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

Metro Last Light

DirecX11 Gaming Performance

Metro Last Light

Metro Last Light is your typical post-apocalyptic first person shooter game with a few rather unconventional twists. Unlike most FPS titles, there is no health meter to measure your level of ailment; rather, you’re left to deal with life, or lack thereof, more akin to the real world with blood spatter on your visor and your heart rate and respiration level as indicators. Metro Last Light boasts some of the best 3D visuals on the PC platform and includes a DX11 rendering mode that makes use of advanced depth of field effects and character model tessellation for increased realism. This title also supports NVIDIA PhysX technology for impressive in-game physics effects. We tested the game at resolutions of 1920x1200 and 2560x1600 with its in-game image quality options set to their High Quality mode, with DOF effects disabled.

The performance trend in the Metro Last Light benchmark looks much like Alien vs. Predator on the previous page. The Radeon R9 280X was slightly faster than the Radeon HD 7970, the R9 270X outran the Radeon HD 7870, and the R7 260X essentially tied with the Radeon HD 7790. Sitting in the pole position, however, was NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 780.

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Save for some inconsistency about in the middle of the run with the lowest-end Radeons (the R7 260X and HD 7790), our FCAT data doesn't show anything to be concerned about.

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