AMD Radeon R7 260X, R9 270X, and R9 280X Tested

Name: Tested and Reviewed: AMD Radeon R7 260X, Radeon R9 270X, and Radeon R9 280X
Brand: Tested

by Marco Chiappetta — Tuesday, October 08, 2013, 12:01 AM EDT

Crysis 3

DirectX 11 Gaming Performance

Crysis 3

Crysis 3, which is powered by Crytek’s proprietary CryENGINE 3 technology, is the third installment in this popular franchise. Crysis 3 is the sequel to 2011’s Crysis 2 and follows Prophet as he returns to New York a few years after the events of Crysis 2. Like previous games in the franchise, Crysis 3 has impressive visuals that can tax even the most powerful PCs when cranked up to their maximum values. We tested this game at various resolutions with all in-game graphics options set to Very High, with 4X MSAA and 16X anisotropic filtering enabled and motion blur set to high.

The performance trend in Crysis 3 was very similar to some of the other games we tested. Here, the Radeon R9 280X finished right alongside the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, but the Radeon R9 270X and R7 260X had no trouble dismantling (get it!) the 7870 GHz Edition and 7790.

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Once again, the Radeon HD 7790's 1GB frame buffer significantly hindered its performance, as evidenced by the rocky frame times. Nothing out of the ordinary to report with the other cards, though.

Tags: AMD, Radeon, Gaming, graphics, GPU, R9, R7, 270X, 280X, 260X

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com