Gigabyte Announces WindForce 3X-Cooled R9 280 Card
Gigabyte's new R9 280 graphics card will be cooled by the mighty WindForce 3X cooler.
Gigabyte has announced a new graphics card – the Radeon R9 280 WindForce OC. This graphics card is simply a Radeon R9 280 graphics card, though it is built on a custom PCB and cooler design.
The GPU clock speeds have been quite notably boosted. Gigabyte has clocked the card with a base frequency of 950 MHz along with a boost frequency of 1072 MHz. For reference, standard R9 280 graphics cards are clocked at 850 MHz base with a 933 MHz boost frequency. The card's memory remains at the standard 5.0 GHz effective frequency.
Cooling is taken care of by the WindForce 3X cooler. The cooler might appear to be overkill for this card. With the 450 W cooling capacity number supporting that, there is a valid reason for having an unnecessarily beastly cooler on a graphics card: lower noise. A cooler with that much cooling power simply won't have to work so hard to cool the GPU, reducing noise output under heavy loads.
There was no word on pricing or availability just yet.
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Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.
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Morbus I have that cooler on my 760 and I can tell you, having heard a stock cooled 760, that it is NOT overkill.First off, the fans don't tell the whole story: the pipes that connect to the GPU are also very important, and not all WindForce 3X are born equal. The first version of the 760's, for example, is badly optimized (two pipes don't touch the GPU).But anyway, I say it's not overkill mostly because of the silence. It's fantastic how silent the card is. Fantastic piece of hardware.Reply -
Ahmadjon ReplyI have that cooler on my 760 and I can tell you, having heard a stock cooled 760, that it is NOT overkill.First off, the fans don't tell the whole story: the pipes that connect to the GPU are also very important, and not all WindForce 3X are born equal. The first version of the 760's, for example, is badly optimized (two pipes don't touch the GPU).But anyway, I say it's not overkill mostly because of the silence. It's fantastic how silent the card is. Fantastic piece of hardware.
What about MSI cards? -
Morbus Reply
From what I've seen, they're even better on the silence front, and they're temperatures are about the same as Gigabyte. MSI does tend to have slightly lower stock clocks though.12917858 said:I have that cooler on my 760 and I can tell you, having heard a stock cooled 760, that it is NOT overkill.First off, the fans don't tell the whole story: the pipes that connect to the GPU are also very important, and not all WindForce 3X are born equal. The first version of the 760's, for example, is badly optimized (two pipes don't touch the GPU).But anyway, I say it's not overkill mostly because of the silence. It's fantastic how silent the card is. Fantastic piece of hardware.
What about MSI cards? -
Ahmadjon Reply12919098 said:
From what I've seen, they're even better on the silence front, and they're temperatures are about the same as Gigabyte. MSI does tend to have slightly lower stock clocks though.12917858 said:I have that cooler on my 760 and I can tell you, having heard a stock cooled 760, that it is NOT overkill.First off, the fans don't tell the whole story: the pipes that connect to the GPU are also very important, and not all WindForce 3X are born equal. The first version of the 760's, for example, is badly optimized (two pipes don't touch the GPU).But anyway, I say it's not overkill mostly because of the silence. It's fantastic how silent the card is. Fantastic piece of hardware.
What about MSI cards?
My GTX-760 under load doesn't go higher 70C and 45% fan speed! -
Morbus Reply
My Gigabyte 760 doesn't go above 65C. I I stress it artificially, it will reach 69C. On a hot day.12919160 said:12919098 said:
From what I've seen, they're even better on the silence front, and they're temperatures are about the same as Gigabyte. MSI does tend to have slightly lower stock clocks though.12917858 said:I have that cooler on my 760 and I can tell you, having heard a stock cooled 760, that it is NOT overkill.First off, the fans don't tell the whole story: the pipes that connect to the GPU are also very important, and not all WindForce 3X are born equal. The first version of the 760's, for example, is badly optimized (two pipes don't touch the GPU).But anyway, I say it's not overkill mostly because of the silence. It's fantastic how silent the card is. Fantastic piece of hardware.
What about MSI cards?
My GTX-760 under load doesn't go higher 70C and 45% fan speed!
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Adela Pop Cool! Hopefully, the Thermal Design Power will also be improved, taking into account that the TDP for the current AMD Radeon R9 280 is 200W, which is quite high compared to other GPUs: http://versus.com/en/amd-radeon-r9-280Reply