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Sapphire's Dual-X R9 280 OC Graphics Card Review

Tags:
  • Graphics
  • Graphics Cards
  • AMD
  • Geforce
  • Radeon
Last response: in Reviews comments
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August 25, 2014 2:00:37 AM

We take a look at the value proposition offered by Sapphire's Dual-X R9 280 and consider it's performance compared to its competitor, the GeForce GTX 760, and its predecessor, the Radeon HD 7950 Boost.

Sapphire's Dual-X R9 280 OC Graphics Card Review : Read more

More about : sapphire dual 280 graphics card review

August 25, 2014 2:14:10 AM

Why no noise measurements ?
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August 25, 2014 2:19:03 AM

ill wait for tonga
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a b U Graphics card
August 25, 2014 2:32:39 AM

Quote:
Why no noise measurements ?

The one thing I was really interested to see
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August 25, 2014 2:47:37 AM

This... as a newer, faster and more power efficient R9 285 comes out?
What are the board partners thinking?
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August 25, 2014 4:35:12 AM

They got the wrong memory bandwidth for the R9 280 and 7950 cards... it's 384-bit.

Which is why I'm worried that the 285 won't be able to keep up. Particularly at higher resolutions.

[Response by Cleeve:

Doh! Fixed. :)  [/Response]
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August 25, 2014 5:05:37 AM

Wow mantle gives Intel 6 cores relevance in games. Wonder if AMD will design a 16 core now for the AM3? Cant wait to see mantle on Intels new 8 core CPU's.
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August 25, 2014 5:16:37 AM

Am I the only one who finds it unfair to bench an Overclocked card and put it against a reference model?
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August 25, 2014 5:16:47 AM

The mantle 4770 test for thief was -.1 min fps and only 1fps average increase. Clearly on the 6 core its getting more in both min fps and average.
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August 25, 2014 5:31:56 AM

The battlefield 4 mantle test lost performance with the 4770 on 1080.
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August 25, 2014 6:47:43 AM

Shneiky said:
Am I the only one who finds it unfair to bench an Overclocked card and put it against a reference model?


This is a Sapphire Dual-X review, not a reference 280 launch.

The Sapphire Dual-X R9 280 comes overclocked from the factory.

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August 25, 2014 6:49:49 AM

blackmagnum said:
This... as a newer, faster and more power efficient R9 285 comes out?
What are the board partners thinking?


This is simply a last look at the 280, relevant from the perspective that these will probably be discounted on the market for a little while.

As far as performance, we don't believe the 285 will be much faster (possibly even slower), based on specifications.

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a b U Graphics card
August 25, 2014 7:21:31 AM

I agree with Shneiky. The small margins by which the 280 edges out it's win could easily be explained away by the fact that it's an aftermarket card vs reference cards.
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a b U Graphics card
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August 25, 2014 8:06:34 AM

What I mean is - this is OC 280 vs Stock 760. If you get a OC model of a 760 from Asus, EVGA or Gygabyte or whatever - the margin between 280 and 760 will shrink, turning it into a battle of power an acoustics, since you can get custom 280 and custom 760 for comparably the same price.

P.S Just made a check. In most big on-line retailers in Netherlands, Germany and Belgium, the SAPPHIRE DUAL-X R9 280 3GB GDDR5 OC w. Boost cards are actually more expensive than OCed 760s.

SAPPHIRE DUAL-X R9 280 3GB GDDR5 OC - 270 EUR

ASUS R9280-DC2T-3GD5 - 245 EUR and it is clocked 40 Mhz higher

GIGABYTE GV-N760OC-2GD - 230 EUR and it is clocked 100 Mhz and 120 Mhz more with Boost compared to reference model. That is more than 10% over-clock and it is enough to surpass the OCed 280.
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a b U Graphics card
August 25, 2014 9:12:17 AM

Quote:
What I mean is - this is OC 280 vs Stock 760. If you get a OC model of a 760 from Asus, EVGA or Gygabyte or whatever - the margin between 280 and 760 will shrink, turning it into a battle of power an acoustics, since you can get custom 280 and custom 760 for comparably the same price.

