AMD Radeon R-200 series review roundup

AMD’s new Radeon R-200 series has launched and it is the start of the company’s journey into the gaming industry dominated on the console side by Radeon graphics cards. In this article we’ll take a look at the specifications of the new cards as well as see what reviewers have been saying about them.

The lineup today is not based on the new Hawaii chips. Those will be fully detailed on 15 October, which gives reviewers time to get to grips with the hardware and fully flesh out their reviews and complete all their testing. The cards on offer today are rebrands of cards from the outgoing Radeon HD7000 series.

Despite the architectural similarities, the thing that has most changed is the launch price. The R9 280X starts at $299, the R9 270X starts at $199, and the R7 260X starts at $139. With the exception of the R7 260X, Nvidia has no counters for the new cards today and will have to do some serious price drops to compete.

Specification	Radeon HD7970 GHz Edition	Radeon R9 280X	Radeon HD7870 GHz Edition	Radeon R9 270X	Radeon HD7790 GHz Edition	Radeon R7 260X
Stream processors	2048	2048	1280	1280	896	896
Raster Operators	32	32	32	32	16	16
Clock speed	1000MHz	820MHz	1000MHz	1000MHz	1000MHz	1100MHz
Boost speed	1050MHz	1000MHz	—	1050MHz	—	—
Memory speed	1500MHz	1375MHz	1200MHz	1400MHz	1500MHz	1625MHz
VRAM buffer	3GB	3GB	2GB	2GB	1GB	2GB
Bus width	384-bit	384-bit	256-bit	256-bit	128-bit	128-bit
AMD TrueAudio support	No	No	No	No	No	Yes
TDP	250W	250W	180W	180W	115W	115W
Launch price	$499	$299	$349	$199	$149	$139

The new cards basically chop off a lot from the original launch price and are pretty similar to their outgoing cousins. There are differences in clock speeds for both the GPU and memory. In the case of the R7 260X and the R9 270X, this makes the cards both cheaper and much faster, but the R9 280X is actually a tad slower than the GD7970 GHz Edition.

This is so that value-seekers will buy remaining stock of the HD7970 but also so that AMD has open space in its product stack for newer and better cards. As far as the competition goes, the table below shows which Geforce cards that AMD is targeting with the R-200 series.

Graphics card	Geforce GTX760	Radeon R9 280X	Geforce GTX660	Radeon R9 270X	Geforce GTX650 Ti Boost	Radeon R7 260X
Stream processors	1152	2048	960	1280	768	896
Raster Operators	32	32	32	32	24	16
Clock speed	980MHz	820MHz	980MHz	1000MHz	980MHz	1100MHz
Boost speed	1032MHz	1000MHz	1032MHz	1050MHz	1032MHz
Memory speed	1502MHz	1500MHz	1502MHz	1400MHz	1502MHz	1625MHz
VRAM buffer	2GB	3GB	2GB	2GB	2GB	2GB
Bus width	256-bit	384-bit	192-bit	256-bit	192-bit	128-bit
TDP	170W	250W	140W	180W	134W	115W
Launch price	$249	$299	$229	$199	$169	$139

The R9 280X is only $50 more than the GTX760 but offers performance that can approach a GTX770, which costs on average $100 more. It isn’t as power-efficient as the GTX760 but that’s acceptable considering it is a big value play for AMD. The GTX660 is likewise trampled by the R9 270X and actually comes pretty close in terms of power usage.

The only card that doesn’t offer the same benefit is the R7 260X. Based off Bonaire, which powered the Radeon HD7790, it loses out in both performance and efficiency compared to the GTX650 Ti Boost, but perhaps AMD will have an answer to that card in the future.

The benchmarks show this almost precisely, although the only outlier in PC Perspective’s tests is Skyrim, which might be memory frequency-sensitive in the areas they were using for benchmarking. That being said, the R9 280X is not only cheaper for AMD to make, its also much cheaper than the GTX770 it typically hangs with.

What the reviews say:

PC Perspective gave the Radeon R9 280X and the R9 270X both Silver awards, citing their solid performance at a lower price than their Geforce competitors as a key point to their success.

The R7 260X had an honorable mention, but isn’t as competitive with the GTX650 Ti Boost as was expected. PC Perspective also noted that the cards don’t win Gold awards just because of lingering issues with frame-rating on Eyefinity and older games.

Tom’s Hardware welcomed the rebranding and price drops because it put AMD in a stronger overall position in the market. They awarded the R9 280X the Smart Buy award, but felt that the R9 270X and the R7 260X weren’t special enough to be a better choice than the HD7870 and the HD7790.

Anandtech were hesitant to give the new cards any awards because the R-200 series doesn’t yet qualify for the Never Settle Forever bundle. This is a calculated effort, they say, to get stock of the HD7000 series out before they can do bundles on the new cards again. Anandtech liked the performance on offer at lower prices, however.

TechpowerUp liked all three cards but noted that the R9 270X and the R7 260X needed price drops to be truly attractive. They reviewed a non-reference version of the R9 280X and were disappointed in the cooler’s performance, which was made by MSI. They did caution users to not expect high overclocking headroom even though the cards may be theoretically able.

Hexus awarded the R9 280X and the R9 270X with their Good Value award and noted that the reference coolers are well-made and perform on par with reference designs from Nvidia.