ASUS Radeon R9 280X DirectCU II TOP 3GB GDDR5 - Overclocking Required

ASUS Radeon R9 280X DirectCU II TOP 3GB GDDR5

The ASUS Radeon R9 280X DirectCU II TOP 3GB GDDR5 is the first graphics card from the company to feature the new AMD Radeon R9 280X GPU. But this isn't the top-end GPU from the new Radeon R9 series. The top dog is the R9 290X GPU, while the R9 280X is the second in line. According to our article detailing how the new Radeon R9 and R7 series stack up and the features they boast, the Radeon R9 280X is part of the enthusiast series of gaming graphics cards that are designed to please users who intend to game at a resolution of 2560 x 1440 pixels with good graphics details. In terms of specifications, it tends to look like an updated Radeon HD 7970 and that's pretty much where AMD has set the launch price to be in US dollars at $299 - the same price point as the currently retailing Radeon HD 7970.

Fortunately, the ASUS DirectCU II TOP edition of the Radeon R9 280X doesn't resemble anything like a reference card and comes with a custom design PCB, a better 8-phase PWM design for the GPU (compared to a 5-phased edition on the reference model), and most visibly apparent ASUS' signature cooling technology.

While only the R9 290 series with the new GPU core features the enhancements made to its PowerTune technology that make use of environment variables, together with user-input parameters to determine the optimum clock speed of the GPU, AMD is taking this opportunity to restructure how the core clock speeds are marketed across the entire R9 and R7 series by stating what the GPU is rated to perform up to rather than defining a fixed clock. As such, the R9 280X GPU is rated to perform up to 1000MHz. For the ASUS card, it rolled off the factory line with a slightly raised performance ceiling of 1070MHz. For its memory modules, they have been overclocked to 6400MHz, up 400MHz from the default clock speed of 6000MHz.

As we have mentioned earlier, the R9 series is targeted at serious gamers; and we expect the R9 280X GPU to come with all the bells and whistles like any enthusiast level product. However, it lacks support for AMD TrueAudio Technology. This new exclusive aural feature is touted by AMD to deliver an immersive audio experience through the use of an on-die digital signal processor embedded with the GPU. However, this feature is only available for the Radeon R9 290X, R9 290 and R7 260X.

For the ASUS card, the company has included its DirectCU II custom cooler with CoolTech cooling technology. This cooling fan technology makes use of a CoolTech fan (which allows a wider angle of air flow dispersion), and a regular 80mm one to dissipate heat from fin-stack of the DirectCU II cooler. There are a total of five copper heatpipes that are in direct contact with the GPU of the ASUS card - four of which are a mix of 6mm and 8mm diameters while the last one is thicker than usual at 10mm in diameter.

In terms of video connectivity, there are two dual-link DVI ports, one HDMI port and one DisplayPort output. Unlike the previous generation Southern Island cards, there are no mini-DisplayPort options, which is better as it offers direct connectivity to monitors without requiring an adapter. We expect most cards of the new series to follow this set of display outputs. The GPU can still directly control up to 6 monitors via the use of a MST hub through the DisplayPort connection to expand  the number of connection options.

As the R9 series GPUs are targeted at gamers, the Radeon R9 280X has been positioned to compete directly with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760. The newer Radeon GPU is priced at US$299 that is between the suggested retail prices of the NVIDIA GTX 770 at US$399 and the GTX 760 that's priced at US$249. This makes the newer card an attractive upgrade option. Not to mention the card has a wider memory interface of 384-bit and 3GB of video memory buffer. This is a direct improvement over the features of the GeForce GTX 760 card. For the GTX 770, it has the same memory interface as the new Radeon, but its video memory size is determined by the add-in partners, and these GTX 770 cards come in 2GB or 4GB versions. Specific to the ASUS Radeon R9 280X DirectCU II TOP 3GB GDDR5, it has an SRP of S$549, which is an attractive price point.

Since we've not been able to secure reference class cards for the new Radeon graphics cards, we shall make our observation of the newcomer against its direct competitors through the overclocked ASUS variant on review in this article.

