MSI Radeon R9 280X Gaming 6 GB

[IRQ Conflict]

The conclusion in the review shows an 8.9 but the main review page shows 9.1. Which is it?

 

[W1zzard]

The conclusion in the review shows an 8.9 but the main review page shows 9.1. Which is it?

fixed

 

[The Von Matrices]

Well at that price that's actually a pretty good deal if you want to run a multi-card setup at a high resolution!

I see no point of a 6GB 280X since it can't practically be used in Crossfire to drive the displays that would actually need 6GB of VRAM. Using any 60Hz display setup over 4MP including Eyefnity and 4K is asking for trouble with Crossfire 280Xs.

The frame pacing issues with the 280X/7970 are still not fixed for high resolution even with the latest drivers. I have 3 7970s and a 7MP display setup but can't stand to use Crossfire - the stuttering for most games is that distracting. The big issue is that those few games with optimizations for frame pacing are not the newest games that I actually want to play. For example, the 14.3 drivers finally added reasonable frame pacing for Crysis 3 over one year after the game's release and after everyone who had wanted to play the game already did. Even the "Gaming Evolved" titles (now with the exception of Crysis 3) are unsupported for 280X high resolution frame pacing. Thief for example has a 70% variance in frame timing even though it's AMD's current premiere title.

I seriously have wanted to play Bioshock Infinite in Eyefinity at high or extreme settings but I can't stand the stuttering in Crossfire and therefore run one card (Crossfire disabled) at normal settings. I don't hold out hope for AMD releasing frame pacing optimizations for the game either. Considering the age of the Tahiti GPU, I think stuttering is an intractable problem and people like me just got burned by AMD's promises within the past year of fixing the issue completely. With all the headaches these 7970s have caused me, I know that as soon as the 20nm GPUs come out, I'm getting rid of the 7970s.

 

[sliderider]

It seems the 6gb is of no benefit at all, at least in the resolutions that the vast majority of gamers play at. If you play with 3-1280p monitors, then it might be of some benefit but for the rest of us who don't, it's a waste of money when there are better cards for less that you can use on a single monitor. It looks to me like any performance gain is coming from the factory overclocks and not the additional RAM. Running a side by side comparison with other factory overclocked R9 280X cards with 3gb would likely prove that out. A Sapphire R9 280X Toxic would probably match this card and cost less.

meh.. R9 290 4gb(400$) is better choice

Or another massively overclocked 280x with only 3gb, like the Sapphire Toxic or the 2nd gen. Vapor-X with Tri-X fans.

 

[Aquinus]

It's entirely possible that the 6GB might not show its colors unless you run crossfire with 2 or 3 in the future when more games have bigger textures. I know with my 6870s, the 1GB holds them back on newer titles where with a single one it's tolerable (for what it is,) but 2GB would help for crossfire where I have more flexibility on quality settings which may use more hefty textures and such. I suspect that same could become true of this GPU if the conditions were right, which they're not yet. It's a lot of extra money to find out though.

 

[halorath]

Basically it depends if you have multiple monitors or a single monitor simply because when the calculation that happens in the
GPU so that many pixels appear on screen to form the whole screen they must have storage to be saved in the card, so
guess what the storage is... that's right you guessed it, it's the VRAM.

So if you have multiple monitors I highly recommend the 6gb version.
E.g. you have a 2GB card and you're running a high-end game at ultra settings you're going to get FPS drops if you're running a second monitor at the same time in the same graphics card.
3GB is solid for 2 monitors but that depends on their resolution and if you have one using the HDMI port because HDMI is harder on the card than DVI. Same goes with the FPS when comparing a 60 Fps monitor to a 120 Fps monitor and if the game is or isn't locked to 60 Fps.

But as far as no game using more than 2GB is wrong;
Heavily modded Skyrim littered with custom HD packs etc can use well over 4GB of VRAM (not including System RAM).
Watch Dogs on ultra settings will use 3.4GB of VRAM (not including System RAM) and that is without unlocking the hidden graphic settings that were only shown at E3.
That's just a few examples and you can look it up too; with GPU statistics showing a GPU maxing out at 4GB VRAM with one monitor playing one game.
Not all games will use more than 2GB but some games do and games within the next 2-3 years will use more than 2GBs also.

That and with the 280x 6GB having 10 degrees less then the 280x 3GB version on load you can overclock it further.

Also if you want to use Crossfire or SLI make sure you have a good CPU and depending on the cards have the CPU Overclocked above 4Ghz and above 4.5Ghz at the least if you Crossfire / SLI 3 high end cards, GPUs can only work with what they are given and it's the CPUs that feed them the game (the GPUs cannot access the hard drives directly it all has to go through the CPU same goes with the system ram anything coming in and out goes through the CPU hence why it's the heart of a computer) and if you have 3 Crossfired / SLI cards and a CPU lower than 4Ghz your CPU will choke your GPUs the they will drop frames not perform as good as they can and stutter but they will still run at high temps though even if they aren't being fed what they require.
E.g. Two R9 290s on CPU lower than 4Ghz gets choked and will run Crysis 3 at 30-40 fps however One R9 290 will run at 60 fps on Crysis 3 with the same settings on the same CPU. because having Two Crossfire R9 290s is too taxing on a CPU lower than 4Ghz.

 

[Dagamus(NM)]

So my export times in adobe premiere pro are awesome with my setup. I am running 3 r9 280x's on my rampage iv with 3930k and my times for exporting a 30 minute hd video is at 11 minutes. This computer has 32gb kingston value ram lol.

This is about four minutes faster than my upstairs computer using sli evga gtx 670 ftw, amd fx-8350 and 32gb kingston hyper-x beast @1866. This is with cuda acceleration.

Before this most recent release of adobe products it was only nvidia products that accelerated adobe but now with the creative cloud releases adopting OpenCL and supporting it fully amd can compete in the professional arena that was previously closed out.

I would be running quad r9 280x 6gb cards but the ek cooling configurator was originally listed as having my existing 7970 blocks fit these which is why I got them. To my dismay the layout of the msi 6gb is different than the 3gb model. It is not just the cooler that is different but the overall pcb.

So nobody makes a waterblock other than a custom job from aqua tuning in Germany and those prices are much higher than my want to get the fourth card in. The spacing for the rampage iv board is favorable for three air cooled cards. I would match them with the amd cpu and use nvidia with the 3930k but amd pcie spacing is retarded and only runs air cooled practically with dual cards.

If anybody knows of an am3+ board that has even spacing for 3 gpu's please share. I wouldn't mind brand matching and getting a 3rd nvidia card to see how it does heads up in video rendering in premiere pro or after effects.

This tri-fire r9 280x 6gb games pretty awesome too. Probably not any better than some other setups but it does great in my experience. 3D dead island and Sleeping dogs is sweet. I am just waiting for dead island 2 to come out.

 

[eidairaman1]

I think Msi should of focused on figuring out how to push 4gib on the board and making it a heavy oc ghz model.

 

[Dagamus(NM)]

1050/6000 out of the box isn't good enough? These do 1200/7000 no problem without artifacts.

 

[eidairaman1]

You forget oc mileage varies. This unit only pulled 1155... Also the 6Gib of ram doesnt negate the expense compared to the 3 gib model- when they perform the same, now if it was a 768bit buss it be different. Now lets see a 285 unit.

 

[Dagamus(NM)]

Where are you going to get a 768bit bus at this price? Nowhere, that's where. Double the bus for 10x the price. 12gb Titan black is the cheapest at $3K for getting a 768 bit bus.

It would be reasonable to want 512 but that would cost a lot more I think.