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The XFX R9 280X Black OC Edition ships in a long box with a lot of details, but no images of the hardware on the front.
Inside are several power converter cables, a Crossfire adapter and literature, including information on other XFX products.
As I said on the previous page, this is a simple, yet beautifully designed two slot cooler. Those people who don't like bright primary colours will prefer this understated ethic.
XFX have opted for a plain black finish with the company initials engraved at the far edge. Two large 100mm fans take centerstage with each featuring a simple red outline sticker with ‘XFX graphics' highlighted in a circle.
The XFX R9 280X has a DVI-I, DVI-D, full sized HDMI, and two mini DisplayPort connectors on the backplate.
R9 Series graphics cards can now support up to three HDMI/DVI displays for use with AMD Eyefinity technology. A set of displays which support identical timings is required to enable this feature. The display clocks and timing for this feature are configured at boot time.
As such, display hot‐plugging is not supported for the third HDMI/DVI connection. A reboot is required to enable three HDMI/DVI displays.
The XFX R9 280X Black OC Edition takes power from a 6 pin and an 8 pin power connector. Regular readers will remember that the Sapphire R9 280X Toxic Edition had two 8 pin connectors – which could potentially demand more power under load.
The XFX card has two Crossfire connectors, to support multiple card configurations.
The XFX R9 280X Black OC Edition uses 8 copper heatpipes which run into a copper base. 6 of these heatpipes run straight along the full length of the card, while two are bent back 180 degrees into a separate rack of aluminum fins. I don't think I have ever seen this specific heatpipe layout before.
The XFX board is a 6 Phase power design … regular readers will remember that the Sapphire R9 280X Toxic Edition we reviewed last week was an 8+2+2 power phase configuration.
An overview of the XFX R9 280X Black OC Edition. The core clock is boosted from 1,050mhz to 1,100mhz. Like all other R9 280X graphics cards it has 32 ROPs, 128 TMU’s and 2,038 Stream Processors. The 3GB of GDDR5 memory is connected via a 384 bit memory interface and has been overclocked to 1,650mhz (6.6Gbps effective).
Thats the nicest looking GPU I have ever seen.
Good board, but I think Sapphire nailed it with the Toxic Edition – looks a better built card too.
Still this is cheaper, so horses for courses.
I’m with Ben on this one, its one of the most understated, but visually stunning cards I’ve seen in a long time!
Performance is great, but price is even better, I’d love one in my system 😉
Have you checked with xfx about clock times because scan still is listing black edition with this clock speed 1080-6200 MHz, so this is the same card you have reviewed with lower clock speed?