ASUS R9 280X DirectCU II TOP Review

Direct from ASUS we get to sample a retail version of the new R9 280X complete with ASUS’ DirectCU II cooling. How does is fair against the competition?

Product on Review: ASUS R9 280X DirectCU II TOP
Manufacturer and Sponsor: ASUS
Street Price: £275.99

With the advent of a new era of GPUs from AMD, today we sample the R9 280X is the guise of an ASUS’ DirectCU II TOP. The DirectCU II cooler should need little introduction as it was examined in our ASUS GTX770 DirectCU II OC review but if you haven’t had chance to read that, rest assured it is one of the best custom coolers available being both high performing yet extremely quiet.

Perhaps the main reason why you are reading this review though is to learn a little more about the R9 280X. From the outset, we can confirm that the core is for all intents and purposes the very same core used in the AMD HD7970 codenamed ‘Tahiti’. AMD suggest this component is in direct opposition to NVIDIA’s GTX760 however, with NVIDIAs recent price drops on the GTX760 model to sub £200, the R9 280X finds itself without a direct competitor, at least in terms of price. The GTX770 is marked up just above the £300 threshold and with no impending price reduction forthcoming from NVIDIA, the AMD R9 280X finds itself nestled between both the GTX760 and GTX770 cards. Comfotable however it is not because for little more than £200, a HD7970 can be had which as we will see, is near identical to the card we have for review today, especially if you consider the ASUS HD7970 DirectCU II TOP version!

All this makes the ASUS R9 280X DirectCU II TOP a difficult proposition to make however, it needs to be put into perspective. This card is NOT a replacement for the HD7970, that honour goes to the upcoming R9 290X. HD7950? No, that will be the R9 290. The 270X features the Pitcairn core which was the base of the 78XX series of GPUs so where does that leave the R9 280X? Which card does this replace? We will leave question unanswered until we give our closing thought at the end of this review.

ASUS takes its name from Pegasus, the winged horse in Greek mythology that symbolises wisdom and knowledge. ASUS embodies the strength, purity, and adventurous spirit of this fantastic creature, and soars to new heights with each new product it creates.

This visionary approach is the reason ASUS is able to bring high-quality innovation and design to all, and the reason for its widespread acclaim. ASUS products won 4,168 international awards and accolades in 2012 – that’s over 11 a day, every day. ASUS has consistently achieved significant year-on-year growth in terms of consumer notebook units shipped too, and closed 2011 on a high with revenues hitting US$11.9 billion.

Specification

A simple re-brand?

Above is a side by side comparison of the GPU-Z readouts from both the R9 280X (top most) and HD7970 (bottom). Aside from the clockspeeds and resulting texture results, the physical specifications are identical. Both cards use the Tahiti core, have the same amount of memory and bus width meaning for all intents and purposes, both cards attributes are identical. So are AMD simply re-branding the HD7970 and passing it off as a ‘new ‘ graphics card. Well yes and no.

The R9 280X features the same core, and with it the same features of the HD7970. This is no bad thing of course because the HD7970 was, and still is a fantastic high end graphics card capable of most situations you care to throw at it. With 3GB of GDDR5 it wants for pretty much nothing but add an increase in both clockspeed and memory speed as standard and what we now have is a flagship card that should still be capable of mixing it with NVIDIAs second tier of gaming cards. Yes, we would all prefer new technology but that will come with the R9 290X. What AMD have done with the R9 280X is nothing new, indeed NVIDIA use similar tactics when using up excess silicon. What is key is the price.

It is almost 2 years since we reviewed the HD7970 and upon release it was a circa £500 graphics card. We expect the R9 280X cards to enter the market at around £240, less than half the price of a once flagship product. This strategically places the card above the GTX760 price yet below the GTX770 (at the time of writing). Not a bad move at all considering the performance of the HD7970 that this card is expected to exceed. So what is so good about the Tahiti core?

The Tahiti core which is the successor to the Caymen core of the HD6900 family. The Caymen core was based on a 40nm manufacturing process so it is fair to say that perhaps the biggest improvement to the Tahiti core is the reduction to 28nm process. This has enabled AMD to cram 4.31 billion (4,312,711,873) transistors into the Tahiti core as opposed to the 2.64 billion on the HD6970 Caymen XT.

