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Today we are checking out five of the very best Radeon R9 280X graphics cards the market has to offer. Arguably the best value mid-range graphics card the R9 280X provides plenty of performance at the $300 price point. The question which AMD board partner offers the best package, Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, HIS or Sapphire?
Are you a gamer that has $300 burning a hole in your pocket? Are you in need of a new GPU? If so then we are here to help. The first step is to pick between AMD or Nvidia, Radeon or GeForce and that choice largely comes down to price vs. performance. For smack bang on $300 you get a Radeon R9 280X with all the bells and whistles. For a little extra ($40 - $50) the GeForce GTX 770 becomes a reality and this souped-up GTX 680 is no slouch.
 Still we saw this battle play out in 2012 when the $400 Radeon HD 7970 took on the $470 GeForce GTX 680. The Radeon was 7% faster at 1920x1200 and 11% faster at 2560x1600, while the standard 7970 matched the performance of the GTX 680. Given that the 7970 GHz Edition was not only faster than the GTX 680 but also 18% cheaper, it won our recommendation as the best value $400+ graphics card. Two years later the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition has been re-badged as the Radeon R9 280X with no real changes other than the name and a reduction in price to $300. The GeForce GTX 680 was also reborn as the GTX 770, though Nvidia at least went to some trouble to disguise the fact by employing significantly faster GDDR5 memory and a slightly higher core clock speed. The end result was between 5 – 10% more performance. Therefore the Radeon R9 280X and GeForce GTX 770 can trade blows all day.
 However because the Radeon R9 280X is still the cheaper of the two cards we feel it is the better value option right now. Should you agree the next step is to pick which brand deserves your hard earned cash? Although there are more than a dozen brands to choose from we have picked from the best five, in our opinion, to see how their offerings compare. The cards we have for testing include the Asus R9 280X DirectCU II TOP 3GB, Gigabyte R9 280X WindForce 3X 3GB, HIS R9 280X iPower IceQ X² Turbo 3GB, MSI R9 280X Gaming 6GB and Sapphire Vapor-X Tri-X OC R9 280X 3GB. With that in mind let’s move on to check them out in greater detail... |
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Jabra |
Posted on: 07/21/2014 09:00 PM
You should have CF them all  |
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Turk |
Posted on: 07/22/2014 10:25 PM
Where is the noise comparison? Temperatures are irrelevant if they are not compared to noise levels. I feel Sapphire cooler should be quite good in temperature/noise ratio. Gigabyte windforce coolers on the r9 280x have an issue with developing a rattling noise after a while. |
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Mr.Potato |
Posted on: 07/23/2014 09:30 PM
The sound of the cards is largely subjective. A decibel level doesn't tell much of a story. The pitch would, but even that is subjective. There are people who deem the HD 7990 and R9 290X in reference form to be "quiet", or at least unnoticeable. A sound meter will also penalize a card that has excessive coil whine which may not affect more than a percentage of cards, and a card that has been through a few reviewers hands and taken to the limits of its overclockability on a few occasions (such as Steve mentioned with the Asus DCII TOP card) might suffer more than most. |