Sapphire Radeon R9 280 Dual-X 3GB Graphics Card Review

For about as long as GPU-accelerated games have existed, an ideal performance target has been 60 frames-per-second. Owing thanks to this is the standard 60Hz monitor, which delivers its best result when the framerate matches its refresh rate. To make sure the monitor’s refresh rate and game’s framerate keep aligned, to avoid visible tearing, VSync should be enabled.

While I believe our Best Playable results will appeal to any gamer, they could especially prove useful to those intrigued by livingroom gaming or console replacements. The goal here is simple: With each game, the graphics settings are tweaked to deliver the best possible detail while keeping us as close to 60 FPS on average as possible.

Because our Metro Last Light and Total War: SHOGUN 2 tests are timedemos, and because this kind of testing is time-consuming, I am sticking to six out of the eight games I test with for inclusion here.

	Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag
	Minimum		Average
EVGA GeForce GTX 760 SC	46		57
Graphics Settings & Ingame ScreenshotResolution: 1920×1080	Environment:	Very High	Shadow:	Very High
	Texture:	High	Reflection:	High
	Anti-aliasing:	FXAA	God Rays:	High
	Ambient Occlusion:	On	Volumetric Fog:	On
	Motion Blur	On
Sapphire R9 280 Dual-X	47		58
Graphics Settings & Ingame ScreenshotResolution: 1920×1080	Environment:	Very High	Shadow:	Very High
	Texture:	High	Reflection:	High
	Anti-aliasing:	FXAA	God Rays:	High
	Ambient Occlusion:	On	Volumetric Fog:	On
	Motion Blur	On

On account of the fact that our regular 1080p testing brought performance close to 60 FPS, and also the fact that there’s no room to gain without making a severe performance impact, we’re sticking to those settings. Some of you may prefer to disable SSAO to loosen the workload up a little bit in case it doesn’t feel silky-smooth enough. 1440p could be possible if you were willing to sacrifice graphics detail, but you’d really have to dial many knobs down, and I really wouldn’t consider that to be worth it.

	Battlefield 4
	Minimum		Average
EVGA GeForce GTX 760 SC	45		61
Graphics Settings & Ingame ScreenshotResolution: 2560×1440	Texture Quality:	High	Texture Filtering:	High
	Lighting:	High	Effects:	High
	Post Processing:	High	Mesh:	High
	Terrain:	High	Terrain Decoration:	High
	Anti-aliasing Deferred:	Off	Anti-aliasing Post:	Off
	Ambient Occlusion:	SSAO
Sapphire R9 280 Dual-X	51		66
Graphics Settings & Ingame ScreenshotResolution: 2560×1440	Texture Quality:	High	Texture Filtering:	High
	Lighting:	High	Effects:	High
	Post Processing:	High	Mesh:	High
	Terrain:	High	Terrain Decoration:	High
	Anti-aliasing Deferred:	Off	Anti-aliasing Post:	Off
	Ambient Occlusion:	SSAO

Both of the tested cards share the same Best Playable settings in Battlefield 4, but AMD’s card manages to boost performance by 5 FPS. The best part of this all is: We’re dealing with 1440p here. “Ultra Detail” would be very playable at 1080p if anti-aliasing and AO were disabled.

	Crysis 3
	Minimum		Average
EVGA GeForce GTX 760 SC	43		63
Graphics Settings & Ingame ScreenshotResolution: 1920×1080	Anti-aliasing:	FXAA	Texture:	High
	Effects:	High	Object:	High
	Particles:	High	Post Processing:	High
	Shading:	High	Shadows:	High
	Water:	High	Anisotropic Filtering:	x16
	Motion Blur:	Medium	Lens Flares:	Yes
Sapphire R9 280 Dual-X	43		59
Graphics Settings & Ingame ScreenshotResolution: 1920×1080	Anti-aliasing:	FXAA	Texture:	High
	Effects:	High	Object:	High
	Particles:	High	Post Processing:	High
	Shading:	High	Shadows:	High
	Water:	High	Anisotropic Filtering:	x16
	Motion Blur:	Medium	Lens Flares:	Yes

Crysis 3 has made work easy for me here, as there’s not one worthwhile setting that can be increased without dramatically affecting the performance. So, once again, we’ve left the settings used for regular apples-to-apples benchmarking in tact. Like with AC IV: Black Flag, it could be possible to hit playable framerates at 1440p with Crysis 3, but my goal here is to avoid that “Medium” detail setting at all costs.