Comprising of what AMD calls ‘Graphics Core Next (GCN)’ architecture which is optimised for heterogeneous computing, the new Tahiti core has upto 32 CU’s (compute units) with dual geometry engines along with 8 back-ends comprising of 32 colour ROPs per clock and 128 Z/Stencil ROPs per clock. Each CU has a Vector unit and Scaler Co-Processor and can execute instructions from multiple kernels.

The VLIW4 SIMD has evolved to the GCN quad SIMD which equates to similar computational power yet grants better performance, threading and simplification. The GCN also has a new Cache hierarchy with 16KB instruction Cache and32KB Scaler Cache shared between 4 CU’s. The L2 Cache is accessible by each CU with it’s own separate process to ensure coherency. These changes increase the GFLOPs by 140%.

Tesselation on the Tahiti core is also enhanced by increased Vertex re-use off-core which theoretically at least, means the R9 280X has 4 times the throughput of the 69XX series. The are improved ansioscopic filtering algorithms too which come at no performance cost allegedly. These new algorithm improvement will allow the use of Forward Rendering with 1000’s of potential light sources and will also mean MSAA can be rendered easily.

Looking at the schematics above, we can identify the bulk of the GPU is taken up with the 32 CU’s. Above these are the geometry engines. To the left and right are the 8 Render back-ends, 4 each side. There’s 768KB of L2 cache along with 6x64bit dual channel memory controllers making a 384-bit GDDR5 memory interface capable of delivering up to 264GB/sec. All of technology coupled together is transferred through a fully compatible PCI Express 3.0 x16 bus interface. Have no fear though because the cards are backwards compatible with PCIe 2.0.

AMD Zerocore Power Efficiency

AMD ZEROCORE POWER

ENABLING THE WORLD’S MOST POWER EFFICIENT GPUS

When a discrete GPU is in a static screen state it works to minimize idle power by enabling a host of active power saving functions including (but not limited to); clock gating, power gating, memory compression, and a host of other features. However, GPUs with AMD’s exclusive AMD ZeroCore Power technology can take energy savings to entirely new heights by completely powering down the core GPU while the rest of the system remains active. Nearly all PCs can be configured to turn off their displays after a long period of inactivity. This is known as the long idle state; where the screen is blanked but the rest of the system remains in an active and working power state (ACPI G0/S0).

As soon as the system goes into long idle state and applications are not actively changing the screen contents, the GPU enters the AMD ZeroCore power state. In the AMD ZeroCore power state, the GPU core (including the 3D engine / compute units, multimedia and audio engines, displays, memory interfaces, etc.) is completely powered down. However, one cannot simply remove the GPU and its associated device context completely; particularly when it is the
only GPU in the system as is the case in many enthusiast platforms. The operating system and SBIOS must still be aware that a GPU is still present in the system. For this reason, the AMD ZeroCore Power state maintains a very small bus control block to ensure that GPU context is still visible to the operating system and SBIOS. The AMD ZeroCore power state also manages the power sequencing of the GPU to ensure that the power up/down mechanism is self contained
and independent of the rest of the system.

The enablement of the AMD ZeroCore Power feature is controlled by the driver. The driver monitors the display contents and allows the GPU to enter the AMD ZeroCore Power in the condition that the GPU enters long idle and subsequent work requests are no longer being submitted to the engine. If any applications update the screen contents, AMD ZeroCore Power technology can periodically wake the GPU to update the framebuffer contents and put the GPU
back into the AMD ZeroCore Power state. Furthermore, applications such as Windows 7 desktop gadgets are architected to minimize activity and save power in the long idle state. These applications are active during screen on mode to display dynamic content such as weather, RSS feeds, stock symbols, system status, etc. but also have the intelligence to suspend any updates and activity when the system enters long idle. These applications will not wake the
GPU from the AMD ZeroCore Power state in long idle.

