AMD Radeon R9 280X, R9 270X and R7 260X Reviews

Performance Analysis

With all three cards using tried and tested GPUs, there are few surprises when it comes to their performance. The Radeon R9 280X 3GB is almost identical to the Radeon HD 7970 3GB GHz Edition, and indeed the card's perform as such, with the latter usually having a slight advantage thanks to a minor clock speed difference. The exception to this is in BioShock Infinite, where recent driver updates give the new card the lead.


As the Nvidia GTX 760 2GB can be had for around $250 in America, it's good news that the $300 R9 280X trumps it in every test. It also lives up to the claims that it's a good card for 2,560 x 1,440 gaming, as it produces smooth framerates in all of our 2,560 x 1,600 tests, but does begin to struggle across three screens. Our Unigine benchmark places it marginally behind the HD 7970 3GB GHz Edition (less than 3 percent), but almost 100 points (7 percent) ahead of the GTX 760 2GB. There are no surprises when it comes to power consumption either.

The Radeon R9 270X 2GB also lives up to its claims of being able to max games out at 1080p, although the demanding Crysis 3 does begin to stretch it even without anti-aliasing. It also gets through most of the 2,560 x 1,600 tests as well with playable framerates. It easily beat the similarly priced GTX 660 2GB in every test, and although Unigine puts the two cards as neck and neck it's the real world performance that counts more. With higher clock speeds, it obviously has no issue beating the HD 7870 2GB as well (and consuming more power). Its cooler does a fine job of balancing low noise with low temperatures, and the card's healthy overclocking headroom makes it an attractive package overall.

Performance of the R7 260X 2GB is sandwiched between the GTX 650 Ti 1GB and the GTX 650 Ti Boost 2GB - handy given that it's priced between these two cards as well. It naturally maintains a good lead on the HD 7790 1GB too, thanks to its higher clock speeds and larger frame buffer. However, the GTX 650 Ti Boost is only marginally more expensive, but significantly and consistently faster than the R7 260X 2GB (over 30 percent in Unigine, in fact), and even the card's decent overclocking potential does little to close the gap between them.

Conclusion

It's difficult to pass final judgement on these cards without final UK prices, and as such this section especially is subject to change as new information comes in. Nevertheless, the R9 280X 3GB is set to enter the market at the price that HD 7970 3GB GHz Edition cards have fallen to anyway. Given how similar they are in every other regard, there is essentially no reason to choose one or the other, so if you're leaning towards it we'd suggest trying to snag as good a deal as possible on the outgoing HD 7000 series card. Compared to Nvidia's hardware, it offers pretty much the right amount of performance for the price as well as an extra 1GB of VRAM.

The R9 270X 2GB comes in at a price between the GTX 660 2GB and GTX 660 Ti 2GB, but closer to the former card (at least in the US market). Given that it universally outperforms the GTX 660 2GB by some margin, it's the best deal of the bunch and an excellent choice for those looking for a solid mid-range card to pair with a 1080p screen. This is even more apparent when you consider its overclocking capabilities, at least on our sample.

The R7 260X 2GB doesn't fair quite as well on the price/performance scale. Although the GTX 650 Ti Boost 2GB is more expensive, it's only by a little, with some currently available for $150. The framerate advantage that Nvidia's card has, however, is much more distinctive, and as such it's the best deal in this price category. That said, the R7 260X 2GB does feature both TrueAudio and Mantle support, but these are as yet unproven technologies.