# Asus R9 280X DC2T 3GD5 graphics card review



## itsakjt (Jun 29, 2014)

*1. Introduction*:

Hi everyone, hope you are all well. This time, I am reviewing the Asus R9 280X DC2T 3GD5 graphics card. The R9 280X is at the higher end of the R9 series GPUs released by AMD. The R9 280X is the successor to the R9 280 which is again the successor to the R9 270X. Please note I have reviewed the Asus R9 270X DC2T 2GD5 which you can read here: Asus R9 270X DC2T 2GD5 graphics card review
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Here's the link to the card I am reviewing. 

Graphics Cards - R9280X-DC2T-3GD5 - ASUS

Product showcase:
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The R9 280X GPU is based on the Graphics Core Next(GCN) architecture by AMD which promises very good graphics processing power and computation power. The GPU boasts a stream processors count of 2048, texture mapping units count of 128, 32 Raster Operation units(ROPs) and a 384 bit memory bus width. The default clocks for the reference R9 280X is 1000 MHz for the core and 1500 MHz for the memory. The Asus DirectCUII TOP variant comes with 1070 MHz core clock(70 MHz increase) and 1600 MHz memory clock(100 MHz increase) out of the box which are significant increases over the reference/standard cards. The card has a video memory of 3 GB DDR5. The card also has Asus' patented DigiVRM and Direct CUII cooling. The card has a TDP(Thermal Design Power)* of 250W.

*TDP= Stands for "Thermal Design Power". It is a measure of the power consumption of the card and tells us how much heat energy is wasted during absolute full load operation. The lower the better. However, keep in mind higher performing card have higher TDPs.

*2. Unboxing and packaging:**
*
Packaging was good. Everything was well protected and should not cause issues during shipping.
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The box encloses another box containing the card and another small box containing the accessories.
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The card is wrapped up with an anti static complaint bag and foam to prevent damage from static electricity and shipping issues.

Contents of the box:
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Asus R9 280X DC2T 3GD5 graphics card
Driver disc
Setup and user guide
Crossfire bridge

Pretty much everything is included. Didn't find any issues there. 
The box looks appealing and will definitely attract anyone seeing it on display. 
So here I will conclude this section. Moving on to gallery, close ups and choice of components. 

*3. Gallery and close ups, choice of components:
*
Front side:
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The shroud looks cool and is again a face lift to the earlier Direct CUII models. This looks a lot like the ROG segment. It is metallic unlike the previous models which were plastic. 
Asus has designed the two fans in different ways. With respect to the picture, the left fan is designed such that cooler air can be blown and hot air can come out through the back vent at a higher pressure. The right fan is designed to just blow the cooler air. The right fan helps to cool the VRM(voltage regulating module) of the card. I should mention that in the time I used this card, there was much less dust in the fans as compared to other cards I used before. Very impressed with Asus. 

The fan near the vent:
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The fan near power connectors:
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The fan connector has a total of 5 wires. Three are common for power and sense and a pair are different for separate PWM. 
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There are a total of 53 aluminium fins in the heatsink. Fin# 1 to 16 are smaller than fin# 17-53. The larger part covers most of the part of the heat sink. See the illustration above. 

The back side:
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The back side of the card has zero/minimum soldering flux residue. Excellent work by Asus. 

Talking about ROG, I also found this:
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Yes it includes real time voltage monitoring. So if you are a DIY enthusiast, you can have your multi-meter hooked here to read voltages.

For power, one 6 pin PCIE and one 8 pin PCIE connectors are there and they are backed by a pair of two LEDs. Successful connection is indicated by a green LED. Unsuccessful connection is indicated by red LED. 
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The motherboard can supply 75W. The 6 pin PCIE can also supply 75W and the 8 pin can supply 150W. So the configuration is good for up to 300W of of power draw. 

The card is complaint with quad CrossfireX having two Crossfire connectors.
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Premium alloy chokes from Trio is selected. These chokes are top of the line and produces less heat and vibration. 
Also all the capacitors are premium solid state capacitors rated at 105 degree C.
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Hynix memory made me happy this time. The model number is H5GQ2H24AFR R0C variant rated to run at 1500 MHz(6000 MHz effective GDDR5). The Asus R9 270X I reviewed had Elpida chips which did not overclock well. We'll see later how much these can go.

