Gigabyte R9 280x Windforce 3x Oc

Radeon R9 280X Gets the Windforce 3x Treatment

The Gigabyte Radeon R9 280X Windforce 3X OC is the first Radeon R9 series menu from Gigabyte to reach our test lab. Right out of the box, the card sports an overclocked AMD Radeon R9 280X GPU that is rated at 1050MHz - or at least that was how it debuted in retail.

However, at the time when nosotros embarked on testing this bill of fare, we were brash by Gigabyte to update the BIOS of the card to a fresh firmware that was just made available. Post-obit the update, the card took on a more aggressive operation profile. Co-ordinate to the GPU-Z utility, the R9 280X GPU has been overclocked to 1100MHz, an increment of 50MHz when compared to its previous specifications. To be sure, we checked that this gratuitous speed upgrade was applicable to all customers who've bought this carte and indeed, the specs folio on Gigabyte's product page is at present updated. The graphics memory yet is still operating at the default 6000MHz.

As a result, the Gigabyte menu currently has one of the highest factory-overclocked R9 280X GPU in retail. The ASUS ROG Matrix R9 280X Platinum is even so the fastest based on our experience, but that'south a card built on the principles of being extreme (along with its request price). Putting that bated, it'south clocked faster than the ASUS Radeon R9 280X DirectCU 2 Pinnacle too as the MSI R9 280X Gaming 3G. As such, we look the Gigabyte card to perform as proficient or better than its similarly priced competitors. For its power delivery system, the card features an 8-phase design arrangement; its GPU core is fed with 6 phases, and ane-stage each for the graphics memory modules and the stage-locked loop (PLL) of the carte's lath respectively.

The rear of the carte du jour isn't protected and you lot tin conspicuously see its blue printed circuit board (PCB). You will as well notice the metal brackets that agree the aluminum fin-stack radiator. The fin-stack also firm iii 8mm copper pipes that draw estrus away from the R9 280X GPU cadre.

Taking a foliage from its DualBIOS characteristic found on its motherboards, the card has two BIOSes; i is for back up purposes and the other contains the manufacturing plant default settings for the card. In the photo below, the switch is at the factory default position.

As we accept mentioned earlier, the R9 280X GPU core of the Gigabyte has one of the highest overclocks, and then allow u.s.a. put it to the test to see how it stacks upwardly against the rest!

Test Setup

These are the specifications of our graphics testbed:

Intel Core i7-3960X (iii.3GHz)
ASUS P9X79 Pro (Intel X79 chipset) Motherboard
4 x 2GB DDR3-1600 G.Skill Ripjaws Memory
Seagate 7200.x 200GB SATA hard drive (OS)
Western Digital Caviar Black 7200 RPM 1TB SATA hard drive (Benchmarks + Games)
Windows vii Ultimate 64-bit

Beneath is the list of cards we'll exist testing. We rounded up the MSI R9 280X Gaming 3G and the ASUS Radeon R9 280X DirectCU Ii Pinnacle card for direct comparison. In addition, a number of improver partner cards were used to correspond reference ones, and they were downclocked to the clock speeds of their reference counterparts in guild to gauge their performance with updated drivers. For the AMD Radeon Hard disk 7970, the downclocked Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 OC 3GB GDDR5 was used. For the NVIDIA GeForce GTX cards, the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 770 Windforce 3X OC was downclocked to represent a reference GTX 770; while the MSI GeForce GTX 760 Twin Frozr IV OC was used to stand for the GTX 760.

Gigabyte Radeon R9 280X Windforce 3X OC 3GB GDDR5 (AMD Catalyst xiii.11)
MSI R9 280X Gaming 3G 3GB GDDR5 (AMD Goad xiii.11)
ASUS Radeon R9 280X DirectCU II TOP 3GB GDDR5 (AMD Catalyst 13.eleven)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 2GB GDDR5 (ForceWare 331.40 Beta)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 2GB GDDR5 (ForceWare 331.40 Beta)
AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition 3GB GDDR5 (AMD Catalyst xiii.ix)

Notation ane: In temperature and power consumption comparisons, the results used were from the data gathered from the actual reference cards. Please refer to our reviews for the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 and GTX 760.

Benchmarks

We take had assessed a couple of R9 280X cards earlier and take a grasp of the potential of the Radeon R9 280X; hence, we'll be using a much more than truncated listing of tests this time round for our assessment:-

Futuremark 3DMark 2013
Crysis three

Primarily, we will be focusing on the overclocking upside, temperature performance and power consumption of the Gigabyte card. This will help u.s.a. determine how the overclocked card will perform in the confront of strong competition. For our temperature and power consumption tests, 3DMark 2011 was used.

