Since the AMD Radeon R9 280X is roughly speaking nothing else than a renamed Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, AMD's partners are launching custom designs right from the beginning. ASUS, for example, is offering no less than six cards; two Matrix, two DirectCU II triple slot and two DirectCU II dual slot. Today we're going to have a look at the dual slot card Top version, the R9 280X DirectCU II Top.
ASUS ships its Radeon R9 280X DirectCU II Top card with the core clocked at
1'070 MHz and the memory at 1'600 MHz (6'400 effective). Compared to the R9 280X
reference clocks the Top has a nice factory overclocking, 70 MHz on the core and
100 MHz (400) on the memory. This should give a nice boost in performance,
especially in games that scale with memory bandwidth.
Although the R9 280X has the PowerTune Boost functionality we never saw it in
action. We mean that, although the manufacturer advertises it otherwise, the
DirectCU II Top has technically a core clock of 970 MHz and a boost clock of
1'070 MHz. During our testing, the card was always running at full speed of
1'070 MHz under load, we didn't experience any clockdown.
AMD themselves are being obscure on that point too, the reference R9 280X has
actually a base clock set at 850 MHz with a boost clock of 1'000 MHz but AMD
just write down "GPU Clock Speed: Up to 1 GHz". The latter is not wrong but it's
not exact either.
ASUS DirectCU II Top
Radeon R9 280X
Radeon HD 7970 GHz
Chip
Tahiti XTL
Tahiti XTL
Tahiti XT2
Process
28 nm
28 nm
28 nm
Transistors
4.31
billion
4.31
billion
4.31
billion
GPU
clock
1'070 MHz
1'000 MHz
1'000 MHz
GPU Boost
clock
N/A
N/A
1'050 MHz
Memory GDDR5
3'072 MB
3'072 MB
3'072 MB
Memory
clock
1'600 (6'400) MHz
1'500 (6'000) MHz
1'500 (6'000) MHz
Memory
interface
384 Bit
384 Bit
384 Bit
Memory
bandwidth
307.2 GB/s
288 GB/s
288 GB/s
Shader Cores
2'048
2'048
2'048
TMUs
128
128
128
ROPs
32
32
32
TDP
xxx Watt
250 Watt
250 Watt
PCB Type
Custom Design
Reference Design
Reference Design
Lenght (PCB - Total)
26.8 - 28.7 cm
xx.x - xx.x cm
xx.x - xx.x cm
Height (PCB - Total)
12.2 - 14.8 cm
xx.x - xx.x cm
xx.x - xx.x cm
Slots
2
2
2
Cooler
DirectCU II
AMD Reference
AMD Reference
Launch
Price
$XXX
$299
$499
ASUS decided to equip the R9 280X DirectCU II Top with the latest
revision of their famous DirectCU II cooler. It is exactly the same that equips
the GeForce GTX 780 DirectCU II series, no changes have been made. In this case you get no less than five heatpipes,
two six millimeter, two eight millimeter and one massive ten millimeter. The
heatpipes have been nickel plated but on the bottom part in contact with the
core. Soldered to the heatpipes you find the fin stack
which is being provided with fresh air via two 95mm fans. The fan closer to the I/O
shield is one odd hybrid axial/radial fan ASUS like to call "CoolTech".
They claim that this fan is able to provide a higher airflow than standard axial
or radial fans at the same noise level. In case of the second fan you find a
standard axial fan. Both fans are being manufactured by Everflow and strangely
share the same model, T129215SU.
Overall the cooler is well made and finished. Thermal paste has been spread all
over the core in large quantity and memory chips aren't actively cooled.
Like most of ASUS' recent high-end cards the PCB has been completely
reworked and the power design beefed-up. A closer look at it shows a 10 phase
power implementation for the main power design where the GPU gets eight (there
are five on the reference card) and the memory two. Going further we see, on the
left side of the PCB, two additional phases for the IO and one phase for the pll.
The MOSFETs of the main power design are being actively cooled via an aluminium
heatsink/thermal pad combo. The manufacturer decided to equip its 280X with only
the
metal reinforcement located at the top end of the card to prevent bending rather
than the full backplate + reinforcement solution like on the GTX 780. A cost efficient solution that doesn't protect the
card unfortunately.
Components wise ASUS makes use of high
quality so called Super Alloy Power components. Last but not least,
located at the rear of the PCB there are several voltage reading and
modification points (VDDCI, MVDD, VDDC, OVCI, OVM, OVC) and the ROG Connect
soldering points.
Checking the
voltage regulation chip we find a digital multi-phase controller labelled Digi+ ASP1211
for the GPU, probably a rebranded CHiL 8228 or 8318.
There are two
unidentified Richtek 2-phase controllers labelled 02=FF 42G on this card. The
one closer to the PCIe power connectors is taking care of the memory and the one
close to the CrossFire connectors is taking care of the IO.
The memory chips used are made by Hynix and carry the model number
H5GQ2H24AFR R0C. They are specified to run at 1'500 MHz (6'000 MHz effective).
The card ships well bolstered in a foam made mold.
Bundled with the graphics card there is a software CD, an installation manual
and a soft CrossFire bridge.
Idle, temperature is
taken after 15 minutes @ lowest, 40 %, 50 %, 70 % and 100 % fan speed.
Room Temperature: 25°C
Temperature under
Furmark
For FurMark, temperature is taken
after 15 minutes of GPU Burn test at lowest, 40 %, 50 %, 70 % and 100 % fan speed.
We stopped the test when the GPU temperature hit 90°C.
Room Temperature: 25°C
Temperature and
fan speed under BattleField 3
For BattleField 3, temperature and fan speed
values taken, are the highest achieved after 1 hour gaming @ auto fan
speed.
The "Performance Index" value is calculated as the sum of all
benchmarks results divided by the amount of games (3DMark and Ungine not
included into the calculation).
Performance/Price
Graphics Cards
Performance Index
Price
(€)*
Performance/€*10
nVidia GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost
40.87
109
3.75
AMD Radeon HD 7790
32.75
95
3.45
AMD Radeon HD 7870
50.03
147
3.40
nVidia GeForce GTX 660
47.37
140
3.38
AMD Radeon HD 7850
40.04
129
3.10
nVidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti
53.55
177
3.05
nVidia GeForce GTX 650 Ti
30.80
102
3.02
nVidia GeForce GTX 670
62.00
210
2.95
nVidia GeForce GTX 760
56.63
193
2.93
AMD Radeon R9 270X
53.39
184
2.90
AMD Radeon HD 6870
31.88
110
2.90
AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition
69.99
250
2.80
AMD Radeon HD 7970
63.41
239
2.65
nVidia GeForce GTX 580
50.49
199
2.54
AMD Radeon R9 280X
68.40
276
2.48
nVidia GeForce GTX 680
68.36
283
2.42
ASUS Radeon R9 280X DirectCU II Top
72.22
319
2.26
nVidia GeForce GTX 770
70.92
322
2.20
AMD Radeon HD 6950
36.83
204
1.81
nVidia GeForce GTX 780
81.66
523
1.56
AMD Radeon HD 6970
41.32
281
1.47
AMD Radeon HD 5850 (Ref)
30.05
255
1.18
AMD Radeon HD 6990
73.96
656
1.13
AMD Radeon HD 5870 (Ref)
35.98
325
1.11
nVidia GeForce GTX TITAN
85.05
814
1.04
* 09/10/2013
More is better
Less is better
More is better
For the price we took the lowest price available on geizhals.eu.
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.
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.