Card Layout and Photos

So the Gigabyte R9 280 is an interesting one. For starters this is the only R9 280 that Gigabyte makes, additionally it is just listed as THE R9 280. Without any other designations I honestly would have expected this to be a reference card but this is an overclocked Windforce card. For the overclock this card runs at 950 MHz with a boost clock of 1072 MHz. For reference the stock R9 290 runs at 827 MHz with a boost clock of 933 MHz. So that is a nice overclock. Memory clock speeds are unchanged though. The card itself is interesting, Gigabyte basically bolted three large fans onto a large heatsink. It’s the equivalent of a tiny card with a huge motor sticking out of the hood. The cooler is both longer and taller than the PCB making this a fairly large card. I do love the look of the cooler though with its all black fan shroud.

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Gigabyte uses three thick heatpipes to pull the heat from the GPU in the middle out to the other two fans for the most efficient cooling. Beyond the thin fan shroud on the fan side of the card, everything else is basically open. This is needed because the three fans blow directly down and the heatsink fins run vertical, so the air needs to go somewhere. He top and bottom of the card both have metal brackets but both are very open to avoid air blockages.

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For display connections the R9 280 has a nice mix. You get one DVI, one full sized HDMI, and two mini DisplayPorts. Typically I would prefer to see two DVI and a full sized DisplayPort rather than the mini, but they did include an adapter as well so the second plug is just a bonus. If you haven’t transitioned to DisplayPort at all with your monitors and you are running more than two displays you are going to need an additional adapter.

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For power the Gigabyte R9 280 requires an 8-pin and a 6-pin for power. Gigabyte was careful to leave room around the plugs to give good access to both plugs as well.

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The R9 280, being based off the older HD 7900 cards, still has Crossfire bridges. The newer R9 290 and 290X run their crossfire through PCI. Having two bridges means the R9 280 can support tri/quad Crossfire if you decide to expand in the future.

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On the back of the card we get a peek at the black PCB. More importantly we can see that Gigabyte used a skinny back bracket to help support the heatsink over on the left. Additionally along the top the metal framing attaches in three spots giving the card a lot of rigidity. This won’t compare to a full backplate,, but it is a nice touch, especially with the Windforce heatsink being so large and long.

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garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #36141 09 Jan 2015 16:17
Before we hit the weekend, I take a look at an R9 280 from Gigabyte.
jj_Sky5000's Avatar
jj_Sky5000 replied the topic: #36143 09 Jan 2015 20:07
I thought this was a old review till I saw the date. I take it your testing the drivers?

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