Overclocking
Overclocking results listed in this section are achieved with the default fan and voltage settings as defined in the VGA BIOS. We choose this approach as it is the most realistic scenario for the majority of users.
Every sample overclocks differently, which is why our results here can only serve as a guideline for what you can expect from your card.
On NVIDIA cards with Boost, the values discussed here are base clock. Boost will further increase clocks. Boost is already factored into our resulting clocks for AMD cards because of the way their technology works.
Maximum overclock of our sample is 1155 MHz GPU base clock (10% overclock) and 1800 MHz memory (20% overclock).
Maximum GPU clock ends up on the lower end of the spectrum for R9 280X cards, but not terribly so. Memory overclocks quite well, especially when you consider that this card uses Elpida chips, which usually do not OC that well.
Maximum Overclock Comparison |
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| Max. GPU Clock | Max. Memory Clock |
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MSI R9 280X Gaming 6 GB | 1155 MHz | 1800 MHz |
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MSI R9 280X Gaming 3 GB | 1145 MHz | 1825 MHz |
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ASUS R9 280X DC II | 1180 MHz | 1855 MHz |
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ASUS R9 280X Matrix | 1195 MHz | 1835 MHz |
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Gigabyte R9 280X OC | 1215 MHz | 1620 MHz |
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Important: Each GPU (including each GPU of the same make and model) will overclock slightly
differently based on random production variances. This table just serves to provide a list of typical
overclocks for similar cards, determined during TPU review.
Using these clock frequencies, we ran a quick test of
Battlefield 3 to evaluate the gains from overclocking.
Actual 3D performance gained from overclocking is 10.8%.