Introduction

With a market presence of close to two years and counting, the Radeon HD 7000 series kept AMD afloat in the discrete PC graphics market. The company pretty much sat out 2012, probably focusing its efforts on getting its next-generation console chips right. Come Q4 2013 and a product-stack update is long overdue for AMD. The company feels that the silicon it built its HD 7000 on is still fit for duty, provided that SKUs based on them are repositioned in the product stack much in the same way NVIDIA shuffled its with the GeForce GTX 700 series. Much like NVIDIA, AMD is going into its new generation with just one new chip it codenamed "Hawaii" while repositioning "Tahiti" and "Pitcairn" based SKUs one tier lower.



The R9 290 series will succeed the HD 7900 series in the product stack, and the R9 280 series succeeds the HD 7800 series while the R9 270 series succeeds the HD 7700 series. Since such an arbitrary product stack repositioning would create unreal price-performance increments at the price points AMD launched its various HD 7000 series products, AMD tweaked pricing a little, so there really is a different and equally valid way of looking at AMD’s new product stack by using price points.

The Radeon R9 280X we have with us today is an interesting proposition for $299. It’s fundamentally identical to the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition from last year, but sells at a price that isn't too far off the $249.99 at which the Radeon HD 7870 debuted. Under the hood, the card is based on the same 28 nm "Tahiti" silicon that proved to be AMD's workhorse performance-segment chip for the better part of two years.

The Radeon R9 280X comes at an interesting time: DICE, publishers of the smash-hit "Battlefield" online multiplayer shooter franchise, announced that the recommended system requirements for the upcoming "Battlefield 4" prescribes graphics cards with at least 3 GB of video memory, which disqualifies the likes of the $410 GeForce GTX 770 and even NVIDIA’s flagship for last year, the GeForce GTX 680. Even though a very artificial requirement, it could still impact buyers psychologically, swaying them to buy either the R9 280X or the now $220-ish HD 7950.

Based on the 28 nm "Tahiti" silicon, the Radeon R9 280X features 2,048 stream processors based on the Graphics CoreNext architecture, 128 texture memory units (TMUs), 32 raster operations units (ROPs), and a 384-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface holding 3 GB. AMD’s reference clock speeds for the chip are 1000 MHz on the core and 1500 MHz (6.00 GT/s effective) on memory, churning out 288 GB/s of memory bandwidth.



Today, we are reviewing the Gigabyte R9 280X WindForce OC using the company's WindForce cooling solution we've seen on several other cards before. Gigabyte does use a new PCB design with new voltage regulation circuitry and has also overclocked the R9 280X out of the box, giving its GPU a 100 MHz clock boost. Memory is merely clocked at the default 1500 MHz, though. The Gigabyte R9 280X WindForce OC is currently available online for only $299, which means it comes at no price premium over the reference design, making it a very attractive card for people who don't want to spend too much money.

Packaging & Contents

We received the card without packaging or accessories from GIGABYTE. Rest assured that the final product will come with the usual documentation, driver CD, and adapters.

The Card

We've seen Gigabyte's cooler design on a few models now. Three large fans cover most of the surface of the PCB to keep it cool. Dimensions of the card are 26.5 x 11.5 cm.


Installation requires two slots in your system.


Display connectivity options include one DVI port, one HDMI port, and two DisplayPorts. You may use all outputs at the same time, so triple-monitor surround gaming is possible with one card.

The GPU also includes an HDMI sound device. It is HDMI 1.4a compatible, which includes HD audio and Blu-ray 3D movies support.


Two available CrossFire connectors allow you to combine up to four R9 280X cards in a CrossFire configuration. You may also combine the R9 280X with cards from the HD 7900 Series since both use the Tahiti GPU.


Pictured above are the front and back, showing the disassembled board. High-res versions are also available (front, back). If you choose to use these images for voltmods, etc., please include a link back to this site or let us post your article.

A Closer Look

Gigabyte's cooler uses five heatpipes that quickly transport heat away from the GPU core and to a large array of fins above which sit the three fans. Please also note that the thermal pads for cooling the memory chips are located on the primary cooler.


Gigabyte has also added a small heatsink over the VRM area to keep voltage regulation circuitry cool.


The card requires a 6-pin and one 8-pin PCI-Express power connector. This configuration is good for up to 300 W of power draw.


Gigabyte installed a dual-BIOS on their R9 280X, a feature we've seen on many HD 7900 Series cards before. It comes in extremely handy when a BIOS flash goes wrong. Just switch to the other BIOS to recover.


Gigabyte picked an ADP4100 voltage controller for the design. A very rare controller, it is a cost-effective solution, but does not provide voltage control or advanced monitoring via I2C.


The GDDR5 memory chips are made by Elpida and carry the model number W2032BBBG-6A-F. They are specified to run at 1500 MHz (6000 MHz GDDR5 effective).


AMD's Tahiti graphics processor was the first chip to use the GCN shader architecture. It is also the first GPU to be produced on a 28 nm process at TSMC. The transistor count is 4.31 billion.