Radeon R9 280: specs and benchmarks

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Aggregate performance score

Radeon R9 280 provides acceptable gaming and benchmark performance at 12.52% of a leader's which is RTX PRO 5000 Blackwell.

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 a dual-slot graphics 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.

Primary details

Some basic facts about Radeon R9 280: architecture, market segment, release date etc.

Place in the ranking409
Place by popularitynot in top-100
Cost-effectiveness evaluation4.47
Power efficiency5.04of 100.00 (Radeon 890M)
ArchitectureGCN 1.0 (2012−2020)
GPU code nameTahiti
Market segmentDesktop
Designreference
Release date4 March 2014 (11 years ago)
Launch price (MSRP)$279 of 14,999 (Quadro Plex 7000)

Cost-effectiveness evaluation

The higher the ratio, the better. We use the manufacturer's recommended prices.

Performance to price scatter graph

Detailed specifications

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 cores1792of 960 (GeForce GTX 660)
Boost clock speed933 MHzof 1000 (HD Graphics (Haswell))
Number of transistors4,313 millionof 100,000 million (Data Center GPU Max 1100)
Manufacturing process technology28 nmof 0.003 MB (Arc Graphics 140V)
Power consumption (TDP)200 Wattof 235 (FirePro S9150)
Texture fill rate104.5of 1,968 (RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell)
Floating-point processing power3.344 TFLOPSof 126 (RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell)
ROPs32of 512 (Moore Threads MTT S4000)
TMUs112of 896 (Data Center GPU Max 1350)
L1 Cache448 KBof 64 MB (Data Center GPU Max 1550)
L2 Cache768 KBof 408 MB (Data Center GPU Max 1350)

Form factor & 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 supportPCIe 3.0
InterfacePCIe 3.0 x16
Length275 mm
Width2-slot
Supplementary power connectors1 x 6-pin + 1 x 8-pin

VRAM capacity and type

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 typeGDDR5
Maximum RAM amount3 GBof 288 GB (Radeon Instinct MI325X)
Memory bus width384 Bit
Memory clock speed1250 MHzof 16384000 MB (GeForce RTX 4050 Mobile)
Memory bandwidth240 GB/sof 983040 MB (GeForce RTX 5080)

Connectivity and outputs

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 Connectors2x DVI, 1x HDMI, 2x mini-DisplayPort
Eyefinity+
HDMI+

Supported 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.

CrossFire+
FreeSync+
HD3D+
LiquidVR+
TressFX+
TrueAudio+
UVD+
DDMA audio+

API and SDK support

APIs supported by Radeon R9 280, sometimes including their particular versions.

DirectXDirectX® 12
Shader Model5.1
OpenGL4.6
OpenCL1.2
Vulkan+

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 score.

R9 280
12.52

Passmark

This is the most ubiquitous GPU benchmark. 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.

R9 280 5538
Samples: 3697

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.

R9 280 8020

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.

Closest competitors

Radeon R9 280's performance relative to its closest rivals among desktop graphics cards.


Radeon R9 280 100

NVIDIA equivalent

According to our data, the closest NVIDIA alternative to Radeon R9 280 is GeForce GTX 690, which is slower by 1% and lower by 3 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.

All comparisons with Radeon R9 280

Community ratings

Here you can see the user rating of the graphics card, as well as rate it yourself.


3.6 436 votes

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Comments

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