I was slightly disappointed that there is no heat plate provided for the memory chips as we should expect such for a card of this segment. 

There are 4 heat pipes of varying sizes on one side and one large heat pipe on the other side. These heat pipes are made of Copper and coated with Nickel to prevent corrosion. Asus names it Direct CUII as the heat pipes made of Copper(Cu2) are in direct contact with the GPU chip. All the heat pipes travel through the entire heatsink at least once.
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Here's the output section and all ports are included except VGA. You need to use a DVI-VGA converter to use this card with a monitor having only VGA port. 
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There are:

2 x DVI ports(Top one is DVI-I(Digital+analog), bottom is DVI-D(only digital)
1 x HDMI
1 x DisplayPort(DP)

How it looks inside the system:
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The card is a beauty to look at and anyone will agree to that. It is quite heavy and is large, the reason why it is inclined towards the right. Asus has included a hard metal plate along the side to prevent the PCB from bending. 

So as far as component choice and build quality is concerned, Asus used top notch components and overall build quality and design is good. The PCB quality is good and it is thick. So lets see how this card performs in real time. Moving on to test system and benchmarks. 

*4. **Test system:*

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 980 @ 4.1 GHz, all 4 cores active and IMC at 2.8 GHz
Motherboard: Asus M5A97 R2.0(BIOS ver. 2501)
RAMs: 2*4 GB Kingston HyperX Blu DDR3 1600 MHz 9-9-9-27 1T @1.65 V (KHX1600C9D3B1/4G) running at 1600 MHz 8-9-8-22 1T @ 1.65 V
Graphics card: Asus R9 280X Direct CUII TOP 3GB (Asus R9280X-DC2T-3GD5)
Hard disk: Western Digital Caviar Green 1TB (WD10EARS), AAM set to high performance and idle timer off(head parking disabled)
CPU cooler : Corsair Seidon 120V
Power supply: Corsair GS 700 2013 edition 700 Watt power supply
Monitor: Dell S2240M @ 1920*1080, 60 Hz

*5. **Synthetic Benchmarks:
**
3D Mark Vantage:
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Very good scores. In spite of the old processor overclocked to 4.1 GHz, the GPU scores 31986 points. 

*3D Mark 11:
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As promised as per specs, scores are very good for a single GPU system. 

*3D Mark new:
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The graphics card do score very good marks in this benchmark also. And according to 3D Mark, the Firestrike score is 78% better than all results. That is something. 

*Unigine Valley:
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In this benchmark, the graphics card scores more than 400 points higher than the R9 270X I reviewed. 

*Unigine Heaven:
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More than 200 points higher than the R9 270X. 

New version 4.0:
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Pretty good scores. 
*
**6. **Gaming Benchmarks:
*
I used the following games to test how this card performs.


Batman Arkham Origins
Metro Last Light
Battlefield 3
Battlefield 4
Thief
Grid 2
Sleeping Dogs
Dirt 3

All games were at their highest settings except Metro Last Light and Sleeping Dogs. The resolution was kept constant at 1920*1080 and at a refresh rate of 60 Hz. V Sync was turned off to prevent capping the frame rate equal to or less than the refresh rate. 
Settings for Metro Last Light:
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Settings for Sleeping Dogs:

Except Anti aliasing, all other settings were turned to the highest. Anti aliasing was set to one step back from the highest to prevent optimization problems known with the game.

