AMD has just launched the Radeon R9 280 GPU. The Radeon R9 280 is basically a re badge of the 7950, more specifically the 7950 Boost with an 8Mhz difference. Featuring the Tahiti PRO GPU Core, AMD's latest card chases the crucial high-mid end price point of $279.9 Dollars or $280 (I hope everyone can see AMD's clever pun here).

AMD launches the R9 280 at the namesake $280 Price Point

The AMD Radeon R9 280 'Tahiti Pro 2' graphics card is launching for a price of $279.99 US. Now as for the official specs; the R9 280 is based on the Tahiti Pro 2 GPU afused with 1792 stream processors, 112 TMUs, 32 ROPs. The Tahiti Pro chip consists of 4.313 billion transistors and is based on a 28nm design which is running since the Southern Islands series. The Radeon R9 280 is coupled with a 3 GB GDDR5 memory which runs along a 384-bit interface at a clock speed of 5.0 GHz pumping out 224 GB/s bandwidth. HD 7950 Boost can achieve a max clock of 925 Mhz whileas the R9 280 can achieve a Max Clock of 933 Mhz ( Stock). Everything else is an exact replica of the HD 7950 as you can note from the comparison chart posted at the end of this post.

As you can see there is one thing different, the TDP of the 7950 Boost was around 225Watts (we will not use the TDP of the 7950 which is ~200W). So there is around a 25W increase in TDP. The exact base clock is not known so I took a guess (thus the "?") so do not treat it as confirmed. Some R9 280Xs also released today but I will not bother covering them since they have been available at online retail stores for the past month now. An example being the MSI R9 280X 6GB version ( 7970 GE 6GB Rebrand). Anyways, Here are the sub vendor releases of the R9 280 at the time of writing, along with AMD Slides:

















AMD Radeon R9 280 Specifications Sheet:

AMD Radeon R9 280X AMD Radeon R9 280 AMD Radeon R9 270X AMD Radeon R9 270 AMD Radeon R7 265 AMD Radeon R7 260X AMD Radeon R7 260 GPU Codename Tahiti XT Tahiti Pro Curacao XT Curacao Pro Pitcairn Pro Bonaire XTX Bonaire Pro GPU Process 28nm 28nm 28nm 28nm 28nm 28nm 28nm GPU Shaders 2048 1792 1280 1280 1024 896 768 Transistors 4313 Million 4313 Million 2800 Million 2800 Million 2800 Million 2080 Million 2080 Million ROPs 32 32 32 32 32 16 16 Core Clock 1000 MHz 933 MHz 1050 MHz 925 MHz 900 MHz+ 1100 MHz 1000 MHz Boost Clock 1050 MHz N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A VRAM 3 GB GDDR5 3 GB GDDR5 2 GB GDDR5 2 GB GDDR5 2 GB GDDR5 2 GB GDDR5 2 GB GDDR5 Memory Bus 384-bit 384-bit 256-bit 256-bit 256-bit 128-bit 128-bit Memory Bandwidth 288.4 GB/s 224.4 GB/s 179.2 GB/s 179.2 GB/s 153.6 GB/s 104.0 GB/s 104.0 GB/s Memory Clock 6.00 GHz 5.00 GHz 5.60 GHz 5.60 GHz 4.80 GHz 6.50 GHz 6.50 GHz TDP 250W 250W 180W 150W 130W 115W 95W Power Configuration 8+6 Pin 8+6 Pin 6+6-Pin 6-Pin 6-Pin 6-Pin 6-Pin Launch Date 8th October 2013 2014 8th October 2013 2013 13th February 2014 2013 2014 Launch Price $299.99 US $279.99 US $199.99 US $179.99 US $159.99 US $139.99 US $109.99 US