Conclusion

Running the card at stock clocks shows, that when we equipped it with the EK-FC R9-280X-DCII watercooler scores were on average 4.4 percent higher than with the aircooler. This is actually already a solid hint, that the card started to throttle with even the powerful DirectCU II aircooler, even at stock clocks. The smallest performance difference we found with Call of Duty Black Ops 2, where the watercooled card was only 0.47 percent quicker. On the other hand there is Metro Last Light where we see that the watercooled card is no less than 8.4 percent quicker.

Once we started overclocking the cards, we noticed that 1150 MHz on the GPU and 1700 MHz on the memory were maximum stable clocks to run the card aircooled with the DirectCU II aircooler. In order to show there is quite some potential still slumbering in the R9 280X cooler, when appropriately cooled, we overclocked the card a little bit hihger. In this case we ran it at 1200 MHz GPU clocks and 1700 MHz memory clocks. 

Let's discuss the results again now. In 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme we see the scores increase by 8.8 percent in case of aircooling OC and 11.6 percent when it comes to watercooling OC. This means there is a gap of almost 3 percent inbetween aircooling and watercooling, which apparently comes from the higher overclocking of the watercooled version. Overall the aircooled version is able to gain 7 percent performance with the overclocking and the watercooled variant got 11 percent faster. One value that was especially interesting at this point was Battlefield 4. In this game the watercooled and overclocked cards gains no less than 26 percent, whereas the aircooled and overclocked card "only" gains 8.4 percent.

On another note we had a closer look at temperatures. There is actually nothing much to say then the obvious. Even under full load and overclocked the watercooled card didn't get hotter than 46°C, whereas the aircooled version ran at 70°C.

Even though the R9 280X doens't product as much heat as the R9 290X we had for testing it appears, that even the R9 280X combined with the powerful DirectCU II cooler from ASUS starts to throttle. If you put a watercooler on top of this card, then you can basically unleash the full potential of this chip. This becomes especially clear as soon as you start overclocking the card. In our case it was possible to run the card stable even at 1220 MHz GPU clock, whereas the maximum with the aircooler was at 1150 MHz. Overall we can say if you go get yourself a high-end R9 280X and you want to get the maximum out of this card, then we'd recommend you to go for a custom watercooling loop and the EK-FC R9-280X-DCII is certainly doing a great job. Obviously if you do not own any watercooling gear at all, this is going to cost you quite some money, but at least you'd have to buy a new radiator and pump only once. If you buy an new card in a few years you just need to buy a news waterblock. The EK-FC R9-280X-DCII we've used for testing in this article is going to set you back 102.96 Euro (price 14.03.2014). To add some more numbers you can for example calculate that when you overclock the card to 1200 MHz on the GPU and 1700 MHz on the memory performance goes up by 11 percent. The ASUS R9 280X DirectCU II costs 271.37 Euro (price 14.03.2104 Geizhals). This means for an additional 11 percent performance you have to pay an additional 38 percent. Considering only price/performance this isn't too attractive. If you decide to buy this block in combination with this card then you also want the beautiful design as well as the possibility to tune noise levels even further.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 9 - Call of Duty Black Ops 2
Page 2 - Test Setup	Page 10 - Sleeping Dogs
Page 3 - 3DMark Fire Strike	Page 11 - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Page 4 - Unigine Heaven 4.0	Page 12 - Metro: Last Light
Page 5 - BattleField 4	Page 13 - Power Consumption
Page 6 - BattleField 3	Page 14 - Temperatures
Page 7 - Bioshock Infinite	Page 15 - Index
Page 8 - Crysis 3	Page 16 - Conclusion