P.S Just made a check. In most big on-line retailers in Netherlands, Germany and Belgium, the SAPPHIRE DUAL-X R9 280 3GB GDDR5 OC w. Boost cards are actually more expensive than OCed 760s.

SAPPHIRE DUAL-X R9 280 3GB GDDR5 OC - 270 EUR

ASUS R9280-DC2T-3GD5 - 245 EUR and it is clocked 40 Mhz higher

GIGABYTE GV-N760OC-2GD - 230 EUR and it is clocked 100 Mhz and 120 Mhz more with Boost compared to reference model. That is more than 10% over-clock and it is enough to surpass the OCed 280.


I agree that the 760 reference was a little misleading along with not including the power and temperature measures from the 760 as well.
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August 25, 2014 9:35:05 AM

anthony8989 said:
I agree with Shneiky. The small margins by which the 280 edges out it's win could easily be explained away by the fact that it's an aftermarket card vs reference cards.


You can't buy a reference card on Newegg anymore. All the Radeon R9 280's come with custom coolers.

There are still a lot of 760's with reference coolers available, however.

Nevertheless, you guys are probably picking nits and missing the point. The margin of win/lose is so close that it's irrelevant, as I point out in the conclusion page. A random sample of different benchmarked games might show 760 strengths better than the newest titles that we chose for relevancy.

The point is, they're so close it's almost irrelevant which you choose. Pick based on price and your preferred features, or your prevelance for Radeons or GeForces.

As far as power/noise measurements, we'll be digging into that much deeper in an upcoming Radeon review. ;) 
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August 25, 2014 9:39:57 AM

Quote:
ill wait for tonga


I'm curious. Why? There seems to be no advantage to the R9-285 at all except lower draw power. That's it. Who cares about a higher clock on the memory when its gimped by a 256 bit memory bus. Do the numbers.

You can see 176 GB/s memory bandwidth vs 240 from the Tahiti. Both have the same exact number of shader cores and Tahiti also has a slightly higher base clock. Seems to me that Tonga at the same price point has no benefit whatsoever. Don't understand this card.


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a b U Graphics card
August 25, 2014 9:40:50 AM

Quote:
You can't buy a reference card on Newegg anymore. All the Radeon R9 280's come with custom coolers.

There are still a lot of 760's with reference coolers available, however.

Nevertheless, you guys are probably picking nits and missing the point. The margin of win/lose is so close that it's irrelevant, as I point out in the conclusion page. A random sample of different benchmarked games might show 760 strengths better than the newest titles that we chose for relevancy.

The point is, they're so close it's almost irrelevant which you choose. Pick based on price and your preferred features, or your prevelance for Radeons or GeForces.

As far as power/noise measurements, we'll be digging into that much deeper in an upcoming Radeon review. ;) 


I understand and acknowledge that. The point I was making is that you ( perhaps inadvertently ) put this 7950 Boost rebrand in the best possible light by using an aftermarket cooled and OC'd version against the stock clocked and cooled competition. But since there are no reference models of the card available , that may have been AMD's aim - to put this rebrand in the best case scenario. But you the reviewers should try and level the playing field.

Honestly it's not a big deal. I understand where you're coming from , it's just my opinion is all :D 
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August 25, 2014 10:02:09 AM

anthony8989 said:

Honestly it's not a big deal. I understand where you're coming from , it's just my opinion is all :D 


I hear you, man.

Like I said, we've got a thorough comparison coming in the near future with more details. This was more of a goodbye to the 280, really, which i believe will be a better option than the 285 unless you *REALLY* want to save power.