Given the card's specifications, the ASUS ROG Matrix R9 280X Platinum is the ideal competitor, only considering it's priced way out (close to $S700) of the normal price bracket of a Radeon R9 280X graphics carte (which about about S$500), nosotros opted to not compare with it straight in our benchmark graphs. However, we know you'll be curious and then we'll still be making brief comparisons across all cards we've personally tested.

Here's a expect at how the Gigabyte Radeon R9 280X Windforce 3X OC stacks up against the competing cards:


R9 280X	R9 280X	R9 280X	Tahiti XT	GK104	GK104
4.iii billion	four.3 billion	4.3 billion	4300 one thousand thousand	3.54 billion	3.54 billion
28nm	28nm	28nm	28nm	28nm	28nm
1050MHZ (Boost: 1100MHz)	Gaming Mode: 1000MHz (Boost: 1020MHz) OC Manner: 1000MHz (Boost: 1050MHz) Silent Mode: 1000MHz (Boost: 1000MHz)	1070MHz	1050MHz	1046MHz	980MHz
2048	2048	2048	2048 Stream processing units	1536 CUDA cores	1152 CUDA cores
1100MHz	1000MHz	1070MHz	1050MHz	1046MHz	980MHz
128	128	128	128	128	96
32	32	32	32	32	32
6000MHz	6000MHz	6400MHz	6000MHz DDR (GDDR5)	7012MHz DDR	6008MHz DDR
384-bit	384-chip	384-bit	384-bit	256-bit	256-flake
288GB/s	288GB/s	307.2GB/s	288GB/s	224.3GB/southward	192.3GB/s
PCIe v3.0 x16	PCIe v3.0 x16	PCIe v3.0 x16	PCIe ver iii.0 x16	PCIe ver three.0 x16	PCIe ver 3.0 x16
1 x half-dozen-pin power cable; 1 ten 8-pivot ability cable	1 ten 6-pin power cable; one ten 8-pivot power cable	1 x 6-pin power cable; 1 10 8-pin power cablevision	1 x vi-pin, 1 x 8-pivot	one x half dozen-pin, 1 x eight-pin	2 ten 6-pin
CrossFireX	CrossFireX	CrossFireX	CrossFireX	SLI	SLI
1	ane	2	ane 10 Dual-Link	1 10 DVI-D, 1 x DVI-I	1 x DVI-D, 1 x DVI-I
1	1	1	1	1	one
2 ten mini DisplayPort	ii ten mini DisplayPort	ane 10 Native DisplayPort	two (version ane.ii HBR2)	ane	1
Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

3DMark (2013) Results

Futuremark's DirectX 11 based 3DMark 2013 benchmark will put the cards through their paces with its Burn down Strike and Burn down Strike Extreme tests. They consist of farthermost levels of tessellation and volumetric illumination, every bit well as complex smoke simulation using compute shaders and dynamic particle illumination.

Equally expected, the Gigabyte Radeon R9 280X Windforce 3X OC card pulled ahead of the rest. It managed to vanquish its closest competitor, the ASUS Radeon R9 280X DirectCU II TOP 3GB GDDR5 by less than 1%, with a ribbon-thin margin that range from 0.4- to 0.7%. Against the reference NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770, its winning margin was widened to the range of between 8- to 9%. This is in line with our expectations as the Gigabyte bill of fare has its GPU core boosted to 1100MHz after its BIOS update. When compared to our reference AMD Radeon Hard disk 7970 GHz card, the Gigabyte card pulled ahead by virtually six%.

What it if nosotros compared the Gigabyte card with the fastest available in the market? The ASUS ROG Matrix R9 280X Platinum managed slightly improve figures at 7790 and 3885 points respectively for the Fire Strike tests. This translates to the ASUS ROG card being ane.v% speedier than the Gigabyte Radeon R9 280X Windforce 3X OC.

Crysis 3 Results

Next, we tested the cards with the Crysis game title, to ascertain their performance level while handling the CryEngine 3 of the game title.

The GeForce GTX 770 turned in the best overall functioning. Nevertheless, at the highest settings for this test; with anti-aliasing turned on, and the resolution ready at 2560 10 1600 pixels, the ASUS R9 280X DirectCU 2 Pinnacle card was actually on par with the GTX 770! The Gigabyte card turned in a score of fourteen.9fps, only barely beating the reference Radeon HD 7970 GHz edition carte du jour. The ASUS ROG R9 280X Platinum is still the best performing carte with a score of xv.7fps!