AMD ZeroCore Power technology delivers tremendous energy savings. Many PCs remain in the long idle state for a variety of use cases that are highly relevant to everyday consumers, enthusiasts and professionals. In AMD ZeroCore Power mode, users can still enjoy non‐graphics activities such as file serving/streaming, motherboard audio and music, and remote access while the GPU core is essentially powered off.

GCN Technology

Available on select, high-performance AMD Radeon™ R9 and HD 7000 Series graphics products, the Graphics Core Next (GCN) Architecture is a radically new approach to the design of a consumer GPU.

Designed to push not only the boundaries of DirectX® 11.2 gaming, the GCN Architecture is also AMD’s first design specifically engineered for general computing. Equipped with up to 32 compute units (2048 stream processors), each containing a scalar coprocessor, AMD’s 28nm GPUs are more than capable of handling workloads-and programming languages-traditionally exclusive to the processor. Coupled with the dramatic rise of GPU-aware programming languages like C++ AMP and OpenCL™, the GCN Architecture is truly the right architecture for the right time.

Performance

In simple terms, increasing the number of transistors in a GPU has a big impact on the potential performance of a graphics card-but transistors alone are not enough. It takes a truly great design, like the GCN Architecture, to effectively utilize that potential for real-world performance.

Below you will find just a few examples of how this truly next-generation architecture delivers on one very simple design goal: enable the world’s most powerful graphics cards.1

Starting with GPU utilization, AMD has taken great strides to ensure that the GCN Architecture is capable of efficiently using its hardware resources. This seems like such a simple idea, but designing a GPU to frequently approach its peak theoretical performance is a challenge the GCN Architecture tackles with ease.

The GCN Architecture is designed for improved utilization, which ensures that the GPU is making optimal use of its resources for maximum performance.

The GCN Architecture also benefits from dramatically improved tessellation performance. Games featuring this DirectX® 11 technology are considerably faster than they were on the previous generation of AMD Radeon™ products. There is also the new Mantle API which promises to dominate NVIDIA, especially in titles such as Battlefield 4. Project Mantle is one of AMD’s most innovative and game-changing features, delivered with the Radeon™ R9 and R7 Series product line. Mantle is a new application programming interface (API), leveraging the commonality between the next-gen consoles and Radeon™. It enables game developers direct communication to our GPUs, unlocking the true potential of GCN and resulting in significantly higher gaming performance at all segments. We will be looking at Mantle in a separate article but if what we hear is correct, Microsoft (who are responsible for DirectX) should be very worried.

Every gamer knows that the GPU’s clockspeed also has a big impact on the performance of a graphics card, and the GCN Architecture keeps that in mind.

But what many don’t know is that every graphics card is designed to draw only a certain amount of power from your PC’s power supply. This is called the Thermal Design Profile, or TDP, and it’s critical that the GPU architecture is capable of making the most of every watt. The GCN Architecture can do that thanks to a technology called AMD PowerTune technology.

AMD PowerTune is an intelligent system that performs real-time analysis of the games and applications that utilize a GPU. Examples of such software might include Battlefield 3 or Furmark. In the event that an application is not making the most of the power available to the GPU, AMD PowerTune can improve that application’s performance by raising the GPU’s clockspeed by up to 30%! Best of all, this technology is completely automatic and is designed specifically to improve gaming performance.

Available on all 28nm AMD Radeon™ products, AMD PowerTune is designed to enable significantly higher clockspeeds in your favorite games-automatically!

Image Quality

But performance is not enough for today’s demanding gamers. Image quality, or the clarity and accuracy of textures and effects, is equally important. The GCN Architecture is equipped with three key technologies that dramatically raise the bar in this regard.

Partially Resident Textures (PRT)
Even in the latest titles, gamers may have noticed that games often re-use or repeat textures, particularly on the ground or in background scenery such as mountains or trees. This is because increasing the physical size or number of textures in a game can have a negative impact on the performance of a GPU. PRT is a radical new technology that hopes to break this cycle.

PRT can utilize absolutely enormous texture files, up to 32 terabytes large, with minimal performance impact. PRT accomplishes this by streaming small bits of these massive textures into the GPU as needed, giving compatible games a virtually endless supply of unique texture data it can apply to the game world. The GCN Architecture in 28nm AMD Radeon™ products is the first GPU design to feature a hardware implementation of this technology.