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a b U Graphics card
August 25, 2014 11:40:51 AM

cleeve said:

As far as power/noise measurements, we'll be digging into that much deeper in an upcoming Radeon review. ;) 


That's what I am talking about. To me efficiency is nearly as important as performance assuming a near equal price and close performance. Even 10% less performance at 60 FPS is only 54 FPS something I can't really notice without fraps on.

I would like to see how the new cards are stacking up to the GTX 7 series though. Since the GTX 760's have seemed to have not fallen in price I might think about selling mine off to get something new.
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August 25, 2014 12:46:47 PM

you guys can wait and I will enjoy my fully under warranty msi twin frzrs i picked up off of ebay for $125 a piece.

btw i already sent one into MSI and within 10 days it came back fully repaired. my daughter (autistic) opened up my rig and dumped juice on the GPU and MSI still replaced it without conflict or headache (I did clean with 99% alcohol). they have just earned my money for future purchases
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August 25, 2014 1:43:18 PM

The 280 vs 760 price debate is very location sensitive. In Europe, where hardware is much more expensive than US, the GTX 760 is priced a lot more competitively than the 280. Also, I have never seen reference designs for sale with few exceptions and those being high-end cards with pre-order mainly. My comments about the use of a reference design for the 760 is not that I want to boost up nVidia. To be honest I am from the ATI team (it will always be ATI). But my software requirements and specifically prices places nVidia in a rather good position.
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August 25, 2014 1:52:34 PM

Toms, please stop using the photo gallery plugin you currently use. My iPhone cannot handle it. It causes my phone to stress and slow to a crawl and then doesn't even load the photos. Makes these articles unreadable on iphones.
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August 25, 2014 1:53:47 PM

Quote:
I'm curious. Why? There seems to be no advantage to the R9-285 at all except lower draw power. That's it. Who cares about a higher clock on the memory when its gimped by a 256 bit memory bus. Do the numbers.

You can see 176 GB/s memory bandwidth vs 240 from the Tahiti. Both have the same exact number of shader cores and Tahiti also has a slightly higher base clock. Seems to me that Tonga at the same price point has no benefit whatsoever. Don't understand this card.


I share your sentiment on the matter. AMD is attempting to lower the power draw of their cards, not through architectural engineering advancements, but by reducing capacities. I'm baffled at this strategy - I see it more like a stratagem.

Offer less performance for the same price but call it a win on efficiency grounds. I'm very curious to see the power draw on this card at stock and OC'd.
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August 25, 2014 4:51:08 PM

Quote:
Quote:
ill wait for tonga


I'm curious. Why? There seems to be no advantage to the R9-285 at all except lower draw power. That's it. Who cares about a higher clock on the memory when its gimped by a 256 bit memory bus. Do the numbers.

You can see 176 GB/s memory bandwidth vs 240 from the Tahiti. Both have the same exact number of shader cores and Tahiti also has a slightly higher base clock. Seems to me that Tonga at the same price point has no benefit whatsoever. Don't understand this card.



Don't expect the 256bit bus to gimp the card. This depends greatly on the gpu's design. Just as the pcie bandwidth can be offset by dedicated video card memory so can memory bandwidth. If the tonga for example has more cache or uses a more efficient memory design. While the 285 will be a fairly powerful card some leaked specs on the Nvidia 880 suggest it will have 4GB's on a 256 bit bus.
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August 26, 2014 7:07:32 AM

Offtopic: Love my Sapphire Trix R9 290 OC (oced it further) to 1150mhz core and 6000mhz to match 780 Tti stock in a lot of benchmarks, for 250$ thats pretty awesome. However, I want my next card to be an nvidia card only because it is kind of habit for me to switch brands from time to time. It was always hard for me to choose nvidia card because of the price/performance ratio is pretty awful this series. Hope the 800 series has a better ratio.
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August 26, 2014 8:41:42 AM

Quote:
Toms, please stop using the photo gallery plugin you currently use. My iPhone cannot handle it. It causes my phone to stress and slow to a crawl and then doesn't even load the photos. Makes these articles unreadable on iphones.

