Radeon R9 280 and R7 265 Graphics Cards Launched by Gigabyte

The Radeon R9 280 and R7 265 graphics cards may be powerful and decent, respectively, and, thus, good for gamers of varying budgets, but Gigabyte decided they could both do better, so it tweaked them until it was satisfied.

Thus it was that the Gigabyte Radeon R9 280 (part number GV-R928WF3OC-3GD) and Radeon R7 265 (GV-R7265WF2OC-2GD) came to be.

The former is a video board with 3 GB of GDDR5 VRAM and a Tahiti Pro graphics processing unit (GPU) featuring 1,729 GCN (graphics core next) stream processors (SPs) and an interface of 384 bits for the memory. Speaking of the memory, it is of 3 GB GDDR5 VRAM.

We actually took a look at the Gigabyte Radeon R9 280 a couple of days ago, when we also noted that it was the first overclocked GTX 280 ever.

Usually, clock tweaking has been left to the X-series (R9 290X, 280X, 270X, etc.), but Gigabyte decided it saw no point in not overclocking the R9 280 a bit too.

The Triangle Cool technology is one of the major assets here, represented by the WindForce 3X cooling module. The company couldn't really afford anything weaker, not with 950 MHz / 1072 MHz Base/Boost clocks (versus reference 850 MHz and 933 MHz), and 3 GB of GDDR5 at 5 GHz.

For those who want to know more about the cooler, it has three 8 mm pure copper heatpipes, anti-turbulence inclined fans, and an aluminum heatsink.

So that leaves the Gigabyte R7 265, the GV-R7265WF2OC-2GD, and this, too, is quite seriously overclocked.

Unfortunately, Gigabyte hasn't added the product page of this card, and didn't mention the clocks in the press release either.

That means we have to wait until the website is updated, or retailers list the item on their online stores, whichever comes first.

Seeing as how the reference adapter goes as high as 925 MHz for the GPU, and 5.6 GHz for the 2 GB of GDDR5 VRAM (256-bit interface), we might be looking at an extra 50-100 MHz. It depends on how good that dual-fan WindForce cooler proves to be.

As with all AMD Radeon R9 and R7 series graphics cards, the two Gigabyte models support DirectX 11.2, AMD PowerTune and CrossFire technologies.

Finally, the product boxes will include a copy of the OC Guru II software, allowing buyers to further modify the clocks, although anything too drastic will void the warranty if you cause a chip meltdown.