Partially Resident Textures (PRT) enables future games to utilize ultra-high resolution textures with the same performance as today’s small and often repetitive textures.

Improved Anisotropic Filtering (AF)

Available on every modern GPU, anisotropic filtering is a technique that assists the GPU in making sure textures in your favorite games remain razor sharp, even at a distance. Most games now offer the ability to enable this feature, and the AMD Catalyst™ driver suite has long provided players with the option to force enable anisotropic filtering for all of their games.

Where every GPU design differs, however, is in the way the anisotropic filtering is actually executed. The GCN Architecture has been specifically optimized to produce superior results when AF is enabled.

Improved anisotropic filtering in products like the AMD Radeon™ HD 7900 Series ensure gamers get sharper, better textures when this technology is enabled.

Improved DirectX® 11 Tessellation
As DirectX® 11 titles become more mature, game developers are naturally pushing the envelope of realism by utilizing a greater degree of special rendering effects. One such effect is tessellation, which can dynamically generate additional detail in a scene on the fly.

A wireframe scene of a rally car in DiRT 3 driving through water. On the left, notice there are no ripples. On the right, after tessellation, there is new and dynamic detail in the game.

As with anisotropic filtering, tessellation is not new to GPUs, but the manner in which tessellation is executed can have a large impact on the gaming experience. Because of this, the GCN Architecture has again been optimized to deliver up to 4x the performance of the AMD Radeon™ HD 6000 Series in heavily-tessellated games.

Packaging & Accessories

The outer sleeve of the box features a small, fragmented diagram of the card on a backdrop of metal complete with ‘talon’ tears. Beneath this we find the main product features of DIGI+, GPU Tweak, 2GB GDDR5 and OC (Overclocked).

The rear of the package goes into greater detail regarding the features in multiple languages. ASUS also show the I/O backplate which is a nice addition.

Removing the sleeve we find a compartmentalised plain Matt black box, identical to their GPU range of the past two years. Not that this is a bad thing because this packaged, while hardly new, is one of the best out there ensuring that the product will reach you in perfect condition.

We mentioned this with the previous review of the GTX760 DirectCU II in that the accessory list is less than appealing with a driver/utility CD and quick start/installation guide along with the obligatory Crossfire bridge. Because most gamers will have at least a DVI port, the omission of a VGA adaptor is forgivable but it would have been nice to have a 6-8 pin PCIe power port adaptor.

First Look

The graphics card is dominated by the DirectCU II cooler. For those who already have a ROG board, this card will perfectly match the colour scheme thanks to the red highlights across the centre of the card adjacent to the twin fans.

There is no backplate, as with the GTX760 version which is a shame. Nonetheless, ASUS were considerate enough to protect all of the gold fingers along with the ports in the input/output area with blue plastic protects to ensure static discharge damage is potentially avoided. The PCB is matt black which is never a bad thing and as you can see, there are just four screws holding the cooler to the card making it easier to change the TIM should you wish to do so.

The card features a mid-plate which acts as both a brace to prevent bowing of the card but also to cool both memory and the VRM area. From this angle we can see a single huge heatpipe sprouting out beneath the core area which hints at the cooling performance. There are however a total of five heatpies on this DirectCU II design.

The ASUS R9 280X dimensions are 11.2″ x 5.7″ x 1.5″ inches and will take up two expansion ports on the motherboard.

Overall, the aesthetics of the card are great. We love the black and red theme which would perfectly suit a ROG (Republic Of Gamers) PC build. We found it odd however that ASUS used two different fans however, as described below, there is method to the madness:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/totFkHQftaI[/youtube]

Let’s take a closer look…

Closer Look

We found it odd that ASUS used two different fans however, it is clear why they used at least one Cooltech fan:

Strange then that they did not use both Cooltech designs as the benefits from noise reduction on one fan will be countered by the same noise being used on the more traditional fan. We can only surmise that the turbulence caused by using two of the same fans actually served to increase noise so an equilibrium was sought by using a hybrid design.

