AMD Radeon R9 280: specs and benchmarks
Summary
AMD started Radeon R9 280 sales 4 March 2014 at a recommended price of $279. This is GCN 1.0 architecture desktop card based on 28 nm manufacturing process and primarily aimed at gamers. 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 21.16 percent of a leader's which is NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti.
General info
Of Radeon R9 280's architecture, market type and release date.
Technical specs
Radeon R9 280's general performance parameters 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.
Compatibility, dimensions and requirements
Information on Radeon R9 280's compatibility with other computer components. Useful when choosing a future computer configuration or upgrading an existing one. For desktop video cards it's interface and bus (motherboard compatibility), additional power connectors (power supply compatibility).
Memory
Parameters of memory installed on Radeon R9 280: its type, size, bus, clock and resulting bandwidth. Note that GPUs integrated into processors don't have dedicated memory and use a shared part of system RAM.
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 video cards, since for notebook ones the availability of certain video outputs depends on the laptop model.
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.
API support
APIs supported by Radeon R9 280, sometimes including their particular versions.
Benchmark performance
Non-gaming benchmark performance of Radeon R9 280. Note that overall benchmark performance is measured in points in 0-100 range.
Overall score
This is our combined benchmark performance rating. 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.
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 seemingly made of lava. Using 1920x1080 resolution, Fire Strike shows off some realistic enough graphics and is quite taxing on hardware.
Passmark
This is probably the most ubiquitous benchmark, part of Passmark PerformanceTest suite. It gives the graphics card a thorough evaluation under various 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.
Mining hashrates
Cryptocurrency mining performance of Radeon R9 280. Usually measured in megahashes per second.
Game benchmarks
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.
This video card matches 96% minimum and 83% recommended requirements of all games known to us.
Relative perfomance
Overall Radeon R9 280 performance compared to nearest competitors among desktop video cards.
NVIDIA equivalent
The nearest Radeon R9 280's NVIDIA equivalent is GeForce GTX 690, which is faster by 1% and higher by 2 positions in our rating.
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.