Can you please specify the model, browser, and connection? We've tested this feature on all current iPad and iPhone models without issue.
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August 26, 2014 8:56:17 AM

I'm assuming you are not testing Battlefield 4 on multiplayer.
AMD fx-8350
Gigabyte 990FXA UD3
Sapphire Radeon 7870 OCed 2gb GDDR5
G.Skill 2x4Gb 1866mhz.
BF4 at constant 60fps on ultra graphics on DX. Haven't tried Mantle yet.
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August 26, 2014 1:28:01 PM

good review. how does one get a review page? do you need to own or test the components in benchmarks
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August 29, 2014 1:32:39 AM

It would have been nice to see power usage and noise measurements included.
With a TDP of only 170W, the expected power usage of the GTX 760 is much lower than the R9 280. This is a significant benefit for lower noise levels, less heat and less power. This also seems to be what AMD is targeting with the R9 285.
Hopefully when R9 285 cards are reviewed, power and noise measurements can be included for R9 285, R9 280 and GTX 760 as equivalent cards, as well as the R9 280X and GTX 770 as higher performing but higher usage cards and the R9 270X and GTX 750 Ti as slower but even more efficient cards.
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August 29, 2014 9:22:43 AM

Quote:
Quote:
Toms, please stop using the photo gallery plugin you currently use. My iPhone cannot handle it. It causes my phone to stress and slow to a crawl and then doesn't even load the photos. Makes these articles unreadable on iphones.

Can you please specify the model, browser, and connection? We've tested this feature on all current iPad and iPhone models without issue.


I have issues with the format as well. I am using IE(latest that xp supports) on my xp 32bit work computer, to try to view them. They don't load in compatability mode either. They work fine on my personal desktop though. :)  Any idea's?
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August 29, 2014 2:51:27 PM

sincreator said:
Quote:
Quote:
Toms, please stop using the photo gallery plugin you currently use. My iPhone cannot handle it. It causes my phone to stress and slow to a crawl and then doesn't even load the photos. Makes these articles unreadable on iphones.

Can you please specify the model, browser, and connection? We've tested this feature on all current iPad and iPhone models without issue.


I have issues with the format as well. I am using IE(latest that xp supports) on my xp 32bit work computer, to try to view them. They don't load in compatability mode either. They work fine on my personal desktop though. :)  Any idea's?


Try using a different browser if your work computer has one?

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October 5, 2014 6:46:11 AM

Microcenter has this card on sale right now for an unbelievable $179.99. ($169.99 with a $10 rebate) I had just bought an XFX R7 270X at Best Buy for $189.99 which was a price match then saw this. Returned the XFX and RAN not waled to Microcenter. It performs SOOO much better than the R7. The difference in Battlefield 4 is staggering.
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October 5, 2014 6:52:35 AM

While the Sapphire R9 280 179.99 at Microcenter is unbelievable. Sorry, it was the R9 270X that was 189.99 at BB not the R7, that was a typo. just wanted to get that right.
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October 9, 2014 5:33:42 PM

Can someone please help me understand the power usage chart, is that power usage for just the 280 or the entire system?
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October 9, 2014 5:35:03 PM

Can someone please help me understand the power usage chart, is that power usage for just the 280 or the entire system?
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a c 158 U Graphics card
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October 10, 2014 7:35:36 PM

Warh3D said:
Can someone please help me understand the power usage chart, is that power usage for just the 280 or the entire system?


These measurements will be for the whole system measured at the wall. This suggests peak usage for these components in this benchmark was about 280W. This is mostly power drawn by the graphics card, and then by the CPU.
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less than a minute ago

VincentP said:
Warh3D said:
Can someone please help me understand the power usage chart, is that power usage for just the 280 or the entire system?


These measurements will be for the whole system measured at the wall. This suggests peak usage for these components in this benchmark was about 280W. This is mostly power drawn by the graphics card, and then by the CPU.


Thank you for clearing that up for me
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