14 DAY TRIAL // Gigabyte already has overclocked versions for most of AMD's R9 series of graphics cards up for sale, but there is one board that is only now getting an OC iteration: the Radeon R9 280. In fact, it's the first Gigabyte R9 280, period.
Gigabyte has formally launched the Radeon R9 280 WindForce OC video board, featuring a custom printed circuit board and the WindForce 3X cooling module.
The PCB shares some similarities with the R9 280X WindForce series, as well as the well-known WindForce 3X cooler.
It's enough to make one wonder why the video card didn't come out months ago. Perhaps because the R9 280X lent itself easier to overclocking, and had a better chance of catching the attention of users.
Whatever the reason, the R9 280 WindForce OC has finally been launched, though the company didn't say what price it had.
The product has also failed to show up online, for order or pre-order, so we can only guess at the tag based on the money needed to buy all other R9 280 boards out there.
Thus, the price should be of around $335 / €335. That's a lot higher than the $279 / €279 that the adapter was released for, but not altogether shocking.
After all, pretty much every AMD video board is selling for $100 / €100 to $200 / €200 more than they should be, due to the good demand caused by Bitcoin mining, among other things.
That said, the new video card, Gigabyte R9 280 WindForce OC, bears the part number R928WF3OC-3GD and has 3 GB of GDDR5 VRAM clocked at 5 GHz.
The graphics processing unit (Tahiti) has a base frequency of 950 MHz and a GPU Boost maximum of 1,072 MHz. Both numbers are well beyond the 850 MHz and 933 MHz of the reference adapter.
Furthermore, the GPU contains 1,792 stream processors, 112 TMUs (texture mapping units), 32 ROPs (raster operating units), and a memory interface of 384 bits.
Finally, Gigabyte implemented the Ultra Durable VGA construction components, giving the board ferrite chokes (the card won't make noises when load is put on it by a high-graphics game or benchmark).
If previous product releases are anything to go by, the Gigabyte Radeon R9 280 WindForce OC graphics card could appear in online and street stores by the end of the week, or maybe in a couple of weeks or so. The product has, after all, been added to the company website, so shipments should start sooner rather than later.