VisionTek Radeon R9 280X 3GB GDDR5 PCI Express Graphics Card - 900652

While I am not a professional reviewer of video cards nor owner of many, I found myself to be very pleasantly surprised by this product.The visiontek r9 290 at a glance is a fairly large video card, but that is to be expected for a higher end video card. Make sure your computer case is big enough to have this card installed.Power usage-wise, as long as your psu can provide over 500 watts, I doubt there would be any issue.And here is my favourite part: noise level. The visiontek runs very quietly - and I mean it, it is super quiet even when running more advanced titles such as call of duty aw. I am not one to care for noise level, but I was still very glad that it runs so quietly.Performance is nothing short of great, being able to run demanding titles such as the witcher 2 with max setting, max aa at 1920x1080 without obvious frame drop even at crowded locations.Overall, I believe this product is rather underated for what it is, but definitely deserve a great score.Six months in edit: 6/6/15As the season transition into summer, the 290 series' infamous heat will become much more emphasized. With good ventilation and cool room temperature, this issue will be significantly deduced, but how often would you get a cool night in the middle of July?Anyhow, for those who are looking to abate the notorious heat issue: buy a liquid cooler. I have yet to purchase one, but one of these 290/x dedicated coolers are purported to reduce temperature up to 20 degree Celsius (wow!). For those who don't know, 25 degree Celsius is roughly 77 degree Fahrenheit. For a card that, under intense gaming, usually runs at 70 degree C, the reduced temperature is a god send.Performance is still good, no complaints in that department.Recently finished installing a Corsair H55 hydro series on this card in conjunction with the Kraken G10 bracket. It was turbulent, to say the least, but it is complete and functional. One thing to take notes is that since this is not a reference card, you literally only need two parts to complete the liquid cooled system: The Kraken G10 bracket and a liquid cooler of your choice.I've purchased the VGA RAM heat sink and Gelid Solution ICY enhancement kit, in preparation that I may need them - turns out, those are only for reference cards. I.E, cards that do not use the stock AMD fan will not need these heat sinks, as they came preinstalled. At least for the VisionTek Product.Know that this card will NOT work with the Corsair HG10 mounting bracket, because it lacks the reference 90mm blower fan that is required for the the said bracket to work, and it has these heat sinks that I suspect will interfere with the installation.With the H55 installed, along with a new TIM (The arctic Ceramique - note that for GPU's, you need a TIM that has high thermal conductivity or else you will experience GPU overheat like I did with a 5 dollar SIlicone based compound) my temperature is now idling at 36 degree C, and hours after 100% GPU load, it will peak at 60 and never above. Keep in mind this is one day, with the ambient temperature about 25~27 degree on a sunny day.

This card is a beast. No doubt about that. Jumping my frame rates in almost all of the recent titles from high 40s on ultra with an hd7950 to 60+. Quite a significant feat might I say. But this card comes at a cost. And that cost is, you guessed it. Heat. When I first put this card in my rig it was running 35c idle and not reaching over 75c under load. But after only 2 months of use it has jumped to 42c and runs into the load 80s on occasion. Which in some ways worries me. As I'm constantly checking temps now. But from what I've heard these cards can most definitely handle these temps. On another note. I picked up this card at a friggin bargain price of three hundred, and although they've shot back up into the 400 range again. I will wilingly splurge to get another one when prices are low. The amount of power just a single one of these card contain is more than enough to warrant the heat. And to a lesser extent, the money. Splurge man. Cause if you want the best you gots to pay for the best.

The card worked well, while it worked, about 3 out of 9 months. Constant crashes and shut downs plaged my PC. I was quick to blame every other component and bought some multiple times (PSU) only for the GPU to die on me one day. Now I;m rating this on the particular experience I had with my particular card. I'm sure R9 made by others are OK.It was very lovely how amazon and visiontek had no problem selling it to me abroad, but when it broke down they just refused to help in any way, I'm still under warranty but f-- me because I don'l live in the good ol US of A. They won't ship a replacement. Thanks again Visiontek.Pros:great value,runs almost any game on high or higher settings.easy to setup.constant driver updates by AMD.temperatures on idle are very low (35-40)Cons:Very loudthey didn't include at least a DVI-D to something adapter in the boxhigh voltage requirement compared to nvidia counterparts

CAVEAT: No CrossFire cable included.I bought two of these to replace my HD 5870, and to power 3 4K displays (Samsung U28D590D from Ecomade Arena, here on Amazon).The cards feel solid, love the heat-pipe design, and thus far each gives me about double the FPS that my 5870 did.I will be trying these in CrossFire once I procure a cable; I see they are available for < $10 here on Amazon, but I remain disappointed that a premium card would not come with one.

MIne has an issue with not displaying output upon initial boot. If my system has been off for 10+ minutes, I need at least one reset after a fairly long wait before I see anything onscreen. I leave it on now. Once it gets going, it does all the 1080p gaming I need.

This GPU is a great GPU, it can easily max out most games without anti aliasing on and shadows. I run this card with an FX 8320 at 4.5 Ghz cooled by a Corsair H110. Only bad thing about this card is the heat it produced, along with coil wind which can be annoying if you like quietness.

This card is less than what I expected from a high end video card. Most of the problems are with the drivers and software. The drivers corrupted my windows system files and had to reinstall windows 8.1. there is no support for the ATI/AMD drivers or the catalyst software so beware.

The 280X is a screaming card, runs quiet, and it's a good price for the performance. Only problem I ran into was I had an older BIOS on my motherboard and it initially wouldn't work. Updated the BIOS, and everything is hunky-dory.Pros -FAST (Single card is 25% faster than my dual unlocked 6950's)Quiet, even when having to cool quite a bitCons -It's a big card, fair bit of heat when it gets goingNot a huge complement of outputs

So far so good. It came on time, I installed it and it works, and seems fully functional, which is more than I can say for the Asus motherboard it's mounted to. I have Displayport MST hubs and adapters coming because I intend to run 6 displays through the Mini Displayports. I'll update this once I have more to report and will let you know what components I found to work well. At this point I don't have any games or programs that come anywhere close to working this thing or even make it run warm. You should know that this card requires two power supply plugs, a 6-pin and an 8-pin. You can buy adapters on Amazon to convert the 4-pin Molex plugs on your power supply to the 6 or 8 pin configurations, but only of your power supply can keep up; they recommend a750 watt. There is one 4-pin molex to 6-pin adapter included, as well as a 6-pin to 8-pin adapter, so you'll need a power supply with at least one 6 or 8-pin output and an available Flat-four-molex, unless you're gonna buy more adapters. There is a DVI to VGA adapter included in the box.

All depends on where you came from graphics card wise.I needed display port 1.2 to allow daisy chaining. Had it and works great