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It is a busy week for AMD partners as they release a slew of new graphics cards vying for sales. In this review we look at the high end Asus R9 280X Matrix Platinum which features a heavily customised three slot cooler and impressive out of the box overclock. Is this the card that you want next for a system upgrade?
Earlier this week we reviewed the Sapphire R9 280X Vapor X and it scored well in our review. I have to say it has been slightly disappointing to find that AMD have basically just tweaked their HD7970 GHZ Edition and brought it back out for release. Fortunately in the real world the hardware can still produce excellent frame rates at 1920×1080 and 2560×1600.
The Asus R9 280X Matrix Platinum is their top model in this specific range and ships with a core overclock at 1,100mhz. The GDDR5 memory has also been overclocked to 1,600mhz (6.4Gbps effective).
Many of the AMD R9 280X graphics cards are priced between £250 and £290 but the Asus Matrix Platinum is one of the most expensive you can buy. At £319.99 inc vat this card really does need to deliver an incredible experience to justify the high asking price.
a 3 slot cooler seems insane for basically what is a 7970. I like the card overall, but in crossfire I would have no motherboard visible and the cards would be butting against each other.
I would have bought this one if the price was £280 and it has a two slot cooler. three slot coolers just take up too much room
Zardon, any chance you can throw up the 7970 Matrix Platinum (http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/zardon/asus-matrix-hd7970-platinum-graphics-card-review) up there in tests? Probably the best apples-to-apples comparison over ASUS’ flagship model between these two generations.
Isnt Vapor-X running @ 950 Mhz while the Matrix Platinum running 1100 Mhz. Wouldnt that give a fair bump in the degrees? (enough to justify the 11c higher in gaming)
My bad i see the site ive been looking at only displays base clock at 950, the boost clock is 1070. Nevermind then 🙂