AMD R9 280x Artifacting Issues?

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GPUEnthusiast

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So I currently have two Sapphire HD 7950 Boosts in crossfire. I recently upgraded my power supply to a Corsair 850 watt PSU. So now, I wanted to start to replace my crossfire set up with better cards.

I want to get either the Sapphire R9 280x Toxic, or Sapphire R9 280x Vapor-X. (and eventually get a second one in crossfire) The problem is, a couple people on Newegg are complaining about artifacting issues on those cards, especially vertical line artifacting. There are not many reviews overall, but to have such a decent percentage complain about that problem scares me, since I haven't payed more than 300 for a graphics card in a while.

I have read inferences that it could be because it is an older chip on the card (Tahiti XT), and they are overclocking it too high. But then, wouldn't everybody have these issues with the R9 280x special editions?

Is the risk vs reward great enough? I imagine I could just keep RMA'ing it until I get one not having these problems, correct?
 
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Statistically speaking the reviews are still fairly positive #4 star + #5 star > #1 star + #2 star
Keeping in mind people are more likely to post a negative review than a positive review, it isn't too unreasonable

The review proportions are about the same as for your motherboard (Asrock Z87 Extreme 4) so the chance of getting a bad
card is really no worse than getting a bad mobo.

That said, 7950 CF to 280X CF is not worth upgrading
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GPUEnthusiast

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Thanks for the advice! Though I might go for AMD's R9 300 series since it will come out probably quite soon after the GTX 900 series does.

BE ADVISED: I am still looking for an answer to my question, if anything out of curiosity now. You can go ahead and suggest a different card, which is cool, and I appreciate the feedback, but I'm wondering if this artifacting problem is common, if anything because I have a friend who is getting one soon as well. (hellbent on getting one, because it's blue... dat logic doe)
 
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smeezekitty

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Statistically speaking the reviews are still fairly positive #4 star + #5 star > #1 star + #2 star
Keeping in mind people are more likely to post a negative review than a positive review, it isn't too unreasonable

The review proportions are about the same as for your motherboard (Asrock Z87 Extreme 4) so the chance of getting a bad
card is really no worse than getting a bad mobo.

That said, 7950 CF to 280X CF is not worth upgrading
 
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coolcole01

coolcole01

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I actually have three pc's but I had crossfire 7950 for a longtime and my friend has crossfire 7970 and it just was not worth the money. No problems with the 7970 or 280x except ones which were defective. I would get a gtx 780 it's gonna drop in price when the 970 comes out if you can score one for 300- 350 you will be happy.
 
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I guess I kind of had that idea in the back of my mind as well, people are a lot more likely to come back and complain about a bad experience, then to compliment a good one. The thing is, a friend of mine is buying my Sapphire HD 7950 Boosts because of their litecoin mining performance. He's paying $200/per since they are immaculate and I've never overclocked and my case is always spotless.

I ended up actually calling Sapphire all the way in Taiwan and got a lovely lady named Mandy who told me that they have sold almost 8,000 R9 280x Vapor-X cards to date. (the three fan model), and that they do have a higher than average artifact problem. But she assures me that it only occurs in ~5% of the cards, and it is completely covered by their RMA program, in fact, they encourage you to keep RMA'ing until you get a card that does not suffer the problem because they are trying to remove all of the bad R9 280, R9 280x, and R9 290's that are suffering this problem, from their portion of the market.

So, just for anybody who is looking for an answer to this, this is probably a better one than the other Tom's Hardware threads where everybody is complaining about artifacting 280x's. You're missing the entire demographic who DOES have working 280x's.

Anyway, I'll use the 400 bucks my friend is kicking me and save up for two R9 380x's or even two 390's when they come out. In the mean time, I'll just play PS4 like a peasant ;). smeezekitty wins for the correct answer.
 
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Yeah, I'll definitely judge the prices to see which is worth my money for the performance. I've personally had a bad run with Nvidia cards, specifically EVGA. My EVGA Geforce 9800 GTX+ suffered some devastating electrical failure after only 6 months which charred the card back in 2009, and my EVGA GTX 480 suffered a fan failure which they would not cover under warranty since I purchased it from "an unlicensed carrier"... Apparently Fry's Electronics back in 2010 was an "unlicensed carrier". Anyway, I ride the price performance curve regardless of brand. I've been very impressed with AMD recently, but of course Nvidia is always the juggernaut which requires consideration.
 
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Oh haha, yeah, I'm not going to be on the 4K bandwagon for a while. I'm a 1080p purist because I have a 1080p monitor, and a 1080p TV. If I could afford it, I would get a GTX 690 or HD 7990 just because of how high the 1920x1080 performance is on those cards. I'm going to be one of those people though who completely misses the 2k 1440p portion of UHD. I mean, my LG G3 is 1440p, but as for gaming I'm probably going to jump straight from 1080 to 2160.
 
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smeezekitty

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What a load of nonsense.
The R9-290 and 290X are new chips. And the 280X is only one generation iold.
They all fully support directx in hardware.

The existing problems are mainly caused by defective batches of VRAM
 
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