*Note: Average frame rate is not the sum of the minimum and maximum frame rate by 2. It is the approximation of the frame rate that was delivered most of the times in the game. 
*
So here goes the results:
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So as understandable from the numbers in the graph, almost every game runs well above 60 FPS at their highest settings. So anyone looking for a high end single GPU solution can have this card in his/her mind. This card is very capable for 1080p gaming and even some 60 FPS 1440p gaming by slightly lowering settings. 
*
7. Temperature and fan noise, AMD PowerPlay profiles:**
*
For temperatures, I played Battlefield 4 for 2.5 hrs and the maximum temperature of the card was 84 degree C.
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You can see the current and power values for the GPU VRM also. 
The fan speed was at 55% of the duty cycle as reported by AMD catalyst. The ambient temperature was 35 degree C. Temperatures are good for a card like this and for that high ambient temperature but Asus could have compiled the BIOS in a better way. For 84 degree C, it would have been better if the fan speed was somewhere around 75-80% duty cycle. Though the noise would have been more, the card would have run cooler. However, noise level was not much and the card was barely audible while gaming. 

Here is a screenshot of the PowerPlay profiles. PowerPlay is a dynamic power saving technology which lowers power consumption when the GPU is idle by reducing clock frequencies, voltages and current. 
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So as far as clock profiles are concerned, they are good and consumes very low power on idle yet maintaining good Windows Aero performance and is nifty doing everything possible on idle clocks.

*8. Overclocking and Asus GPUTweak:*

I installed Asus GPUTweak software that came with the disc. 
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That software features 2D clock adjustments as well in case you want to be sure that PowerPlay does not trigger while benchmarks.
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Please note every GPU will overclock different as the law of semiconductor states no two semiconductor is same. Please use these settings for a reference. 

So I gave the settings as follows:
GPU clock : 1160 MHz
Memory clock 1720 MHz(effective 6880 MHz) 
Voltage: Left at default, untouched
Fan speed: 100% just to be on the safe side

With that, ran a test of 3D Mark 11:
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The graphics score became 11706 from 10847 at stock which is an 859 points increase = approx 7.92 % performance increase. 
So overclock potential is pretty good of what we should expect from the components used. There's a 120 MHz memory overclock headroom. Add to that the memory comes factory overclocked by 100 MHz unlike the R9 270X I reviewed earlier. So overclocking is pretty good.

*9. Final words and conclusion:
*
*Pros:*


Good design
Factory overclocked core and memory
Connection monitoring with LEDs
UEFI complaint
Very efficient cooler and fans
Excellent choice of components: Premium alloy chokes, 105 degree C rated solid state capacitors, Digi+ VRM
Very good performance at 1080p(60 FPS+ on almost all games at maximum settings)
Very good overclocking potential

*Cons:
*

No metal plate on top of memory chips for cooling them
Fan profiles could have been optimized in a better way.

*Verdict:*
This card is for hardcore gamers who want to have the 60 FPS + glory at 1080p in mostly every game. The pros can easily rule out the cons. The fan profile can be fixed easily with a better optimized BIOS update. 
The card retails around 23500 INR in India. 

Overall, a 9.2/10 from me.

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An extreme heartfelt thanks from me to Asus India for providing me with the sample. 
Thanks for reading. If you have any queries or suggestions, feel free to comment. Feedback is warmly welcome. 

*About me: 
*A 4th year Computer Science Engineering student with a passion to research on computer hardware and tweaking to get the maximum performance achievable at a price.


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## sam_738844 (Jun 29, 2014)

Great Review. why not do a Nvidia Product Review?


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## rijinpk1 (Jun 29, 2014)

nice review


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## ravi847 (Jun 29, 2014)

great review!!!
Next do the Sapphire r9 290 tri-x 
Can someone review the Dell s2240l?? also if they could compare it with various TN & VA panels and ultrasharp series monitors that'd be great


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## amjath (Jun 29, 2014)

Awesome review. Keep up the great work. Review more


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## itsakjt (Jun 30, 2014)

Thanks a lot all of you. Really meant a lot. For suggestions and queries, please do not hesitate to ask me. 
  [MENTION=150630]sam_738844[/MENTION] - Thanks. Someday, I will. 
 [MENTION=135617]rijinpk1[/MENTION] - Thanks. 
  [MENTION=275610]ravi847[/MENTION] - Thanks. And yes will try to. Also, I am using the Dell S2240M. Review might come soon. 
  [MENTION=127004]amjath[/MENTION] - Thanks. And sure I will.


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