OVERCLOCKING
Overclocking any graphics card is pretty straightforward nowadays provided you know what to do and given that most companies also have their own overclocking software, makes it so much more approachable. In our case, we prefer the Afterburner software.
The reference Radeon R9 280X is clocked in at 1000Mhz and 1500Mhz for the core and memory clocks respectively. The ASUS Radeon R9 280X DirectCUII TOP bumps up the core clock speeds at 1070 Mhz and memory clocks to 1600Mhz which is a large bump to the memory speeds. We’d had hoped for more on the core clocks though.
We really don’t get as much graphics cards to review as motherboards but we try our best to stock-up on comparative data. Also, in our tests we include our highest game-stable overclocks in the comparative charts. For the ASUS R9 280X DirectCUII TOP, we bumped up the clocks to 1160/1775Mhz. Although we’ve seen higher clocks from an HD7970 before, seems like we’ve gotten an average overclocker on our hand.