Gigabyte R9 280X Windforce OC Video Card Review & Benchmarks

Test System and Testing

When we originally started the testing the R9 280X actually showed up as a HD 7970GHz Edition card, but after the BIOS flash and new driver the card now shows up as the R9 280X. For these tests we built an entirely new test bed featuring the new Haswell i7-4770K, a SanDisk Extreme II SSD for the BOOT drive and a WD 1 TB drive for game storage. Other parts include 32GB of Patriot’s Viper Extreme memory, CoolerMaster EVO 612 cooler and Samsung DVDRW all mounted on our Danger Den Torture Rack. Although these cards can do more than just game our original review hovers in the gaming arena with a few tests testing other aspects of the R9 280X.

• Motherboard: ASUS Maximus VI Hero
• CPU: i7-4770K
• Cooling: Cooler Master EVO 612
• Memory: Patriot Viper Extreme 32GB XMP 1866MHz
• PSU: Rosewill Hercules 1600W
• SSD BOOT Drive: SanDisk Extreme II 240GB SSD
• Storage Western Digital 1TB Black 7200 RPM Hard Drive
• Monitor: HP ZR2740W (2560 x 1440)

We tried to run as many of the current crop of games that are floating around at the moment and I think we have a pretty good balance of getting a solid feel for how the card runs in a variety of different situations and games. The thing that kills us as reviewers though is when after a week of testing a day or so before launch they send you new drivers expecting you to just redo all the work you have already done, which is a real pain in the derriere when you feel like you should be finished, but just have to start all over again.  To insure we bring you the latest and best scores we did however redo everything just to make sure all was kosher at the end of the review process. All games were tested a minimum of 3 runs and the score balanced to ensure accuracy of the results. One thing to take note of though, you can CrossFire a HD 7970 with a R9 280X so that is something of an interesting turn of things. We will have a full review of that coming very soon.

Continue Reading: Performance and Temperatures 

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