AMD launches Radeon R9 280 as a re-branded HD 7950 Boost

[Scorpus]

AMD has launched yet another product in their sprawling Rx 200 series today: the Radeon R9 280. The mid-to-high end GPU is essentially a re-brand of the Radeon HD 7950 Boost that was released in mid-2012, giving prospective graphics card buyers an option between the R9 270X and the R9 280X

The Radeon R9 280 will retail at $279, which is an interesting price point at the moment for the card. Cryptocurrency miners have pushed the price of the R9 270X up to $279 at some retailers, so there's a chance the R9 280 will immediately go on sale for higher than AMD's MSRP to fit into the inflated pricing structure. Meanwhile the R9 280X price currently sits between $399 and $499 at most retailers, again thanks to miners.

Specification wise we're looking at a Radeon HD 7950 Boost with a minor overlock of sorts, raising the boost clock from 925 MHz to 933 MHz. This shouldn't have a huge impact on performance, but it has meant AMD has raised the "Typical Board Power" up to 250W from what was around 225W. All other R9 280 specs are identical to the 7950 Boost, which makes it slot nicely between the R9 270X and R9 280X.

High-end AMD Radeon graphics cards

Specs	Radeon R9 270X	Radeon R9 280	Radeon HD 7950 Boost	Radeon R9 280X
GPU	28nm Curacao XT	28nm Tahiti Pro	28nm Tahiti Pro	28nm Tahiti XT
Transistor Count	2.8B	4.31B	4.31B	4.31B
Base / Boost Clock	1000 / 1050 MHz	850 / 933 MHz	850 / 925 MHz	850 / 1000 MHz
Memory	2 GB GDDR5	3 GB GDDR5	3 GB GDDR5	3 GB GDDR5
Memory Speed	5.6 Gbps	5.0 Gbps	5.0 Gbps	6.0 Gbps
Memory Interface	256-bit	384-bit	384-bit	384-bit
Stream Processors	1280	1792	1792	2048
Texture Units	80	112	112	128
ROPs	32	32	32	32
Mantle	Y	Y	Y	Y
TrueAudio	N	N	N	N
TDP	180W	250W	225W	250W
Launch Date	October 8, 2013	March 4, 2014	August 17, 2012	October 8, 2013
Price: Launch (Street)	$199 ($279)	$279 ($279?)	$329 ($419)	$299 ($449)

AMD claims the Radeon R9 280 should perform better than its nearest competitor, the $249 Nvidia GeForce GTX 760, in a number of situations. That said it does presently cost $30 more, and if prices end up inflating, we could see it priced against the much more powerful GTX 770, which currently sits at $329.

The Radeon R9 280 will become available this week, with wider availability expected for next week. As this card is a simple re-brand of the HD 7950 Boost, we won't be reviewing it, but if you're interested in how it might perform, check out some of our past reviews for the HD 7950 and GTX 760.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/55877-amd-launches-radeon-r9-280-as-a-re-branded-hd-7950-boost.html

 

[Forg0t2]

Why buy a R280 when you can buy an 280X for $20 extra???

 

[theBest11778]

Why buy a R280 when you can buy an 280X for $20 extra???

With the street price of $449 for the 280X, which is more than the MSRP for the 290, the 280 will likely fall short of the $400 mark when all is said and done. With these inflated prices AMD is completely out of the PC gaming race. No point in paying that much for the performance you get. It's too bad too. The R9 290 (I got one for $399,) was excellent for the money, just needed an aftermarket cooler. However they're now $599 which is too close to the 780Ti which is far more powerful for gaming.

 

[misor]

So much for price/performance ratio when the actual street price is so much higher...
I wonder if NVidia would lower its prices just to annoy AMD. (but I guess NVidia can't do it because it's too profitable for them too.)

 

[Kibaruk]

Why buy a R280 when you can buy an 280X for $20 extra???

Because it's not $299, it's $449 so it's not actualy $20 extra, it's more like $170 extra.

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

Why buy a R280 when you can buy an 280X for $20 extra???

With gaming in mind why bother with any Radeon part when you can find nVidia's counterpart freely available worldwide and at a stable price? In South Africa Radeons are freely available at RRP because mining isn't a big thing and they're far better value for money.

 

[Cueto_99]

Will it be able to Crossfire with an AMD HD7950 ?

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

I don't see a reason why not, the specs are identical.

 

[GhostRyder]

I knew they were going to do this eventually, but like has been already said the U.S market will charge outrageous prices due to the coin miners saturating the market.

 

[SirDigby]

Crypto-currency miners, stop driving up the prices of our graphics cards!

 

[Railman]

Crypto-currency miners, stop driving up the prices of our graphics cards!

Looks like this Pryamid scheme is about to crash so we can expect a load of these cards on eBay.