The I/O area is a mirror of NVIDIA samples by using both DVI-I, DVI-D, full size HDMI and a DisplayPort.

Having twin Corssfire tabs, the card is fully capable of being married up to other cards from the same family to enhance performance further. We are also led to believe that the R9 280X can be paired with a HD7970 (source) which will be excellent news for those wanting to add to their HD7970 at a later date.

To power the card you will need both an 8+6pin power cables and ASUS recommend a PSU of 750W with 24A available on the 12v line.

Detailed Look

The DirectCU cooler is quite a hefty beast. It features a full length, longitudinal aluminium finned array with five heatpipes entwined between that meet to form a direct copper contact baseplate.

The baseplate is made up of the five heatpipes which are compressed to form a perfectly flat direct contact area for the exposed silicon of the GPU core.

the cooling doesn’t end there though because along with a midplate which cools the memory modules, ASUS use a separate aluminium heatsink to keep the VRM area cool.

The card layout is very similar to the AMD HD7970. there are obvious difference, not least because of the reduction in the input/output ports. ASUS have used a much stronger VRM area and of course used their own hi performance chokes and solid caps.

The VRM area is a 10 phase power design as opposed to the 6 found on the HD7970 and 5 on the reference 280X design. This should allow the ASUS card to reach much higher overclocks even though the R9 280X is higher clocked than a HD7970 AND ASUS have added their own factory overclock. We still hope for more of course and will look at the overclocking results toward the end of the review.

DIGI+ VRM, unlike traditional analog designs, is embedded with digital settings to adjust voltage according to different overclocking scenarios. Due to the precise voltage change, it leads to lower power noise, from 239mV to 159mV.

Controlling the digital functions of the card is the familiar DIGI+ VRM controller. DIGI+ VRM intelligently transfers current among phases and results in less power loss. The delicate power control design efficiently brings power consumption from original 34.4W down to 28.7W.

The memory is an improved design with a product code of H5GQ2H24AFR R0C which should give us some good overclocking results if history is anything to go by.

Finally we reach the core of the R9 280X, codenamed Tahiti. The Tahiti core, while old hat in terms of GPU technology is still one of the strongest slivers of silicon this side of a dual GPU and will handle any game, at any resolution with relative ease.

Test Setup & Methodology

How we test graphics cards

Testing a graphics card is an extremely lengthy process. We sometimes see reviews where a graphic card has been tested using out of date equipment, out of date games and out of date drivers. While the latter can be excused due to the sheer amount of driver updates making a thorough review impossible we will however notify the reader when we have used a different driver to the normal for example a pre-release driver. For the most part however we will always use the same hardware and where possible the same drivers unless a newer driver rectifies an issue we have encountered or significantly improves performance to such an extent that continuing with an outdated driver is not feasible.

Frame Time Analysis
We have also seen the emergence of frame time analysis. We covered this in a separate article here: GPU Reviews: Why Frame Time Analysis is important so we won’t go into the reasoning again but to summarise, our testing comprises both FPS testing and perhaps arguably more importantly, frame time analysis. We also look at overall performance by equating averages across the games and finally before concluding our review we take a look at value for money.

HardwareWith the latest Intel chipset release we decided to update our ageing X58 setup to the new X79 chipset. Not only that but we will be using the flagship Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition processor clocked to 4.5GHz to ensure we have no CPU bottlenecks. With 16GB of ram on board there should be minimal paging so the benchmarks we run today will hopefully give a true reflection of the graphics card’s performance.

