14 DAY TRIAL // Advanced Micro Devices launched the Radeon R9 280 graphics card the other day, but that's not the only video board that Sapphire toyed with. Sure, the company launched one, but it also made a new R9 280X model.
Said graphics card is called Sapphire R9 280X Vapor-X. Sapphire likes its Xes apparently, since the R9 280 is called Dual-X, thanks to the cooling module.
The Radeon R9 280X video controller is the third strongest single-GPU graphics adapter from Advanced Micro Devices.
Sapphire could have just installed a new cooler on it and called it a day, since a superior cooling prowess and better looks are enough to justify a higher price.
However, it can be a real waste to add a superior cooler and not push the board to greater heights. Fortunately, Sapphire tweaked the clocks somewhat.
Not for the memory. The 3 GB of GDDR5 VRAM work at 6 GHz like they've always done. The GPU is tweaked though.
Normally, the Radeon R9 280X reached 850 MHz or 1,000 MHz in a pinch. The Sapphire R9 280X Vapor-X is rated at 1 GHz and 1.1 GHz, base/boost.
For those who want to learn more about the cooler, it is a long thing, with three fans and a colored black with sky blue highlights.
Furthermore, connectivity is provided by two DVI ports, one HDMI and one DisplayPort, which is a pretty standard setup these days (no doubt a DVI to VGA adapter is included in the box).
As for the technical details of the GPU, they were thus: 2,048 Stream Processors organized over 8 computing unit arrays, 128 texture mapping units (TMUs), 32 ROPs (raster operating units), and a memory interface of 384 bits. All in all, the memory bandwidth should be of 288 GB/s.
The price of the Radeon R9 280X should be of $300 / €300, but alas that is not the case. The average is of $500 / €500 instead, as depressing as it sounds.
Demand on the part of Bitcoin miners, among other things, has ensured that the things are selling well enough for AMD and its OEMs to ask higher amounts of money.
Case in point, this very model from Sapphire, the R9 280X Vapor-X, bears a price of $489.99 / €489.99 on Newegg. Sure, it has a triple-fan cooler and a UEFI BIOS installed, but those things hardly account for the price difference of almost $200 / €200. Alas, reality cannot be denied no matter how much we look away.