Test Setup

These are the specifications of our graphics testbed:

• Intel Core i7-3960X (3.3GHz)
• ASUS P9X79 Pro (Intel X79 chipset) Motherboard
• 4 x 2GB DDR3-1600 G.Skill Ripjaws Memory
• Seagate 7200.10 200GB SATA hard drive (OS)
• Western Digital Caviar Black 7200 RPM 1TB SATA hard drive (Benchmarks + Games)
• Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit

This is the list of cards we'll be testing. A number of add-on partner cards were used to represent reference ones, and they were downclocked to the clock speeds of their reference counterparts in order to gauge their performance with updated drivers. For the AMD Radeon HD 7970, the downclocked Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 OC 3GB GDDR5 was used. For the NVIDIA GeForce GTX cards, the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 770 Windforce 3X OC was downclocked to represent a reference GTX 770; while the MSI GeForce GTX 760 Twin Frozr IV OC was used to represent the GTX 760.

• ASUS Radeon R9 280X DirectCU II TOP 3GB GDDR5 (AMD Catalyst 13.9)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 2GB GDDR5 (ForceWare 331.40 Beta)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 2GB GDDR5 (ForceWare 331.40 Beta)
• AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition 3GB GDDR5 (AMD Catalyst 13.9)

Note 1: In temperature and power consumption comparisons, the results used were from the data gathered from the actual reference cards. Please refer to our reviews for the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 and GTX 760.

Note 2: Just prior to publishing this review, AMD's Catalyst 13.11 beta drivers were made available, but preliminary testing showed negligible differences. As such we'll report based on our earlier tested results on Catalyst 13.9.

Benchmarks

Here's the full list of benchmarks that we'll be using for our assessment:-

• Futuremark 3DMark 2013
• Unigine 4.0 "Heaven"
• Unigine "Valley" 1.0
• Hitman: Absolution
• Far Cry 3
• Crysis 3

For our temperature and power consumption tests, 3DMark 2011 was used.

Here's a look at how the ASUS Radeon R9 280X DirectCU II TOP card stacks up against the competing cards:

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3DMark 2013 Results

3DMark (2013)'s Fire Strike benchmark  consists of two tests with extreme levels of tessellation and volumetric illumination, as well as complex smoke simulation using compute shaders and dynamic particle illumination. The first test called Fire Strike is designed for enthusiast-level graphics cards and dual-GPU setups; while the second, called Fire Strike Extreme, ramps up the difficulty with more tessellation, more particle effects and more taxing DirectCompute calculations.

The ASUS Radeon R9 280X card took the pole position for both tests, and against its direct rival in the form of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770, the ASUS card led by margins in the range of 8- to 8.7%. Against the previous generation AMD Radeon 7970 GHz edition card, the newer ASUS card managed to pull ahead by roughly 5% on both occasions.

Crysis 3 Results

Crysis 3, the much anticipated sequel to Crysis 2 and continues to be an absolute beast of a game, , much like its predecessors. It utilizes CryEngine 3, with extreme amounts of tessellation, per-pixel per-object motion blur, Bokeh Depth of Field, displacement mapping on small terrain, particle and volumetric lighting and fog shadows, improved dynamic cloth and vegetation, dynamic caustics and diffuse shadows. 

For this benchmark, the ASUS card only showed the strength of the improved GCN architecture of its new R9 280X GPU, when the anti-aliasing feature of the game was enabled. This can be partly attributed to the benefits of the 48 Raster Operator units of the new GPU; in comparison, the older Radeon HD 7970 card only features 32 ROPs. This increment in the number of ROPs allows the GPU to write more pixel data to the video memory simultaneously per clock cycle. This operation will allow for better anti-aliasing performance for game titles. However, this benefit was only witnessed at Full HD resolution. At 2560 x 1600 pixels resolution, the newcomer was hardly better than the last generation. Gains over the GeForce GTX 770 was marginal to negligible as it too has 48 ROP units. What's surprising is the poor non-AA performance of the Radeon R9 280X in this test.

