Card Layout and Photos

In most ways, if I were to put the R9 270X Toxic next to the R9 280X Toxic you would hardly be able to tell the difference between the two. On some cards that might be an insult, but considering how good looking the Toxic cards look, I would call it a complement. These are some of the best looking cards on the market without a doubt. If I would have told you last year that Sapphire would bring out something like this, I doubt you would believe me. Sapphire went all out on the cooling design of the R9 280X Toxic, starting with a triple fan design. Two of the fans are larger than the third (two 90’s and an 80mm), but the third fan is trimmed in a bright orange that really catches your eye. The cooling starts with 5 heatpipes that pull the heat off of the GPU and up over two heatsinks that cover the length of the card and some. Each heatsink is a vertical fin design meaning the air is pushed down towards the PCB the opposite of what a reference card would do (reference cards push across the card towards the read of your case).

Sapphire didn’t just toss on a bright orange heatsink and call it a day. They went to work on the power circuitry on the R9 280X Toxic. They bumped it up to 10 phase power with 8 power phases for the GPU and two for the memory/IO. This is different than the 5+2 configuration you would see on a stock setup. This allowed them to give the R9 280X Toxic a higher overclock than you would see on most cards as well. To give you an idea the R9 280X reference card has a core clock of 850 MHz and the heavily overclocked Asus card that I took a look at previously has a base clock of 970MHz. The Toxic has a base clock of 1100MHz, coming in WELL above the stock speeds as well as the other cards on the market.  I think we can safely say that this is going to be a fast card, the question now is just how fast.

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With all of that airflow it will have to go somewhere. The fan shroud does go nearly to the rear PCI slot so some of the air will go out the back of the case. But a good portion of it will take the much easier routes out the top bottom and even the inside end of the card. That means a good portion of the heat the R9 280X Toxic creates will go inside of your case. This isn’t a big deal with most modern PC cases, in fact in a lot of cases it is expected. But plan for it or you might end up turning your PC into a small oven. It’s also important to note that both the top and bottom of the card have that same Sapphire logo but the top logo is backlit and glows an off orange color when the card is powered up. Although the color isn’t perfect, it does look great with the orange styling of the Toxic’s triple cooler.

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For power Sapphire upped the power connections from the 6 and 8 pin pair to a double 8-pin pair on the Toxic. Right next to the two power connections they also put a transparent orange panel that wasn’t on our 270X Toxic. Also along the top you will also find two Crossfire bridge connections as well. Right next to the Crossfire bridge connections you have a small push button with a sapphire logo on it. This buttons switches you a UEFI BIOS and when it is on the Sapphire logo lights up blue.

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Of all of the features of the R9 280X Toxic, the one that stands out to me the most is the use of the backplate. Every time I see a card with a backplate I feel like they have a higher quality. But in this case they did even more. The upside down Sapphire logo and the striping really draw your attention to the card when it is installed in a computer. From there you will catch the cutout for each of the small heatsinks. It brings the whole card together both in quality and style.

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On the end of the R9 280X Toxic you have a little different configuration for connections for once. You still get the two dual link DVI connections as well as the full sized HDMI. But rather than give you a single full sized DisplayPort connection Sapphire slipped in a double mini-DisplayPort connection. Normally I wouldn’t like this, but they did include an adapter to get you a single full sized DisplayPort if you need it so more power to them!

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garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #33412 06 Dec 2013 15:38
I hope everyone is having a safe Friday, today I take a look at the R9 280X Toxic from our friends over at Sapphire
VaporX's Avatar
VaporX replied the topic: #33413 06 Dec 2013 23:27
The entire Toxic lineup are just beastly cards. Usually I am a Dual X fan but Toxic to me in the 270 and 280 are exciting.
garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #33418 09 Dec 2013 15:21
Yeah I agree, I was really impressed!

You should add an avatar! :D

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