Sapphire R9 280X Vapor-X OC 3GB Graphics Card Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

AMD have told us that the R9 280X has an MSRP of $299. The GTX 760 currently has an MSRP of $249 and the GTX 770 of $329 (thanks to a recent price cut), so AMD have priced the R9 280X competitively. In the UK we can expect to see the R9 280X hit the market from £233.99 and Overclockers UK have told us they will have an extensive range of R9 280X graphics cards available from £233.99 from HIS, Sapphire, Gigabyte, ASUS and MSI. Of course you can pick up a HD 7970s for a similar, if not lower price. However, AMD’s HD 7000 series is currently being cleared – inventory is being sold off at lower rates to make way for the new RX-2XX series so this isn’t a fair comparison as the great HD 7000 series deals will evaporate soon when stock is digested by the market and not replaced. That said AMD’s R9 280X sits favourably in terms of its pricing. Sapphire’s variant of it will probably be about 15~20% higher than the $299 MSRP so I estimate $340~360.

Due to the fact I have quite differing things to say about the AMD R9 280X GPU and Sapphire’s interpretation of it I will be splitting my conclusion up into two parts. The first part will interpret Sapphires take on the R9 280X GPU and what their card brings. The second will round up my thoughts on the R9 280X from AMD and what I think of it.

What Sapphire Have Done

I am not particularly feeling Sapphire’s modifications to the AMD R9 280X. In effect our testing shows that the cooling solution is very loud at any form of medium to high intensity load (read: gaming). The Sapphire Vapor-X R9 280X reminds me of the HD 6990 reference cooler which reached similarly high noise levels of 65-70 dBA and had a reputation for being too noisy. Sapphire tell us that you can of course reduce noise output by using their TriXX utility to create a more silent fan profile, but the question is why doesn’t the product ship with a quiet profile as standard and give you the choice to tweak the fan profile to a more aggressive one should you want more cooling? The temperatures were an improvement on average R9 280X standards, at around 5 degrees lower than I’d expect to see compared to a reference design, but for the noise that is hardly a surprising or spectacular feat. In most cases less cooling in favour of less noise is preferred by consumers – I know I’d rather have a GPU running at 80 degrees that is silent than one that runs at 73 degrees and is very loud, so I think Sapphire really need to address the problem of noise with this particular card.

Sapphire have also ended up creating a rather impractical card as the backplate clashes with a lot of motherboard heatsinks on higher end motherboards (such as the Rampage IV Extreme) and the triple slot (2.5X) cooling solution means multi-GPU configurations and users with many expansion cards are going to have a tough time fitting everything in. Top that off with the decision to use a blue PCB (when black is preferred by most) and the fact the card seems to have abnormally high power consumption (even by HD 7970 GHz edition standards) and things aren’t really looking that good for this particular Sapphire card. We hope Sapphire can address at least the noise problems with newer revisions of the card that use more up to date and efficient GPUs, as the reviews samples are always the first and least refined off the production line.

The AMD R9 280X

It is clear the AMD R9 280X is a good value for money card when you stack it up to equivalent offerings (the Nvidia GTX 760 and GTX 770). Our results reflect what a modestly overclocked version of the R9 280X would perform like, but most vendors will ship overclocked versions anyway so we think our results are fair. Our results also show us that a modestly overclocked R9 280X beats a modestly overclocked GTX 770 in the lion’s share of benchmarks so I think we can safely assume the stock R9 280X is a faster card than the stock GTX 770, or at least on par with it from the results that we saw. Given the fact this is achieved with slightly  lower pricing than the competition all I can say is hats off to AMD because they’ve put out a great value card. What’s more is that the AMD R9 280X also brings native support for the new Mantle API, DX 11.2 and OpenGL 4.3 – all great things to have. On the front of temperatures and power consumption our results are not truly accurate because what Sapphire has done has a big influence. That said do not expect temperatures and thermals to be too dissimilar to the HD 7970/HD 7970 GHz edition cards. Even so the HD 7970 GHz edition was a very power hungry and hot running card so this is no different. I think the R9 280X is a great performer all things considered with the only down sides being the higher power consumption than Nvidia’s equivalent solutions. The R9 280X also has a major victory on the multi-display front as it can offer support for up to six screens with a single MST Hub (such as the Club3D MST Hub we recently reviewed) thanks to AMD tweaking the multi-display configuration so that a DisplayPort is no longer needed for each Eyefinity set (aka you can run three screens off 1 DP port with an MST hub and another three screens off two DVI and 1 HDMI ports).

Pros

• Excellent multi-screen support – revised eyefinity configuration
• Great price compared to the competition
• Excellent performance – Plays all modern games at max on 2560 x 1440
• Will be a wide range of custom R9 280X GPUs available at launch because vendors have already worked with the GPU before

Cons

• Is based on a rebranding of the HD 7970
• High power consumption – vendors will need to work hard with custom cooling solutions

“AMD’s R9 280X delivers exactly what it says on the tin. It is the best graphics card at the $300 price point and it is capable of delivering playable frame rates in all modern games at 2560 x 1440. Mix that with a rich AMD feature set of DX 11.2 compatibility, Mantle compatibility, OpenGL 4.3 compatibility, anticipated eligibility for the latest Never Settle Bundle (when HD 7000 series ends) and improved Eyefinity – there’s no wonder AMD’s GPU look more attractive than ever. Anyone that is looking to get a high performance graphics card but doesn’t want to spend stupid amounts of money will find that the AMD R9 280X suits their needs perfectly. AMD has once again redefined what value for money means in the mid to high end graphics card market. Just watch out for the power consumption and thermals and ensure you buy a good custom cooled solution!”

Thank you to AMD for providing this review sample.