Conclusion

... so if you want a card that can play demanding titles at high resolutions without breaking the bank, the R9 280X TOXIC is very worthy of consideration.

Sapphire's aim with the Radeon R9 280X TOXIC is to release the fastest single-GPU Radeon card on the market. Shipping with heady clocks and able to go further when pushed, Sapphire succeeds in its aim... for now, as the R9 290(X) is sure to lay the performance smackdown when it arrives on the scene in a short while.

Now outfitted with a brand-new cooler called Tri-X and able to keep an overvolted/overclocked Tahiti chip cool and relatively quiet, it's inevitable that we'll see it again on the unreleased Radeons. We like Sapphire's performance-centric approach, and so if you want a card that can play demanding titles at high resolutions without breaking the bank, the R9 280X TOXIC is very worthy of consideration.

Fast, cool and looking good, the TOXIC is the epitome of an enthusiast card done right. Recommended at £260.

The Good

Fastest R9 280X we've seen
Well-built, overclocks well
Impressive performance-per-pound metric
Ideally suited to 2,560x1,440 gaming

The Bad

Power consumption is, inevitably, high

HEXUS.awards

Sapphire Radeon R9 280X TOXIC 3GB

HEXUS.where2buy

The Sapphire Radeon R9 280X TOXIC graphics card is available to purchase from Scan.co.uk.

HEXUS.right2reply

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why are you comparing non reference 280x card with Nvidia Reference Cards?!!?!? if you want to do unbiased review, then get top of the line non-reference Nvidia cards like ASUS DirectCU II or Gigabyte OC and post some numbers, GTX 770 stock clock speed 1046 Mhz and 7 Gbps memory, with Gigabyte OC it reaches 1230 MHz and 8 Gbps memory and that would beat the crap out of this card. and the price difference is like 50-70$.

YazX
why are you comparing non reference 280x card with Nvidia Reference Cards?!!?!? if you want to do unbiased review, then get top of the line non-reference Nvidia cards like ASUS DirectCU II or Gigabyte OC and post some numbers, GTX 770 stock clock speed 1046 Mhz and 7 Gbps memory, with Gigabyte OC it reaches 1230 MHz and 8 Gbps memory and that would beat the crap out of this card. and the price difference is like 50-70$.

Maybe you can start by explaining why reviewing a $70 more expensive card against the 280X is “unbiased”?

Fact is, Hexus's benchmark suite is a bit friendly on Nvidia cards right now. In most places the 280X and 770 trade blows at stock, coming within a couple of percent of each other. Even on Anandtech the overclocked 280X's sail well past the 770 by 13% - http://anandtech.com/show/7406/the-sapphire-r9-280x-toxic-review/3

Putting your theory to the test however, techpowerup has reviewed the following cards -

Asus Direct CU II 280X (slower than this Toxic) - http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/R9_280X_Direct_Cu_II_TOP/26.html
Asus Direct CU II 770 OC - http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/GeForce_GTX_770_Direct_Cu_II_OC/27.html
Gigabyte 770 OC - http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Gigabyte/GeForce_GTX_770_WindForce_OC/27.html

The 780 is 13% faster than the 280X
The 780 is 14% faster than the Asus 770
The 780 is 10% faster than the Gigabyte 770

So there you go, a whopping 3% faster on the Gigabyte over 18 games, and that's vs the slower Asus 280X. Quite a “crap beating” I'm sure. I hope you didn't have anything better to spend your $70 on.

This Gpu card looks cheap with it's cooling system. one of my main issues with amd gpu cards is their cooling designs. they make it look not worth the price.

For that money, thats a huge amount of performance. Yes the cooler looks a bit tacky (I'd have prefered more muted colors) but no doubt Twin Frozr/Direct CU etc designs will address that. 780ti seems like an odd choice in the context of those results. They look like a 770ti might have been better competition. Yes 780/titan will remain the fastest single GPU card, but when you can Crossfire two of these for the same price that seems rather moot.