra preset, 4x AA)

 

Score.

 

 

FPS.

 

 

Tomb Raider (ULTRA + tressfx 1 FXAA): 

 

 

Hitman Absolution (ULTRA + SSAA):

 

 

Metro Last Light (ULTRA + SSAA): 

 

 

Assassin's creed Unity (ultra preset, high shadows + FXAA):

 

 

The Witcher 3 (Mostly ULTRA, no Hairworks, Water, shadows and foliage at high, those are the settings, I've used to play the game for more than 147 hours)

 

 

Cooling:

The temperatures never exceed 75° (mostly 72) and the fan never went above 65%.

I must say, in comparisson to my previous dual x cooler, the windforce one is not as effective, but it's not as loud.

 

 Conclusion:

In my opinion, the R9 280 is still a very potent GPU with nice performance, but if i had to buy a new card, I would go with a R9 380 with 4GB of VRAM and overclock it to somewhere around 1100MHz. At that speed, you should get around 15% more performance, at a much lover power consumption.

 

You might have seen, that I used a special overclock for the Unigine valley benchmark (1150 core and 6000 VRAM) and we observed a increase in performance, I would like to go deeper on this topic, because, there had been rumors, that the GCN 1.0 amd 1.1 are very bandwidth dependant (this problem has been solved by the GCN 1.2 and it's data compresion). 

[MasterP48]

Introduction:

I got this card back in September 2014 as a replacement for my R9 280 dual x OC from sapphire (i got that for 200 EURO and three free games, so I actually payed around 150EURO). At that time, I was building a budget pc, I got an i5 2500k and a Z68 board for 170 euro and the R9 280 was the card with the best price/performance ratio in the market (it was around 20 EURO cheaper than a gtx 760 in my area, but it was and still is faster). Ou, well I should say, that I did not pay more than 560 EURO for my pc.

Specs:

Process technology: 28nm

Core clock: 950MHz, Boost clock: 1072MHz

Memory Clock: 5000MHz

Memory Size: 3072MB

Memory Type: GDDR5

Power requirement: 6-pin + 8-pin.

I/O: DVI-I, 2x Mini display port, HDMI.

Dual BIOS Switch.

Photos:

The card looks pretty big, bud I didn´t have any problems fitting it into my very (very) small case. It uses a reference PCB (yeah, it is black, not blue!!! But i don´t really care about the PCB color) so no fancy VRM and PCB design.

Test rig:

CPU: intel core i5 2500K oc @ 4,2GHz.

CPU COOLER: cooler master TX3

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA Z68MA D2H-B3

RAM: 2X Kingston 1333MHz 4GB.

HDD: western digital caviar blue 1tb 7200rpm

PSU: seasonic 600W 80% Bronze

Benchmarks.

Just a reminder, I have used different clock speed to simulate the reference hd 7950, the reference r9 280. my factory overclocked version and a high overclock (it is not my highest overclock, but it is a good achievable overclock for most people).

Unigine Valley (ultra preset, 4x AA)

Score.

FPS.

Tomb Raider (ULTRA + tressfx 1 FXAA):

Hitman Absolution (ULTRA + SSAA):

Metro Last Light (ULTRA + SSAA):

Assassin's creed Unity (ultra preset, high shadows + FXAA):

The Witcher 3 (Mostly ULTRA, no Hairworks, Water, shadows and foliage at high, those are the settings, I've used to play the game for more than 147 hours)

Cooling:

The temperatures never exceed 75° (mostly 72) and the fan never went above 65%.

I must say, in comparisson to my previous dual x cooler, the windforce one is not as effective, but it's not as loud.

Conclusion:

In my opinion, the R9 280 is still a very potent GPU with nice performance, but if i had to buy a new card, I would go with a R9 380 with 4GB of VRAM and overclock it to somewhere around 1100MHz. At that speed, you should get around 15% more performance, at a much lover power consumption.

You might have seen, that I used a special overclock for the Unigine valley benchmark (1150 core and 6000 VRAM) and we observed a increase in performance, I would like to go deeper on this topic, because, there had been rumors, that the GCN 1.0 amd 1.1 are very bandwidth dependant (this problem has been solved by the GCN 1.2 and it's data compresion).

Hey, I'm planning to buy a r9 290, is it worth the money or should i buy a 280?

[Lawliet93]

Hey, I'm planning to buy a r9 290, is it worth the money or should i buy a 280?

It's about 45-50% faster than the r9 280, I would get a non-reference one with aftermarket cooling (don't buz the ASUS one, they are using a cooler made for the GTX cards).

[MasterP48]

It's about 45-50% faster than the r9 280, I would get a non-reference one with aftermarket cooling (don't buz the ASUS one, they are using a cooler made for the GTX cards).

If i buy one it will be the trix or maybe the vaporx, mainly because those are the only ones available in my country lol. But seriously i was expecting tge 280 to be like 10 or 15% slower, but it's a huge gap, right now i've only got a hd7750 so i better keep saving money until i can buy it, i want it to last a couple of years at least

[Lawliet93]

If i buy one it will be the trix or maybe the vaporx, mainly because those are the only ones available in my country lol. But seriously i was expecting tge 280 to be like 10 or 15% slower, but it's a huge gap, right now i've only got a hd7750 so i better keep saving money until i can buy it, i want it to last a couple of years at least

I would go with the vaporx one (you can also find one second hand). Did you consider a R9 390? They are up to 10% faster than a r9 290 and there are a lot of options to choose from.

 

To sum up, you can go with this cards:

 

R9 380 with 4GB of VRAM (overclocked at 1100 MHz it is almost as fast as a gtx 780....  http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/asus_radeon_r9_380_strix_review,22.html  ) 

R9 290 vaporx

R9 390.

[CaptainGazzz]

Lol, just found your card on a website for used stuff. It has exactly the same picture as in your review.