MSI Radeon R9-280X TwinFrozr Gaming OC review - Final words and conclusion

Final words and conclusion

MSI has one of the better offerings with their TwinFrozr OC Gaming OC edition of the R280X. It looks incredibly good, has great components and was the most silent card amongst the bunch we have tested to date. In retrospect this really is the Radeon HD 7970 GHz edition (the one that can boost the clock frequency). With a few tweaks we see it perform slightly faster then that Radeon HD 7970 GHz edition. No blame or pointing fingers here though, NVIDIA refreshed its product as well so both parties did this. Overall it remains a very pleasing card to work with. But the sheer reality is that this is a Tahiti XT2/XTL GPU plastered on the a PCB with another cooler and a different label on the box. You'll maybe able to see 5 to 10% performance differences but overall that's it. The pricing however is interesting alright. Hey I'm just stating facts here.

See, fact remains though that the AMD R9-280X is a very capable card with its 3GB graphics memory partition. You can play games easily at FullHD and have a sure thing at QHD 2560x1440; as such the card remains to be in a sweet-spot. The pricing will remain fairly equal towards the R7970 GHz. 

Overall

When you look at the Radeon R9-280X overall, performance, some new Eyefinity features, PCIe gen 3 compatibility and all other stuff then we can only conclude that we like these cards belong in the high-end (not enthusiast) graphics card arena. For those that embrace multi-monitor gaming, it's for you guys that AMD decided to go for that massive 3GB framebuffer / graphics memory. This MSI product is cooling fairly well, expect roughly 70 Degrees C under heavy GPU load in a proper ventilated PC. Top notch however are the noise levels as really, there aren't any. The card is VERY silent. 

Power Consumption 

The board is rated with a fairly high 250 Watt TDP, that means when you completely stress it, that's the power consumption. Our measurements showed the board TDP is roughly 239 Watt, its reasonable for this kind of performance especially when you take into account that the product is factory overclocked for you. Just as impressive is the board's IDLE power state, in desktop mode when not in use it can throttle down and disable huge segments of the GPU allowing it to draw 10 Watt only. Once your monitor jumps into energy saving / sleep mode then the power draw drops towards 2.7 Watt. Since you do not game all day ling, that's where the most power saving can be found.

Overclocking

Overclocking then, we see nice results, we could easily set the card at 1150 MHz and after spending some time we reach almost 1200 MHz. That does seem to be the upper limit on air cooling though. I have now tested 4 280X cards and all of them reach roughly 1150~1200 MHz as maximum. Overall tweaking this card should get you anywhere from 10% additional performance out of the card.

Final Words

The most interesting product from this weeks launch will be the R9-280X, this rebadged and slightly tweaked R7970 GHz edition graphics card will be sold in the 269~299 USD price range bracket. For that kind of money it is an attractive product with 3GB of graphics memory. And hey, did you know that the R7970 launched in December 2011 that it was tagged at an MSRP of roughly 500 USD. Any game will play 1080P perfectly with the best image quality settings. Even 2560x1440 should not be a big deal. That said, the reality is that anybody who bought their Radeon HD 7970 back in December 2011, there really is no reason to upgrade just yet. 

We like the MSI Radeon R9-280X TwinFrozr Gaming OC edition very much as all variables are done right, the overall aesthetics are just excellent, the cooling kicks ass and the nice the factory overclock we like very much. MSI will, next to AfterBurner, also include a small OC software app called the gaming App. press OC mode and you will see the card clocked at 1100 MHz even. You get the military class components, a drop-dead silent card, great looks, dual BIOS and all that at the 300 USD price bracket. That's not a bad deal considering the performance you gain from a product like this. All modern games will play excellent with even stringent image quality settings. It is a product that will guarantee you a pleasant gaming experience as these cards have plenty of juice to work with. As such it comes definitely recommended.

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