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Crossfire Performance
As was mentioned after the GPU-Z screenshot on the “Closer Look” page, the R9 280 is really just a rebadged 7950 with an overclock. So naturally it is able to crossfire with a 7950 just fine.
So we slapped them in crossfire, overclocked our 7950 up to the 1000 MHz of the 280, and ran some benchmarks to see how she did.
3DMark
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| 280 | 280 CF | 290X |
In 3DMark we saw pretty significant jump from 6964 to 10428, a 49% increase. This also put us just barely ahead of the monster 290X at 10201.
Bioshock Infinite
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In Bioshock Infinite we a much larger increase of 89% going from single to dual card. This brought our average from 65 all the way up to 123, beating out the 290X by a fairly significant margin.
One thing you may notice here is the low minimum fps on the crossfire set up. One thing I noticed with the dual cards is that while the averages were much higher, there were occasional “stutters” where the fps would drop very low for a split second and come back. We’ll keep an eye on this for the next benchmarks.
Metro Last Light
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| 280 | 280 CF | 290X |
Metro Last Light is our toughest benchmark here, rendering the single 280 essentially unplayable at max settings. In crossfire though the 280s were able to pull an average of 49 fps, a 79% increase. The first run gave us as min of just 18 fps but the following two runs didn’t dip below about 24. The dual cards were able to again beat the 290X by a fair amount.
Tomb Raider
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| 280 | 280 CF | 290X |
In Tomb Raider we saw a jump from 51.2 fps with the single card to 96.4 fps in crossfire, netting us an 88% increase and solidifying the dual 280’s dominance over the 290X.
Again though take note of the low minimum fps compared to a single card. This is a problem with multi-GPU setups that must be taken in to account before deciding to jump on the Crossfire/SLI bandwagon.
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