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MSI Gaming R9 280X OC Edition Review

Published by Hiwa Pouri on 03.02.14

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In the past few days we've published no less than three MSI Gaming Series graphics card reviews. Today we're having a closer look at MSI's R9 280X Gaming OC Edition graphics card and what it has to offer in details. A quick look reveals, there is a Twin Frozr IV cooler mounted on a reference PCB, which sounds like a combination that offers a very solid price/performance ratio.

Presentation

These days we are re having quite a good run reviewing a few MSI Gaming Series graphics cards. Today, we have a chance to check out the R9 280X which features a Twin Frozr IV custom cooler but with a reference PCB. With its black and red color scheme this card looks just about perfect on any MSI Gaming Series motherboard and luckily the manufacturer also decided to slightly overclock the GPU.

Since this is a Twin Frozr Gaming version of the MSI Radeon R9 280X series, the graphics card features a slight factory overclock of 50 MHz for the core. While a standard reference Radeon R9 280X GPU is set to work at 850 MHz for the base GPU clock and 1'000 MHz for the Boost GPU clock, the MSI Twin Frozr Gaming R9 280X OC Edition works at 1000 MHz for the base clock and 1'050 MHz for the Boost GPU clock.

Unfortunately, no factory overclocking was done on the 3GB of GDDR5 memory which remains at the recommended 1'500 MHz (6'000 MHz effective).

During our testing the MSI Twin Frozr Gaming R9 280X OC Edition held 1'050 MHz most of the load time. We have only experienced downclocking under FurMark where the GPU clock was going up and down from 1'020 MHz to 1'000 MHz. We did not notice any throttling while gaming.

Specifications

	MSI Twin Frozr Gaming R9 280X OC Edition	R9 280X TurboDuo OC	R9 280X DC II Top	Radeon R9 280X
Chip	Tahiti XT2/L	Tahiti XT2/L	Tahiti XT2/L	Tahiti XT2/L
Process	28 nm	28 nm	28 nm	28 nm
Transistors	4.31 billion	4.31 billion	4.31 billion	4.31 billion
GPU clock	1'000 MHz	880 MHz	1'070 MHz	850 MHz
GPU Boost clock	1'050 MHz	1'030 MHz	N/A	1'000 MHz
Memory GDDR5	3'072 MB	3'072 MB	3'072 MB	3'072 MB
Memory clock	1'500 (6'000) MHz	1'500 (6'000) MHz	1'600 (6'400) MHz	1'500 (6'000) MHz
Memory interface	384 Bit	384 Bit	384 Bit	384 Bit
Memory bandwidth	288.0 GB/s	288.0 GB/s	307.2 GB/s	288 GB/s
Shader Cores	2'048	2'048	2'048	2'048
TMUs	128	128	128	128
ROPs	32	32	32	32
PCB Type	Custom Design	Reference Design	Custom Design	Reference Design
Lenght (PCB - Total)	26.8	26.8 cm	28.7 cm	xx.x - xx.x cm
Height (PCB - Total)	11.8 cm	13.0 cm	14.8 cm	xx.x - xx.x cm
Slots	2	2	2	2
Cooler	Twin Frozr IV	TurboDuo	DirectCU II	AMD Reference