High End Graphics cards on test:

ASUS R9 280X DirectCU II 3GB GDDR5
(CAT 13.11 Beta v1)
ASUS GTX760 DirectCU Mini OC 2GB GDDR5(Forceware 320.49)
Inno3D iChill GTX 780 HerculeZ X3 Ultra 3GB GDDR5(Forceware 320.49)
ASUS GTX770 DIRECT II CU OC 2GB GDDR5(Forceware 320.49)
MSI GTX760 Twin Frozr Gaming 2GB GDDR5(Forceware 320.49)
GIGABYTE GTX780 Windforce x3 OC 3GB GDDR5(Forceware 320.49)
GAINWARD GTX780 PHANTOM ‘GLH’ 3GB GDDR5(Forceware 320.49)
INNO3D GTX760 ICHILL HERCULEZ 2GB GDDR5(Forceware 320.49)
GIGABYTE GTX770 WINDFORCE 3X OC 2GB GDDR5(Forceware 320.49)
ZOTAC GTX760 2GB GDDR5(Forceware 320.39)
NVIDIA GTX760 2GB GDDR5(Forceware 320.39)
]NVIDIA GTX760 2GB GDDR5 SLI(Forceware 320.39)
SAPPHIRE DUAL-X HD7950 3GB GDDR5 (Catalyst 13.6 beta)
CLUB 3D HD7970 royalAce 3GB GDDR5 (Catalyst 13.6 beta)
GAINWARD PHANTOM GTX 770 2GB GDDR5 (Forceware 320.18)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 2GB GDDR5 (Forceware 320.18)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 3GB GDDR5 (Forceware 320.18)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 4GB GDDR5 (Forceware 314.22)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN 6GB GDDR5 (Forceware 314.22)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN SLI 12GB(2x6GB) GDDR5 (Forceware 314.22)
NVIDIA GTX680 2GB GDDR5 (Forceware 314.22)
AMD HD7970 3GB GDDR5 (AMD CAT 13.3 beta)

Motherboard: ASUS P9X79 Pro
CPU: Intel Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition @ 4.5GHz
RAM – 16GB (4x4GB) Corsair Vengeance (Red) DDR3 @ 1866MHz 9-10-9-27
Power Supply – Thortech Thunderbolt Plus 1200W
Hard Drive – Kingston HyperX 240GB
Cooler – Corsair H100

Benchmarks
If you are a regular reader of our reviews you will know we like to test the latest hardware with the latest games and benchmarks on the market. Here are the games we have chosen:

Battlefield 3
Crysis 3
Far Cry 3
BioShock Infinite
DiRT: Showdown
The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim

We also take into consideration the benchmarkers out there so have included 3 of the more popular synthetic benchmarks available:

Unigine: Valley
Unigine: Heaven 4
Futuremark 3DMark Firestrike

Let’s see how today’s graphics card performed…

Temperature, Acoustics and Power Consumption

Power Consumption

To test for power consumption we use the included iPower Meter found with our Thortech PSU. As system load figures obviously differ from idle it is extremely difficult to get an accurate figure of system draw and then simply take this figure away from the overall amount because each game will generate varying levels of CPU and hard drive activity. Dynamic power adjustments which fluctuate in game will also affect accurate power figures thus rendering any such power consumption calculations redundant at worst and approximate at best.

We will therefore take our system readings averaged over a benchmark run of Tessmark (100% load) and after 20 minutes of being idle in Windows 7. These can then be used as a comparison to other graphics cards to determine how much more or less power you can expect a GPU to consume.

Power consumption was excellent. Despite being higher clocked and having the same core, it consumed far less power than the comparable HD7970 on test. It was however a little greedier than both NVIDIA’s GTX760 and 770 models.

Temperature

To test temperatures we measured idle temperatures after booting windows, letting all applications finish loading and ran a few benchmarks. Once the benchmarks were complete we left the card to reach a cooling plateau where we then took the idle temperatures. For the load tests, we would normally run Furmark for 20 minutes, taking the absolute maximum temperature attained however we found that this throttled the card and resulted in spurious results. So we set Heaven running continuously for 20 minutes and used this as a temperature result as the card did not throttle with this application.

Being a DirectCU II design, we were not surprised to find that the ASUS card performed exceptionally well in this area.

Acoustics

Normally when a card runs cool, it either has a very efficient core (which we know isn’t true of the Tahiti core because that runs very hot) or it has a powerful but noisy cooling design. The ASUS Direct CU II cooler, thanks to its hybrid design is very quiet yet has excellent performance.