Unigine 4.0 "Heaven" Results

The latest version of Unigine’s longstanding "Heaven" benchmark tests GPUs with extreme tessellation, dynamic sky with volumetric clouds, real-time global illumination, and screen-space ambient occlusion among others.

Unigine 1.0 "Valley" Results

Unigine's Valley benchmark renders a highly detailed seamless landscape, which covers a total land area of 64,000 square kilometers. It also utilizes dynamic sky effects, volumetric clouds, sun shafts, DOF, and ambient occlusion.

The ASUS card showed its strength at the resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels, with anti-aliasing enabled, and even managed to beat the GTX 770 for the Unigine Heaven benchmark by a margin of 6.2%. It narrlowly lost to the NVIDIA card for the Valley benchmark. As strong showing here can be attributed to its large number of ROPs, as well as its large 384-bit memory interface and its video buffer memory that is rated at 6000MHz. However, FPS still dips below 30 when considering AA performance at the highest resolution.

Far Cry 3 Results

Far Cry 3 features heavy tessellation, high amounts of volumetric lighting, and deferred radiance transfer volumes (global illumination). This is because the game is running on the Dunia 2 Engine, a modified version of Crytek's CryEngine.

Hitman: Absolution Results

Running on IO Interactive's proprietary Glacier2 engine, Hitman: Absolution is a challenging benchmark. It features a very hardware intensive engine that is able to render up to 1200 NPCs simultaneously. The benchmark tool used to test this game is extremely intensive, besides the massive crowd of NPCs, it also features Reflective Shadow Mapping (RSM), Direct Compute accelerated Bokeh Depth of Field, extreme tessellation and Ambient Occlusion.

From the results of these in-game benchmarking tools, the ASUS Radeon R9 280X turned in a mix performance. For Far Cry 3, it was consistently trailing the GTX 770 but its managed to outperformed the older Radeon HD 7970 card. For the Hitman Absolution test, it beat the GTX 770 when the game's anti-aliasing feature was turned off; however, with the feature enabled, the ASUS card failed to show the benefits of its improved GCN-based R9 280X GPU. Generally, It didn't performed as expected when anti-aliasing was turned on; however, we suspect that with newer drivers for the AMD "Hawaii" cards, they would turn in better performances. We'll have to re-assess performance in the near future to see how it might improve with mature drivers. The good thing is that the R9 280X is consistently beating the GeForce GTX 760 which AMD compares itself against (though note that price points are different for both products).

Temperature

The ASUS CoolTech fan technology proved its efficiency and kept the card running relatively cooler than the comparison cards from NVIDIA and AMD. In fact, during our testing, the maximum temperature recorded for the ASUS card was 66 degrees Celsius. Of course, we can't truly comment how well is this figure without having a reference Radeon R9 280X graphics card and other competitors from its class. For now, the results are looking positive, but further comparisons are needed and this will come about as we test other R9 280X products over the next few days.

For those wondering about noise pollution, there was none to speak of from the ASUS graphics card and we were satisfied with the experience. Once more, we can't be certain if it's AMD's PowerTune that we need to thank or ASUS, but we'll figure that out soon as we get more comparison cards in.

Power Consumption

The ASUS Radeon R9 280X card drew the most idle power at 153W, but its measured highest sustained power reading was 383W. Overall, we can see that its power consumption profile was similar to the NVIDIA Georce GTX 770. This means the ASUS R9 280X DirectCU II TOP isn't as power efficient as we would have liked it to be. For one, the GeForce GTX 770 is still marginally faster (although more expensive), but it consumes slightly less power than the overclocked Radeon R9 280X. Considering that both PowerTune and GeForce Boost are effectively trying to maximize the power budget available, we're not surprised of the similar power numbers, but it's a slight let down when you consider that the ASUS card's gaming performance is a little lower than the GeForce GTX 770.

Overclocking

We managed to overclocked the card's core clock speed to 1160MHz, an increment of 90MHz from its rated 1070MHz. For its video memory, we pushed it to a high of 7600MHz, up from 6400MHz. According to the 3DMark scores, this translated to performance gains of roughly 10%. Looking at the performance numbers, this seems to be what we were hoping to get out of the box - at least for a card based on a new GPU. We also took note of its operating temperature recorded during our overclocking exercise, and it peaked at only 54 degrees Celsius (note that the formal temperature test numbers were take from running 3DMark 11, hence the difference in temperature reporting here).

