AMD Radeon R9 280: specs and benchmarks
Aggregated performance score
Summary
AMD started Radeon R9 280 sales 4 March 2014 at a recommended price of $279 . This is a desktop graphics card based on a GCN 1.0 architecture and made with 28 nm manufacturing process. It is primarily aimed at gamer market. 3 GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 1.25 GHz are supplied, and together with 384 Bit memory interface this creates a bandwidth of 240 GB/s.
Compatibility-wise, this is dual-slot card attached via PCIe 3.0 x16 interface. Its manufacturer default version has a length of 275 mm. 1 x 6-pin + 1 x 8-pin power connector is required, and power consumption is at 200 Watt.
It provides poor gaming and benchmark performance at 14.36% of a leader's which is NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090.
General info
Some basic facts about Radeon R9 280: architecture, market segment, release date etc.
| Place in performance ranking | 334 | |
| Place by popularity | not in top-100 | |
| Value for money | 10.99 | |
| Architecture | GCN 1.0 (2012−2020) | |
| GPU code name | Tahiti | |
| Market segment | Desktop | |
| Design | reference | |
| Release date | 4 March 2014 (10 years old) | |
| Launch price (MSRP) | $279 | |
| Current price | $91 (0.3x MSRP) | of 168889 (A100 PCIe 80 GB) |
Value for money
Performance to price ratio. The higher, the better.
Technical specs
Radeon R9 280's specs such as number of shaders, GPU base clock, manufacturing process, texturing and calculation speed. These parameters indirectly speak of Radeon R9 280's performance, but for precise assessment you have to consider its benchmark and gaming test results.
| Pipelines / CUDA cores | 1792 | of 20480 (Data Center GPU Max NEXT) |
| Boost clock speed | 933 MHz | of 3599 (Radeon RX 7990 XTX) |
| Number of transistors | 4,313 million | of 14400 (GeForce GTX 1080 SLI Mobile) |
| Manufacturing process technology | 28 nm | of 4 (H100 PCIe) |
| Power consumption (TDP) | 200 Watt | of 2400 (Data Center GPU Max Subsystem) |
| Texture fill rate | 104.5 | of 969.9 (H100 SXM5 96 GB) |
| Floating-point performance | 3,344 gflops | of 16384 (Radeon Pro Duo) |
Size and compatibility
This section provides details about the physical dimensions of Radeon R9 280 and its compatibility with other computer components. This information is useful when selecting a computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop graphics cards, it includes details about the interface and bus (for motherboard compatibility) and additional power connectors (for power supply compatibility).
| Bus support | PCIe 3.0 | |
| Interface | PCIe 3.0 x16 | |
| Length | 275 mm | |
| Width | 2-slot | |
| Supplementary power connectors | 1 x 6-pin + 1 x 8-pin |
Memory
Parameters of memory installed on Radeon R9 280: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Note that GPUs integrated into processors have no dedicated memory and use a shared part of system RAM instead.
| Memory type | GDDR5 | |
| Maximum RAM amount | 3 GB | of 192 (Radeon Instinct MI300X) |
| Memory bus width | 384 Bit | of 8192 (Radeon Instinct MI250X) |
| Memory clock speed | 1250 MHz | of 23000 (GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER) |
| Memory bandwidth | 240 GB/s | of 3276 (Aldebaran) |
Video outputs and ports
Types and number of video connectors present on Radeon R9 280. As a rule, this section is relevant only for desktop reference graphics cards, since for notebook ones the availability of certain video outputs depends on the laptop model, while non-reference desktop models can (though not necessarily will) bear a different set of video ports.
| Display Connectors | 2x DVI, 1x HDMI, 2x mini-DisplayPort | |
| Eyefinity | 1 | |
| HDMI | + | |
| DisplayPort support | - |
Technologies
Technological solutions and APIs supported by Radeon R9 280. You'll probably need this information if you need some particular technology for your purposes.
| AppAcceleration | - | |
| CrossFire | 1 | |
| Enduro | - | |
| FreeSync | 1 | |
| HD3D | + | |
| LiquidVR | 1 | |
| PowerTune | - | |
| TressFX | 1 | |
| TrueAudio | + | |
| ZeroCore | - | |
| UVD | + | |
| DDMA audio | + |
API support
APIs supported by Radeon R9 280, sometimes including their particular versions.
| DirectX | DirectX® 12 | |
| Shader Model | 5.1 | |
| OpenGL | 4.6 | |
| OpenCL | 1.2 | |
| Vulkan | + | |
| Mantle | - |
Benchmark performance
Synthetic benchmark performance of Radeon R9 280. The combined score is measured on a 0-100 point scale.
Combined synthetic benchmark score
This is our combined benchmark performance score. We are regularly improving our combining algorithms, but if you find some perceived inconsistencies, feel free to speak up in comments section, we usually fix problems quickly.
Passmark
This is the most ubiquitous GPU benchmark, part of Passmark PerformanceTest suite. It gives the graphics card a thorough evaluation under various types of load, providing four separate benchmarks for Direct3D versions 9, 10, 11 and 12 (the last being done in 4K resolution if possible), and few more tests engaging DirectCompute capabilities.
Benchmark coverage: 25%
3DMark Fire Strike Graphics
Fire Strike is a DirectX 11 benchmark for gaming PCs. It features two separate tests displaying a fight between a humanoid and a fiery creature made of lava. Using 1920x1080 resolution, Fire Strike shows off some realistic graphics and is quite taxing on hardware.
Benchmark coverage: 14%
Send your test results of Radeon R9 280.
Gaming performance
Let's see how good Radeon R9 280 is for gaming. Particular gaming benchmark results are measured in frames per second. Comparisons with game system requirements are included, but remember that sometimes official requirements may reflect reality inaccurately.
Relative perfomance
Radeon R9 280's performance compared to nearest competitors among desktop video cards.
NVIDIA equivalent
According to our data, the closest NVIDIA alternative to Radeon R9 280 is GeForce GTX 680, which is nearly equal in speed and lower by 4 positions in our ranking.
Here are some closest NVIDIA rivals to Radeon R9 280:
Similar GPUs
Here is our recommendation of several graphics cards that are more or less close in performance to the one reviewed.
Recommended processors
These processors are most commonly used with Radeon R9 280 according to our statistics.
