My whole hearted recommendation

To any of my computing friends who want to get a new graphics card soon, I can honestly, whole heartedly recommend the Sapphire R9 280 (non-X) DualX OC 3GB.

This card is astonishing, its under $300 ($286) AUD and can out perform the most high end 280X cards if your system is cooled well enough.

To give you an idea I put this in my computer today, the graphics card at stock clocks with my 4670K @ 4.2Ghz scored P8510 in 3DMark11.

Stock clocks on this graphics card are: Core 940 / Mem 1250.

I have been testing and benching this card for the last two hours, wait for it, I have settled with a stable and safe clock of Core: 1150 / Mem 1375. I can push the card further if I wanted.. Astounding!

That's a 160Mhz bump up on core clock and 125Mhz on memory, stock voltage, load does not exceed 70 degrees Celsius!

With the GPU now out peforming my overclocked 4670K in 3DMark11 I obvioulsy had to raise my CPU core clock, with my 4670K now at 4.4Ghz 1.3v I have managed a score of P10209!

Best <$300 graphics card ever.

/end story

 

Glad you're happy with your purchase. Nice OCs too. Good to the Sapphire card is a winner. 

That being said you really can't go wrong with any 280. Faster than a GTX 760 and, at least here in the States, cheaper. 

I wish we had your pricing here in Australia, I got it because I initially purchased an over priced 270X 4GB card which went faulty.

The store gave me "store credit" to replace the 270X and this 280 cost $20 more, money well spent I think!

Dear OP read this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_C%2B%2B_Compiler

and further more have a look at this to see the outcome

http://www.agner.org/optimize/blog/read.php?i=49

What's that Jakob?

3DMark11 score doens't really mean anything much.

Game benchmarks is more useful.

The step up from a R9 280 to a R9 280X is still significant when both cards are overclocked when not factoring price.

Of course if the price difference between R9 280 and R9 280X is large that a 10 +fps performance increase isn't worth it.

You can't say 3DMark11 benchmarks don't mean anything, otherwise they wouldn't be used so widely in reviews. My point is my system is scoring higher than what it would with a stock clocked 280x.

If you read around (which I have been doing tonight) it's not uncommon for the R9 280 to perform as well as or slightly better than the 280x when overclocked. I would gladly put a stock clocked 280x in my system and benchmark it, in synthetics and games against this 280 and I bet you the performance will be almost identical if the 280 (non-x) doesn't pull ahead.

Pricing here for an R9 280:   $280-$300.

Pricing here for an R9 280x: $370-$400.

Read it. No further explanation required.

To add to this, have you guys noticed the deals on 4GB 290 cards on fleabay (ex miners)? Reference designs for $230, it's insane. Buy one, stick an NZXT Kraken G10 w/ cheap acetate cooler on it, and OC it to 1.3GHz. That's what I did, and in benchmarks it's close to CF 280 numbers (at ~60C). That's nucking futs. And if it burns out in a couple years, who cares?

Just for the information to be available to anyone interested in this thread, I have an XFX DD 280x which is at stock voltage and reaches 1150 core and 1600 mem. If I were to get into the voltages, I am sure that I could up it some more. At around the same clocks, the 2580x is going to perform much better. Pricing is another issue. Here, the difference between the two in price isn't that much at all.

$100 the difference here in Australia.

Anyway, this wasn't meant to be an e-peen contest. I know there are many posts on here of people trying to build well balanced/high performing budget gaming machines and for the first time in my life I am so happy with the performance of a piece of hardware purchased, I wanted to recommend it to others.

In Australia at the moment the R9 280 is probably the best buy for a sub $300 card, out performing $400 cards at times, you can't argue with that.

It all comes down to pricing. In the US, right now, you can get a 280 for $250 and a 280x for $300 new from amazon. The difference between teh cards seems to be about 5-10 fps at stock clocks. Is it worth the extra money? Depends on who is spending and how much they can actually spend. Both cards are a great option, both overclock really well (as they are basically the 7950 and 7970, this is no surprise).

 

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2014/05/19/amd-radeon-r9-280-review-feat-xfx/1

I don't know about pricing in the US or Australia, but in europe the R9 290 is pretty damn cheap right now. You can get the tri-x version from sapphire for 350€, while the r9 280(x) is 230€-280€. For a high end rig the 290 is just insanely cheap right now, and I think it's an even better deal than the 280.

Sorry bud, I am working, no time to read novels.

I understand how well the R9 290 performs and that it is the best in it's class/price range, however I was dealing with a different price range with my R9 280.