	GRID 2
	Minimum		Average
EVGA GeForce GTX 760 SC	55		62
Graphics Settings & Ingame ScreenshotResolution: 2560×1440	Multisampling:	4x MSAA	Night Lighting:	High
	Shadows:	Ultra	Advanced Fog:	On
	Particles:	Ultra	Crowd:	Ultra
	Cloth:	High	Ambient Occlusion:	Low
	Soft Ambient Occlusion:	Off	Ground Cover:	High
	Vehicle Details:	Ultra	Trees:	Ultra
	Objects:	Ultra	Vehicle Reflections:	Ultra
	Water:	High	Post Process:	High
	Skidmarks:	On	Advanced Lighting:	On
	Global Illumination:	Off	Anisotropic Filtering:	Ultra
Sapphire R9 280 Dual-X	54		64
Graphics Settings & Ingame ScreenshotResolution: 2560×1440	Multisampling:	4x MSAA	Night Lighting:	High
	Shadows:	High	Advanced Fog:	On
	Particles:	Ultra	Crowd:	Ultra
	Cloth:	High	Ambient Occlusion:	High
	Soft Ambient Occlusion:	On	Ground Cover:	High
	Vehicle Details:	Ultra	Trees:	Ultra
	Objects:	Ultra	Vehicle Reflections:	Ultra
	Water:	High	Post Process:	High
	Skidmarks:	On	Advanced Lighting:	On
	Global Illumination:	On	Anisotropic Filtering:	Ultra

Because of the performance boost the AMD card gave me in GRID 2, I was able to use slightly higher settings over the NVIDIA card and still not fall behind in performance. Global illumination was left enabled, for example, as was Soft Ambient Occlusion. While the NVIDIA card had to see its AO setting decreased to Low, I kept it at High for AMD’s. The caveat: I decreased the Shadow detail to High (vs. Ultra) on AMD’s card, because I felt the enabled AO had more of a meaninful impact.

	Sleeping Dogs
	Minimum		Average
EVGA GeForce GTX 760 SC	61		73
Graphics Settings & Ingame ScreenshotResolution: 2560×1440	Anti-aliasing:	Normal	High-res Textures:	On
	Shadow Resolution:	High	Shadow Filtering:	High
	Ambient Occlusion:	High	Motion Blur:	High
	World Density:	Extreme
Sapphire R9 280 Dual-X	65		75
Graphics Settings & Ingame ScreenshotResolution: 2560×1440	Anti-aliasing:	Normal	High-res Textures:	On
	Shadow Resolution:	High	Shadow Filtering:	High
	Ambient Occlusion:	High	Motion Blur:	High
	World Density:	Extreme

As with most GPUs I’ve run through the Best Playable gauntlet, Sleeping Dogs is best-played when the anti-aliasing is degraded to Normal. Admittedly, this is just fine, since the game’s AA implementation is junk, at best.

It’s going to be a sad day when I have to retire this game from our bench suite, as driving through the rainy streets of a faux Hong Kong just doesn’t seem to get boring.

	Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Blacklist
	Minimum		Average
EVGA GeForce GTX 760 SC	52		65
Graphics Settings & Ingame ScreenshotResolution: 2560×1440	Texture Detail:	Ultra	Shadow:	High
	Parallax:	On	Tessellation:	On
	Texture Filtering:	16x	Ambient Occlusion:	Off
	Anti-aliasing:	FXAA
Sapphire R9 280 Dual-X	51		63
Graphics Settings & Ingame ScreenshotResolution: 2560×1440	Texture Detail:	Ultra	Shadow:	High
	Parallax:	On	Tessellation:	On
	Texture Filtering:	16x	Ambient Occlusion:	Off
	Anti-aliasing:	FXAA

Rounding-out our look, both cards performed just about the same (or the same according to some, I’m sure) in Blacklist. Great performance and detail levels at 1440? Not too shabby.