KitGuru KitGuru.net – Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards
Today we are a looking at the latest high end video card from XFX, the R9 280X Black OC Edition. This card is modified with an eye catching two fan cooler and is supplied in a heavily overclocked state. Is the XFX Black OC Edition one that should be making your final shortlist before an end of year upgrade?
Since launch day we have analysed a handful of boards from AMD partners and so far the Sapphire R9 280X Toxic Edition has been the clear performance leader. The Asus R9 280X Matrix Platinum was also an impressive solution, although we had to wonder if it was really necessary to adopt a huge three slot cooler on the R9 280X.
The XFX R9 280X Black OC Edition adopts a dual slot cooler, possibly one of the most elegant, understated coolers we have seen to date. The core clock has been increased to 1,100mhz and XFX have also tweaked the GDDR5 memory – pushing it to 1,650mhz (6.6Gbps effective). We received a new BIOS from XFX this week to adjust various parameters, so we flashed the card and then proceeded with testing.
Let's take a closer look at the Black OC Edition…
Thats the nicest looking GPU I have ever seen.
Good board, but I think Sapphire nailed it with the Toxic Edition – looks a better built card too.
Still this is cheaper, so horses for courses.
I’m with Ben on this one, its one of the most understated, but visually stunning cards I’ve seen in a long time!
Performance is great, but price is even better, I’d love one in my system 😉
Have you checked with xfx about clock times because scan still is listing black edition with this clock speed 1080-6200 MHz, so this is the same card you have reviewed with lower clock speed?