Let’s see how the card performs in our suite of benchmarks…

Gaming Experience (Frame Time Analysis)

Here we take a look at both average (black) and 99th Percentile (coloured) response times of the graphics cards. It is highly unlikely a user will notice any micro stutter (also incorrectly referred to as lag but the effect can be interpreted to be similar) at anything below 30ms but every gamers perception differs.

Comment

The graphs above may appear very daunting however, what you want to see is a smooth line (not fuzzy) with very few peaks and troughs. While you are unlikely to notice peaks and troughs below 30ms, any peak above 30ms may be seen as a stutter during gameplay. This will however depend greatly on your own perceptions. Multi card setups are more likely to show frame lag due to the nature of cross communicating to render frames.

Average and 99th Percentile response times (Frame Time Analysis)

Futuremark 3DMark Fire Strike (Synthetic)

Fire Strike is the new showcase DirectX 11 benchmark designed for high-performance gaming PCs. It is Futuremark’s most ambitious and technical benchmark ever, featuring real-time graphics rendered with detail and complexity far beyond what is found in other benchmarks and games today.

Unigine: Heaven 4 (Synthetic)

Heaven Benchmark with its current version 4.0 is a GPU-intensive benchmark that hammers graphics cards to the limits. This powerful tool can be effectively used to determine the stability of a GPU under extremely stressful conditions, as well as check the cooling system’s potential under maximum heat output. It provides completely unbiased results and generates true in-game rendering workloads across all platforms.

Unigine: Valley (Synthetic)

Valley Benchmark is a new GPU stress-testing tool from the developers of the very popular and highly acclaimed Heaven Benchmark. The forest-covered valley surrounded by vast mountains amazes with its scale from a bird’s-eye view and is extremely detailed down to every leaf and flower petal. This non-synthetic benchmark powered by the state-of-the art UNIGINE Engine showcases a comprehensive set of cutting-edge graphics technologies with a dynamic environment and fully interactive modes available to the end user.

Battlefield 3 (FPS)

Battlefield 3 leaps ahead of its time with the power of Frostbite™ 2, the next installment of DICE’s cutting-edge game engine. This state-of-the-art technology is the foundation on which Battlefield 3 is built, delivering enhanced visual quality, a grand sense of scale, massive destruction, dynamic audio and incredibly lifelike character animations. As bullets whiz by, walls crumble, and explosions throw you to the ground, the battlefield feels more alive and interactive than ever before. In Battlefield 3, players step into the role of the elite U.S. Marines where they will experience heart-pounding missions across diverse locations including Paris, Tehran and New York.

Average and minimum frames per second were measured using Fraps during the parking lot scene on Operation Sword Breaker. High and Ultra presets were loaded at both resolutions.

Crysis 3 (FPS)

Crysis 3 from Electronic Arts is the fourth instalment of the Crysis franchise and sequel to Crysis 2. It uses the CryEngine 3 gaming engine which is perhaps the most advanced gaming engine to date and therefore the most demanding. The meme ‘Can it run Crysis’ has never been so apparent…

Far Cry 3 (FPS)

Far Cry 3 is a tropical survival shooter video game from Ubisoft Montreal and Massive studios. It’s open world design has similar traits to it’s forbear Far Cry 2 but it does it all so much better. With stunning visuals and settings to bring a PC to it’s knee’s, this game is so much more than the ‘just another console port’ it was reported to be.

BioShock Infinite (FPS)

Set in 1912 during the growth of American exceptionalism, BioShock Infinite is a thrid person shooter developed by Irrational games and published by 2K Games. It is the third instalment of the BioShock franchise. the game utilises the Unreal Engine 3, modifying it with their own lighting engine to present a visually stunning experience like no other.

DiRT: Showdown (FPS)

DiRT Showdown is the new arcade racing game from the team that brought you the award-winning DiRT series, uncaged in 2012. Pick up and play controls combine with electrifying events, frenzied crowds and stunning graphics to deliver high octane, dive in and drive thrills from event one.

The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim (FPS)

Skyrim is not a direct successor to the very popular Oblivion. Instead it takes place 200 years after the events of Oblivion. The non-linear playing that made the Elder Scrolls such a popular series does however make a return along with the beautiful scenery the encompasses the world of Skyrim.

