AMD Radeon R9 280X Video Card Review w/ ASUS, XFX and MSI

By Nathan Kirsch October 15, 2013

Battlefield 3

Battlefield 3 (BF3) is a first-person shooter video game developed by EA Digital Illusions CE and published by Electronic Arts. The game was released in North America on October 25, 2011 and in Europe on October 28, 2011. It does not support versions of Windows prior to Windows Vista as the game only supports DirectX 10 and 11. It is a direct sequel to 2005’s Battlefield 2, and the eleventh installment in the Battlefield franchise. The game sold 5 million copies in its first week of release and the PC download is exclusive to EA’s Origin platform, through which PC users also authenticate when connecting to the game.

Battlefield 3 debuts the new Frostbite 2 engine. This updated Frostbite engine can realistically portray the destruction of buildings and scenery to a greater extent than previous versions. Unlike previous iterations, the new version can also support dense urban areas. Battlefield 3 uses a new type of character animation technology called ANT. ANT technology is used in EA Sports games, such as FIFA, but for Battlefield 3 is adapted to create a more realistic soldier, with the ability to transition into cover and turn the head before the body.

bf3

Benchmark Results: The AMD Radeon R9 280X is looking good in BF3 and the ASUS Radeon R9 280X was running 81FPS in BF3 at 1920×1080 and 52FPS at 2560×1600. This is very competitive with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 series cards that are running $399 and higher. For example the MSI Gaming N770 2GD5/0C was faster in BF3, but costs $100 more at $399. Right off the bat it looks like AMD has a price versus performance winner here as at $299 it falls between the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 and GeForce GTX 770. The XFX Radeon R9 280X Double D Edition features the AMD reference clock speeds and still has very respectable scores of 80FPS at 19×10 and 49FPS at 25×16.

AMD said that the AMD Radeon R9 280X will be able to play Battlefield 4 at 2560×1440 with maximum quality settings. This game title isn’t out yet to test, but we tried it out on the beta and it appears to be true.