ASUS Radeon R9 280X DirectCU II TOP 3GB GDDR5 Graphic Card Review

With the NDA from AMD lifted (and a day late, due to some misinformation) – I present to you my review of the said card, and I will be comparing it to the existing HD 7970 Ghz Edition GPU.

Here are some photos of the card – it looks just like any other Asus card with Direct CU II cooler BUT it’s a lot bigger. Really a lot bigger. I thought my Sapphire HD 7970 Ghz Edition with Vapor-X cooler was big enough but this is even bigger.

6pin + 8pin PCI-E. In case you didn’t know, the Sapphire HD 7970 GHz Edition 3GB GDDR5 VAPOR-X that I’ll be using to compare with the Asus R9 280X DCU2 uses 8pin + 8pin PCI-E configuration.

On another note – I love it that the Asus card has 2 LED for each PCI-E connector. It’s red when not connected, green when all system’s are go!

Full details at the Offical Product Page

Here’s the GPU-Z detail of the R9 280X on Catalyst 13.4.

Here’s the GPU-Z detail of the R9 280X on Catalyst 13.11 Beta drivers.

And here’s the Sapphire HD 7970 Vapor-X. Very similar, right?

One thing I need to highlight is that the R9 280X refused to work with my Intel Core i5-2500K + Z77 chipset combo, despite it worked fine with the HD 7970. It would power on for some 12 seconds and shutdown on it’s own. It wasn’t a PSU issue either as I even tested it on a 1300w setup. In the end, I swapped the processor and board to Core i5-4670K with Z87 chipset and it all worked fine.