Average and minimum frames per second were measured using Fraps during the drop down passage to Riverwood. V-sync was disabled to allow fluctuating (higher the 60) FPS for these runs. It is however recommended that v-sync is left enabled during normal gameplay due to the games dynamics.

Value For Money

We make a simple calculation for this set of results. For each game we add all of the resulting FPS totals together and then divide by the four sets to give us an overall performance figure. While the figures alone do not give you an accurate picture of how the card will perform in any given scenario, they do tell you, when averaged, which GPU is the more capable across all of the benchmarks and settings tested.

[fullimage=23846]

Overclocking

For overclocking the R9 280X DirectCU II card we will be using ASUS’ own Tweak GPU tool as this gives us all of the options we require.

Above is a screenshot of GPU-Z showing the reference (factory overclocked) speeds We have also included the ASIC rating of our sample. The ASIC rating basicly tells us how good the overclock will be. The higher the ASIC rating, the better the overclock is likely to be, particularly on air cooling at a given voltage for example.

In truth, we are still dubious as to the real value of this reading but time will tell. As we have been asked on numerous occasions to include it in our reviews we felt it only right to show it although please take any of these values with a pinch of salt until we can confirm whether it does actually mean a higher or lower overclock will be achieved.

Thanks to the excellent cooling properties and the power management of the ASUS R9-280X, we managed a fantastic and fully stable overclock, increasing the core to 1235MHz. The card would run benchmarks at 1250MHz but sadly some artifacting was noticeable so we dropped back our 100% stable (verified by multiple passes of Unigine Heaven 4.0) overclock.

After settling on our stable clockspeed which was verified by multiple runs of Unigine Heaven and 3DMark we benchmarked the overclock and compared it to stock results with Unigine Heaven 4.0 to evaluate the benefits of overclocking the GPU.

Conclusion

To answer the question posed in the introduction of this review: Clearly the R9-280X is a HD7970 beneath the skin. This is amplified by our set of benchmarks with the 280X scoring near identical results to the higher overclocked Club3D HD7970. However the R9-280X isn’t a replacement for the HD7970 nor any other card any card in the AMD armoury. It is simply an answer to the NVIDIA opposition. Those looking to purchase a GTX760 would do well to consider this card as it clearly outperforms its NVIDIA counterpart. Not only this but it outperforms reference GTX770 cards and is on a par with the overclocked GTX770 editions. So while the R9-280X, and in particular the ASUS card we have sampled today may not directly replace any card in its current line-up despite being a HD7970 in disguise, it addresses the competition by offering a viable and worthy alternative thanks in part to the Tahiti core.

While the HD7970 will soon become end of line, the R9-280X seeks to expand upon the Tahiti core’s lifespan. And why not, after all it is a tremendously powerful component. AMD will obviously face criticism for re-branding 2 year old technology and rightly so as we all love to gorge ourselves on new technology but this does not mean the 280X is a poor, re-hashed card by any stretch of the imagination.

This particular variety from ASUS overclocks very well indeed, it is cool running, looks the part, uses less power than its HD7970 stable-mate and is also quieter too. What’s not to like? While the price may be a little above the current HD7970 due to the heavy price dropping by AMD, it is still a competitive price, especially when compared to the NVIDIA GTX770. As shown by [H], it can also be crossfired with an existing HD7970 so if you are looking for an upgrade, don’t go selling that HD7970 just yet because adding this GPU to your HD7970 will give you GTX 690/HD7990 beating performance.

We therefore feel, despite the lack of innovation by AMD on this particular GPU series, this card warrants our Gold award both for product positioning and price which are near perfect. Something which for a new release of graphics card is quite rare by today’s standards.

To summarise:
The ASUS R9-280X DirectCU II TOP may well hide ‘old’ tech beneath the imposing aesthetics yet it is still a very high performing product which will serve any demanding enthusiast well at this price point.

Pros

+ Flagship performance at half the cost
+ Quiet
+ Great overclocking potential
+ Sublime aesthetics

Cons
– 2 year old technology
– Too few accessories