Conclusion - A Notable Challenger

It appears AMD has been very modest when comparing the new R9 280X against the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760. From our benchmark comparisons, the slightly overclocked ASUS Radeon R9 280X card has clearly outperformed our reference GTX 760 card. When the card is compared against the GTX 770, the former's performance was mixed as it consisted of some wins, and a number of instances where it trailed behind the GTX 770. Given the US$299 price point of the new AMD Radeon R9 280X SKU, we suppose the performance observed is to be expected when compared to the US$249 GeForce GTX 760 and the US$399 GeForce GTX 770. Where it might sound disappointing is the the AMD Radeon R9 280X is that it performs on par with the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition; the notion of a new card not really leapfrogging the old card is ever present, but to its credit, it's priced to be a direct replacement and thus performs as such as well.

As for the experience and performance expected out the ASUS Radeon R9 280X DirectCU II TOP, frankly speaking, we were a little underwhelmed from a card boasting the "TOP" moniker in its name and yet it was only mildly overclocked. As we summarized above of our findings in this review, the card was pretty much performing to what we expected of a reference card to muster as it was consistently following the performance profile of a stock Radeon HD 7970 GHz edition. Fortunately for it, we managed to gain a pretty decent overclock out of the card to garner 10% improvement from its stock performance and that really made the card shine. We expected a "TOP" card to perform to this degree out of the box.

Other notable aspects of the ASUS card is its cool operational performance, as we found to run at only 54 degrees Celsius even when overclocked in a benchmark. In more strenuous tests, the card would kick up the thermal reading up to the mid 60s, which was still decent and a good showing of the ASUS cooler technologies implemented through the CoolTech fan and the DirectCU II cooler. Of course, we can't yet comment how is it compared to its competitors, but we'll fill you in on those details in the following days.

Generally, we felt that the first R9 280X card from ASUS is an ideal option for those upgrading from two generations ago or older graphics cards, such as the Radeon HD 5000 or 6000 series where you would likely appreciate what this new card brings to the table.

Factoring in the Value Quotient

Currently, the ASUS Radeon R9 280X DirectCU II TOP is priced at S$549. While we've not had the opportunity to compare it against other R9 280X cards yet, when compared against the older Radeon HD 7970 graphics cards, we found it to be similarly priced to other add-on partners' Radeon HD 7970 cards. This means to say that the prices are competitive, even locally (which is unusual for ASUS). When compared against its NVIDIA rivals, the ASUS card performs well above the GTX 760 which is priced typically under S$450 and it's also more expensive.

The more interesting comparison is with the pricier GeForce GTX 770, where the ASUS card managed to meet its equal in some tests (but lags behind in others). Currently, the average price of a GTX 770-based graphics card is about S$650, which makes the newer ASUS card about 15% cheaper. Take note that GTX 770 comes in 2GB and 4GB editions where the former can be even closer to the S$600 price point. So would we recommend the ASUS card merely based on price and performance? The answer strictly depends how much are you willing to spend as the 15% price difference roughly equates to an equivalent performance difference as a whole.

So despite its mixed performance against the GeForce GTX 770, potential buyers of the GTX 770 and the GTX 760 card may give some serious thought to a card based on the R9 280X such as the ASUS TOP edition we've reviewed. The interesting price point of the AMD GPU may just do the trick to make some upgraders opt for AMD model. One point we would like to chip in is that we found the AMD Radeon R9 280X more of a master at full HD resolutions than at 2560 x 1440 - the latter is what AMD is recommending this card is designed to address. In reality when we max the graphics quality settings, we usually get sub 30 FPS, which isn't ideal for fluid gaming. However without anti-aliasing or at toned down graphical settings, we can manage better average FPS. In our opinion, if you need to game at higher than full HD resolutions with top graphics settings, get a top tier card.

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