Temperature Results

The Gigabyte card ran the hottest at 69 degrees Celsius. This is in line with our expectations as the carte features an overclocked and overvolted GPU core. Surprisingly, the ASUS ROG R9 280X Platinum really fares much better in comparison since information technology's clocked even higher.

Power Consumption Results

Non surprisingly, for the aforementioned reasons behind its high operating temperature, the Gigabyte card had a very loftier ability describe of 424W during our tests. This time round, the higher clocked ASUS ROG R9 280X Platinum raked in the highest power consumption of whatever Radeon R9 280X graphics card nosotros've tested to-date - 483W at load and 162W at idle.

Overclocking Results

During our overclocking do, we noticed that the GPU core of the Gigabyte R9 280X card was already overvolted, at roughly one,240mV. Every bit a upshot, we didn't try to increase it any further. This happens to be the same voltage level that nosotros had used in past overclocking exercises of the other R9 280X cards. This confirms our earlier speculation that the new BIOS volition push button the card to perform at a higher level.

The overclocking headroom of the Gigabyte carte was limited. Nosotros managed to increase the clock speed of the card'southward GPU core to 1154MHz, an increment of about 5% from its 1100MHz baseline value. For its memory modules, we managed to overclock them to an operating frequency of 6680MHz. Any attempts to button either higher resulted in the software crashes.

Unsurprisingly, the performance of the Gigabyte Radeon R9 280X Windforce 3X wasn't impressive due to its limited overclocking potential as opposed to its competitors. Against the higher overclocked MSI R9 280X Gaming 3G, the MSI card atomic number 82 by a margin of 7.vii- to nearly 8%. Against the ASUS card, Gigabyte card'southward fell behind about 5.5- to 6%. Needless to say, information technology was a off-white scrap behind the ASUS ROG R9 280X Platinum as well.

On a side note, the three fans operated without excessive noise when nosotros ramped them up to operate at 100% (this is what we usually do to ensure there'southward nothing holding back our overclocking tests). In doing and so, we noticed that they had the lowest operational noise levels when compared to the other cards we've tested. Unfortunately, this could too be a contributing reason to the menu's higher operating temperature at stock speeds out of the box; consequently, the higher temperatures might also somewhat hamper extreme overclocking.

Determination

Nosotros had expected the Gigabyte Radeon R9 280X Windforce 3X OC card to take shown a stronger operation due to its overclocked graphics core out of the box.. In terms of raw clock speed, information technology was on par with the premier ASUS ROG R9 280X Platinum; nevertheless, the video memory modules of the ASUS card were overclocked while Gigabyte's memory was left to operate at reference clock speeds. Against its R9 280X peers that are in the same price range, the Gigabyte's cadre had the highest clock speed of 1100MHz. This helped it pull away from the pack slightly in our 3DMark benchmarks, but when it came to an actual game test, the card lagged behind on most occasions. It was as well handily outclassed by the contest when information technology came to overclocking potential.

One of the primary strengths of the card is its attractive price indicate of Due south$449. The bill of fare is also backed by a three-year limited warranty from CDL Trading, Gigabyte'due south local authorized distributor. For the first year, the card is covered by a i-to-one exchange policy, in the upshot of whatsoever unfortunate manufacturing defects.

In addition, the card has 2 sets of BIOSes that will make it appeal to power users and arrangement tweakers to toggle between performance modes. For example, when we updated the BIOS of the card, we kept one, the backup BIOS, at its factory defaults. As such, nosotros were able to toggle betwixt BIOSes to vary the performance of the card. The card is likewise bundled with a utility, OC Guru II, which volition allow power users to tweak the menu'southward settings with more than finesse. The utility supports both GPU and memory overvolting. The usual useful features include monitoring of the card's vitals with display graphs, and the power to save the bill of fare'due south settings into profiles for easy retrieval.

Due to the manufacturing plant overclocked state of the card, during our tests, information technology posted the highest operating temperature and power consumption levels. As a whole, the Gigabyte Radeon R9 280X is a decent catch for its attractive cost bespeak, but as we've tested, there are improve options for simply a little more. If you're able to overlook it shortcomings, the Gigabyte card will make a choice graphics buy for a mainstream gamer looking to stretch his budget for a R9 280X-based gaming rig.

Do keep in mind that these cards are recommended for gamers who don't heed playing demanding PC game titles, with certain visual features lowered or turned off. For some other indicate of consideration, those using monitors with a resolution of 1920 10 1080 pixels (Full HD), the Radeon R9 280X has more plenty power to meet all your needs. If y'all plan on driving a higher resolution monitor, you might want to consider a more powerful GPU like the Radeon R9 290X or the GeForce GTX 780 series for a a no-compromise gaming solution.