Final Thoughts
Pricing
AMD’s reference R9 280 graphics card has an MSRP of $280 or £200. In the UK we are seeing XFX’s R9 280 Double Dissipation Black Edition OC graphics card with a £219.99 MSRP, for Europeans that is about a €270 MSRP. In the USA it is selling for $300 MSRP. That means XFX are roughly charging a 10% premium over reference pricing for their custom cooler, cherry picked GPUs and factory overclocks – not too bad at all. For those of you who’d rather not pay extra for a speed binned chip and factory overclock then you can get a cheaper version that still packs the same cooler, current pricing details & links for both XFX R9 280 SKUs are below.
XFX R9 280 Double Dissipation (Black Edition OC) – $299.99 | £215.14
XFX R9 280 Double Dissipation (Standard Edition) – $279.99 | £203.14
In the UK and Europe the XFX R9 DD 280s have a 2 year limited warranty. In North America they have a 2 year limited warranty too, but that can be extended to a lifetime warranty if you register it within 30 days as far as I am aware. You can read XFX’s warranty policy here.
Overview
XFX’s R9 280 Double Dissipation Black Edition OC graphics card is certainly a solid graphics card. Whether you’re looking to game or looking to mine you’re going to get a great graphics card that has bags of performance and overclocking potential. Under gaming loads it runs cool and quiet while under mining loads the cooler is easily capable of taming 24/7 operation and with hefty overclocks. XFX have really done AMD’s R9 280 justice – they haven’t put a foot wrong. We can see that XFX have really upped their game since the HD 7000 series because we’ve got a more effective cooling solution, better looking design, quieter operation and more adventurous clock speeds. Now please don’t mind me while I go and buy six of these for my newest mining rig….honestly I’m just kidding!…..but I know other people who won’t be. If you’re a gamer then I’d say grab these before the miners ruin your fun again!
Pros
- Has massive overclocking headroom
- Runs cool and quiet
- Excellent mining potential
- One of the best looking R9 280s on the market
- Flexible display output configuration
Cons
- Black Edition is priced dangerously close to the R9 280X
- Availability and pricing is susceptible to significant fluctuation from mining demand
- Mini DP to full size DP adapters would be welcome
“To mine or to game? Who cares! The XFX R9 280 Double Dissipation Black Edition OC graphics card is going to excel at whatever you’re doing. With bags of overclocking headroom, competitive pricing, quiet operation and an efficient cooling solution there really isn’t much more you could ask for. “
Thank you to XFX for providing this review sample.
It’s a really nice looking cooler. I see it has Xfire connectors, I thought AMD cards ‘Xfired’ through the PCIe slots nowadays. Boy it just goes to show how out of the loop I am as far as AMD goes. I think the last AMD GFX card I tested was a HD 5770.
Just to think I Recently built an AMD machine with a single R9 290X and never even noticed if it had Xfire connectors or not.
That would the Hybrid CrossFire feature. This was limited to the new GPUs AFAIK which means the R9 290X and R9 290 and R9 295X2 if that comes out. I think all the old rebranded GPUs still need a physical connector.
Edit: I believe it is called DMA not Hybrid CFX, no idea why I said that. Get confused easily
Thanks for clearing that up. Apart from building the odd AMD machine, I really don’t have much to do with them.
I want to replace my R9 270 with this thing because of fascist game developer companies pushing horribly optimized games off as demanding graphical accomplishments (like a creed unity) When they do not look any better than games from 2010! So I want a card with at’least 3GB to run 1080p. And I thought since this model if the 280 is priced very well and has a decent power upgrade from my 270, That it would be great. But for some reason this thing is almost a foot long! WTH? It is not a R9 290! It does not need a cooler this dam long! I am going to have to remove my HDD cage and shorten it just to make it fit!
I purchased one of these for $159 after rebate on newegg(I’ve seen them get down to 149) and must be honest – WOW, this card has got to be the price to performance champion! I just sold my watercooled/overclocked gigabyte r9 290x oc edition to put some money toward the new 390 and wanted something cheap to hold me over for the spring/summer. This card has performed beyond my expectations. 1150mhz core/1400 memory without any voltage added, and it easily hits the 1200mhz board max with stability. It cools well even in my terribly confined case, but most importantly it games at 1080 like a champ.