Radeon R9 280: specs and benchmarks
Aggregate performance score
Radeon R9 280 provides acceptable gaming and benchmark performance at 13.22% of a leader's which is GeForce RTX 5090 D.
Contents
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 ranking | 405 | |
| Place by popularity | not in top-100 | |
| Cost-effectiveness evaluation | 4.70 | |
| Power efficiency | 5.04 | of 100.00 (Radeon 890M) |
| Architecture | GCN 1.0 (2012−2020) | |
| GPU code name | Tahiti | |
| Market segment | Desktop | |
| Design | reference | |
| Release date | 4 March 2014 (11 years ago) | |
| Launch price (MSRP) | $279 | of 14,999 (Quadro Plex 7000) |
Cost-effectiveness evaluation
The higher the performance-to-price ratio, the better. We use the manufacturer's recommended prices for comparison.
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 cores | 1792 | of 24064 (RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell) |
| Boost clock speed | 933 MHz | of 3230 MHz (Radeon RX 9060 XT) |
| Number of transistors | 4,313 million | of 185,000 million (Radeon Instinct MI350X) |
| Manufacturing process technology | 28 nm | of 3 nm (Arc Graphics 140V) |
| Power consumption (TDP) | 200 Watt | of 2400 Watt (Data Center GPU Max Subsystem) |
| Texture fill rate | 104.5 | of 2,554 (Radeon Instinct MI300X) |
| Floating-point processing power | 3.344 TFLOPS | of 126 (RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell) |
| ROPs | 32 | of 512 (Moore Threads MTT S4000) |
| TMUs | 112 | of 1280 (Data Center GPU Max NEXT) |
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 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 |
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 type | GDDR5 | |
| Maximum RAM amount | 3 GB | of 288 GB (Radeon Instinct MI325X) |
| Memory bus width | 384 Bit | of 8192 Bit (Radeon Instinct MI250X) |
| Memory clock speed | 1250 MHz | of 16000 GB/s (GeForce RTX 4050 Mobile) |
| Memory bandwidth | 240 GB/s | of 5,171 GB/s (Radeon Instinct MI300X) |
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 Connectors | 2x 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 compatibility
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 | + |
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.
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.
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.
Send your test results of Radeon R9 280.
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.
