AMD Radeon R9 280 Review feat. XFX

Performance Analysis

The R9 280 inches ahead of the GTX 760 in Battlefield 4, though in real terms they offer the same experience. Interestingly, the R9 270X is closer to the R9 280's performance than the R9 280 is to the R9 280X, despite the latter pair being closer in price and specifications than the former.

BioShock Infinite, on the other hand, sees Nvidia's GTX 760 slip into the lead, although again we're only talking differences of a few fps at most. Both cards are hovering just below 60fps sustained at 1080p and just below 40fps at 1440p. At both resolutions, however, the R9 280X is at least 17 percent faster.


In Crysis 3 it's a similar story, and the cards actually have an identical result at 2,560 x 1,440, though neither is playable at so high a resolution in this demanding game. Skyrim as well reveals the performance similarities between the R9 280 and GTX 760, this time giving the edge to AMD for minimum frame rates and Nvidia for averages. In this game, we also see that both cards are just about able to maintain 30fps, the baseline for smooth gameplay, in a triple 1080p screen arrangement (5,760 x 1,080). This is a pretty impressive achievement, though of course in newer games neither card will manage this feat without significant sacrifices to detail.


The Unigine Valley benchmark gives the Nvidia card the lead, though this is a trend that's consistent with this particular benchmark. Even so, the GTX 760 is about 10 percent better at both 1080p and 1440p. At the latter resolution, the R9 280X manages a 17 percent higher score with 1,760 compared to 1,508 for the R9 280, though equally the R9 280 is 17 percent faster than the R9 270X.

Our power consumption test shows the R9 280 drawing 13W more power than the GTX 760, which isn't a massive difference either. Pleasingly, it's a whole 45W behind the R9 280X, so it doesn't come across as a particularly inefficient card given the performance standings. The thermal results for the XFX cooler are excellent as well, with the delta T of 38°C demonstrating its effectiveness. It's hard to make comparisons without a true AMD reference card or another AIB version of the R9 280, but the DD cooler is very quiet as well, with its two fans never spinning above 46 percent, even after prolonged load. Given how low temperatures are at this speed, there'd certainly be headroom to limit the fans to an even lower speed.


With our overclocked settings we were able to match or better the performance of the R9 280X. Naturally, there's nothing stopping you from overclocking R9 280X cards either, but the results are made better by the fact that the overclocked R9 280 was actually drawing less power than a stock speed R9 280X. In the two games that we retested at 2,560 x 1,440, the overclocked results were also enough to make gameplay visibly smoother too, as evidenced by the Battlefield 4 result surpassing 30fps and the Crysis 3 one exceeding 25fps. All in all, our 16 percent core overclock and 26 percent memory overclock resulted in performance gains of between 17 and 22 percent – right on the money.

Conclusion

As we mentioned at the start, the hardware inside the R9 280 is nothing new, but the SKU itself is still relatively new to the market, and looking at current prices the card does suffer a little for it. GTX 760 cards are about £10 lower and their performance is all but identical. Some may argue that the R9 280's extra 1GB of GDDR5 will serve it well in the future, but we've yet to see it tip the scales in any test. Meanwhile, for only a marginal extra investment you can nab yourself an R9 280X for under £200, which is great considering that it has a significant amount of additional performance on tap.


Given time, be it a few weeks or a few months, we expect R9 280 prices to fall a little and to align with the rest of the market. That's not to say it completely misses the mark right now, but from a pure price/performance standpoint the cards directly above and below do emerge as slightly more attractive. Of course, free games bundles could also sway you either way between red and green – A GTX 760 will currently grant you a free copy of Watchdogs, while thanks to a recent update to the Never Settle Forever Program, the R9 280 will grant you three free game choices from a selection of over twenty. If you do opt for the R9 280, the XFX card is a fine choice. It's the most affordable version currently available and comes with an attractive, quiet and effective cooler that helps with its significant overclocking potential.