 

[GhostRyder]

Crypto-currency miners, stop driving up the prices of our graphics cards!

Looks like this Pryamid scheme is about to crash so we can expect a load of these cards on eBay.

Yea, at this point the first small amount of Miner Specific Machines have entered the market in small quantities. This is only the beginning and as soon as the machines start to get more mass produced and enter the market, GPU mining will become almost non-profitable. By the way its going its safe to say that May or June will be when people start to heavily offload the Mining GPU's for low prices.

 

[Raoul Duke]

Crypto-currency miners, stop driving up the prices of our graphics cards!

Where I live I am actually seeing stock in local and on-line stores for the first time in a long while of R9 280X cards and above, and they are not disappearing instantly either. I think just a little longer for the price to come down and I will buy a 280X or preferably a 290

 

[dividebyzero]

I wonder if NVidia would lower its prices just to annoy AMD. (but I guess NVidia can't do it because it's too profitable for them too.)

No need. With AMD selling its cards to miners, it effectively means that Nvidia picks up more sales for gaming orientated workloads where AMD cards in some markets are no longer competitive.
In the short term, it's a win-win for both vendors. In the long term, it means AMD faces the need to combat its own cards in the resell market if cryptocurrency mining falls out of favour, and finding a way to win back the gaming market share they're losing to the GeForce brand.

Where I live I am actually seeing stock in local and on-line stores for the first time in a long while of R9 280X cards and above, and they are not disappearing instantly either. I think just a little longer for the price to come down and I will buy a 280X or preferably a 290

The initial shortage was likely due to both a run on cards by miners as well as AMD ceding a large proportion of its wafer starts to console APUs to fill PS4 and Xbone orders. Both factors should be less demanding now that Sony and MS have healthy inventory.

EDIT: To the article writer. The specification graph holds an error. I believe the base clock of the R9 280 is actually lower than the HD 7950B at 827 MHz (not 850). Probably a moot point since I doubt many (if any) cards should be temperature throttled since, like the 280X, all cards should be vendor custom boards.

 

[Puiu]

The prices of AMD card are mostly normal in the world with the exception of NA. And NA has higher prices because they refuse to lower them and nobody is doing anything to stop it.

 

[Kibaruk]

The prices of AMD card are mostly normal in the world with the exception of NA. And NA has higher prices because they refuse to lower them and nobody is doing anything to stop it.

They "refuse" to lower them because people are still buying them at that price point, if they didn't sell at that price the company would have no other choice but to start lowering the price until they actually sell. Simple Offer vs Demand.

 

[GhostRyder]

They "refuse" to lower them because people are still buying them at that price point, if they didn't sell at that price the company would have no other choice but to start lowering the price until they actually sell. Simple Offer vs Demand.

Well its mostly the miners who are foolishly continuing to buy them at high price points which is causing the prices to stay or go higher until the miners realize that its not as viable as it was when it first started.

 

[Kibaruk]

If they are overpaying for it, it might be! Those are not common people who look at fancy stats.

 

[GhostRyder]

If they are overpaying for it, it might be! Those are not common people who look at fancy stats.

Well the problem is pretty simple, the miners are mining things like LiteCoin or DogeCoin (Scrypt based) coins on video cards 24/7 which is very demanding causing the cards to drain alot of power. They think that litecoin or Dogecoin is going to end up exactly like bitcoin which because of the unusual nature and the fact it was first to the market and popular it shot up in value to hundreds of dollars per coin. The problem is so many people in the U.S especially think that this is a get rich quick and easy scheme so they are buying up as many cards as possible that mine at high enough rates that they think is going to get them millions of dollars in coins and become rich like some people did on Bitcoin.

Who knows, maybe im wrong and all those people are going to be millionaires, however if life has taught us one thing its that when something is easily obtained or readily available, its not valuable. It would be like if digging for gold was as easy as going into your backyard with a shovel and digging for an hour. If it was that easy to do, do you think gold would be a valuable resource worth as much money as it is?

 

[Relic]

Like most here, I doubt this price will stick beyond the first batch of sales at $279. The R7 265, which is a solid mid-entry level gaming card sold out in less than a day at the MSRP of $150 yesterday. I don't think I can recall a time when an entry level card like that flew off the shelves. It'll be interesting to see if the prices start climbing, forcing gamers out of the market and towards Nvidia again. I have a feeling the same will happen with the R9 280.

In the short term, it's a win-win for both vendors. In the long term, it means AMD faces the need to combat its own cards in the resell market if cryptocurrency mining falls out of favour, and finding a way to win back the gaming market share they're losing to the GeForce brand.

The latter must be so heartbreaking for AMD, they are finally selling out their cards like crazy, but unfortunately to a consumer base that will eventually throw them under the bus, with their core audience switching to their competitor.