ASUS Radeon R9 280X DirectCU II Top Review
Published by Christian Ney on 10.10.13Page:
Conclusion
| General | + | - | |
| The Radeon R9 280X DirectCU II Top from ASUS is a
really nice piece of hardware. It features a nice factory overclocking
paired with a strong power design and a very good cooling solution. But
the card isn't perfect, it comes with a very high price tag, the bundle
is poor and it could be quieter especially in idle. Also we have to point out that the Radeon 200 series is not currently part of the Never Settle Forever program. This may change in the future but at the moment you don't get any game for free buying a Radeon 200 series card unless the manufacturer specifies otherwise. |
- Factory Overclocking
- Performance - Cooling - Design - Power Design |
- Price
- Bundle |
|
| Cooling / Noise Level | + | - | |
| For its Radeon R9 280X DC2T ASUS makes use of the
exact same cooler as on the GeForce GTX 780 DirectCU II series. This
DirectCU II version is a very good cooler, the cooling performance is
great, the build quality is very good and it is silent under load
conditions. Unfortunately in idle the cooling system isn't noiseless, we
think the CoolTech fan isn't as silent as it should be, the card could
be quieter. However since such cards are usually put inside good cases you most likely won't hear it so it is not as bad as we make it sounds like. |
- Cooling performance
- Noise levels under load |
- Noise levels in idle | |
| Performance | + | - | |
| The Radeon R9 280X DirectCU II Top is a fast card.
In the in the tested games the Top is on average 6 % faster than a
reference clocked Radeon R9 280X and as fast as a GeForce GTX 770.
Unfortunately it is also as expensive. A closer look at power consumption shows, that our test system, equipped with the DC2T, burns 48 Watts under idle conditions and 283 Watts under load. Both results are very good, especially under load. |
- Performance/Watt
- Power consumption |
||
| Recommendation / Price | + | - | |
| With a starting price of 319 Euros excluding shipping costs accross the EU, the DirectCU II Top is too expensive. That's about 43 Euros on top of the cheapest R9 280X for example. Obviously such high price is because of recent launch but still, since you can get the Radeon HD 7970 Matrix Platinum from the same manufacturer for only 250 Euros and the latter is better in every single point and comes with the Never Settle Forever Bundle. The R9 280X DC2T is going to have a bad time if its selling price remains unchanged. |
- Gaming
- Overclocking |
- Price | |
| We gave the Radeon R9 280X DirectCU II Top from ASUS 4 out of 5 stars. | |||
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