Skip to main content

AMD reveals $279 Radeon R9 280 graphics card, out this week

amd reveals 279 radeon r9 280 graphics card week
Image used with permission by copyright holder

If your PC upgrade budget sits somewhere south of where AMD’s top-of-the-line offerings are priced (their Radeon R9 290X card is commonly sold for around $700), then the company’s latest GPU announcement may make your ears perk up.

AMD just announced the Radeon R9 280 graphics card, which slots in right behind their R9 280X on the company’s graphics card food chain. While 280X cards are going for around $470 on Froogle, however, AMD’s new R9 280 will open with a base price of just $279.

As for specs, the R9 280 is clocked at up to 933MHz, includes 384-bit 3GB of GDDR5 RAM, supports Mantle, Direct X 11.2 and OpenGL 4.3 as well as CrossFire. Like the R9 280X, the R9 280 requires 6/8-pin power connectors to run it.

Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming
Check your inbox!

Despite the $279 price tag set by AMD, the R9 280’s price could fluctuate depending on what companies like Sapphire, Asus, XFX to do tweak the card once they get their hands on it. Buyers should also note that the 280 will compete directly with Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 760, which can be had for anywhere between $250 and $300 as of this writing. 

The AMD Radeon R9 280 should be available starting this week, with “wider availability” beginning next week.

What do you think? Sound off in the comments below.

Editors' Recommendations

Konrad Krawczyk
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Konrad covers desktops, laptops, tablets, sports tech and subjects in between for Digital Trends. Prior to joining DT, he…
AMD released a beautiful blacked-out graphics card, but you can’t buy it yet
amd radeon rx 6800 xt midnight black edition

AMD has just launched a beautiful new variant of its Radeon RX 6800 XT graphics card in a stunning shade of Midnight Black. While the card will look gorgeous in a gaming rig, especially one with tempered glass see-through windows, Team Red gamers will likely not be able to score the card in the near future due to the ongoing global semiconductor shortage that's plaguing the GPU market. In fact, though the Midnight Black variant of the card is listed on AMD's web store for $649, it is currently sold out. Interested gamers will need to wait for an inventory refresh if they want to score the GPU.

After launching the standard Radeon RX 6800 XT GPU, AMD created the Midnight Black version due to demand for the sleeker, all-black colorway, according to Wccftech. Both cards share the same hardware specifications, so you're really just getting a blacked-out version with the Midnight Black variant. Like the standard edition, you're still going to get a GPU based on AMD's Navi 2x -- also referred to as Big Navi -- microarchitecture that comes with 72 compute units, 72 ray accelerators, a game clock speed of 2015 MHz, and 16GB of GDDR6 memory with 128MB of Infinity Cache. And with a retail price of $649, AMD is selling the limited edition color at the same cost as the regular variant of the Radeon RX 6800 XT.

Read more
AMD reveals Radeon RX 6800, 6800 XT, 6900 XT starting at $580
An AMD RX 6000 graphics card with the Radeon branding.

After trailing rival Nvidia in the high-end GPU space, AMD finally has a high-end graphics card -- complete with real-time ray tracing capabilities -- in the form of the new Radeon RX 6000 family.

AMD is formally taking the wraps off its Radeon GPU. This new graphics card allows AMD to go head-to-head with the competing Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 GPU. AMD teased the design and specifications of its Radeon card prior to launch, with executives poking fun at Nvidia by stating that the AMD GPUs won't suffer the same shortage issues as the flagship GeForce card.

Read more
AMD bolsters Navi with new $279 RX 5600 XT graphics card at CES 2020
amd radeon rx 5600 xt ces 2020

AMD's mid-range division of its Navi graphics card line has some new reinforcements. Following the debut of the entry-level RX 5500 XT in December 2019, AMD has now unveiled its RX 5600 XT, which the company is heralding as the ultimate 1080p gaming card. Although a welcome addition to the lineup, this debut was far from surprising, as multiple leaks over the preceding weeks told us almost everything to expect from the new card.

Although we don't have third-party benchmarks to give us a true idea of what this new card is capable of, by the numbers at least the 5600 XT slots neatly into the existing lineup of 5000-series GPUs -- just between the 5700 and 5500 XT. Although its core and clocks are very near that of the 5700 (especially if you factor in overclocking from third-party manufacturers and gamers) the memory configuration is distinctly different.

Read more