Question 1

How much power does this card need?

Accepted Answer

My apologies but I really don't know.
I pulled this info from a review:
1.System in IDLE = 121W
2.System Wattage with GPU in FULL Stress = 350W
3.Difference (GPU load) = 229W
4.Add average IDLE wattage ~10W
5.Subjective obtained GPU power consumption = ~ 239 Watts

•AMD R9 280X - On your average system the card requires you to have a 550 Watt power supply unit.

Question 2

How much power wattage does this require?

Accepted Answer

I believe MSI recommends 700 or 750W. I've heard people use high quality 500W and get away with it. I bought a CoolerMaster 750W to be safe.

Question 3

What is in the box? Does it include a 6 pin to 8 pin adapter? I've got dual PCIe 6 pin in my system, and a 1000 kw power supply, so plenty of power  but not sure if I need to add a power adapter or not ?

Accepted Answer

It does come with a 6 to 8 pin adapter. And I believe a sata power adapter to either a 6-8 pin. I don't have it on me at the moment so that's the best I can do

Question 4

Considering buying this card for my mid-upper level gaming rig, play games like bf4, payday 2, and total war series. Upgrading from hd 7850 2gb. how much of a difference can I expect?

sys specs: 
amd fx 8350 se 4.0 x8core
8gb 1600 MHz ram

Accepted Answer

For your setup you might want to consider a r9 290 or 290x. I have two of these in crossfire and they are great so far. Voltage locked but the most recent afterburner beta should help if you plan on over or under volting the card.

These cards get hot, luckily the fans are quiet, but they still get hot nonetheless. I will most likely watercool mine.

These cards are great if you plan on doing video or photo editing but for gaming the 6gb is not really all that necessary. The r9 290 and 290x have 4gb which is more than enough for gaming.

Other cards I have are 7950's crossfired on the fx-8350 as you have. Had some stuttering issues in the title screen and load scenes in call of duty ghosts but other than that they are fine. I have a evga gtx. 670  ftw on an older amd chip and that system does not complain with anything I have thrown at it. That card was about $80 more than the 280x 6gb when I got it last year.

Don't get me wrong, this is a great card but the premium you pay for the extra VRAM for a single card used for gaming most likely is not worth it. For my purposes it will work great. But I am using two for video and photo editing as well as some gaming on a 3930k Chip with 64gb ram in the system.

Question 5

How are the running temps, Idle and load? How do you think this GPU would work for mining? thanks

Accepted Answer

No idea about mining. However, I just came off a gaming sprint. Right now it's sitting around 40C in a Rosewill Challenger case.

Question 6

I see 4 video data out puts. How many eyefinity data lanes? What configuration will fire 3x eyefinity monitor set up?

Accepted Answer

You can use both mini-display ports, the d-dvi port, or the hdmi. Any combination there-of will get you eyefinity (at 60hz).

The problem I ran into is that the d-dvi port does not hold a 120hz refresh consistently. 
I am using three asus 24" 144's running at 120HZ. I was utilizing both mini-DP's and the dvi. (the hdmi will not run 120hz). 
For whatever reason, be it a crash or a simple reboot, the dvi connector would only show 60hz. The mini-Dp's still show 120, but not the DVI.

I literally have to unplug both mini's; reboot the system. DVI now shows 120 (as well as the full range of refresh rates). I now plug in both mini's and everything reads 120. At that point and ONLY at that point can you set eyefinity with a 120hz refresh.

This happens WAY TOO often. I have since bought the EVGA display port hub, and while it works, it is still not 100 percent. But that's a story for another page.

If you are only running 60hz refresh, this is never problem and any connection set will get you eyefinity.

Question 7

Does this card use a refrence PCB? Can I use a water block on this?

Accepted Answer

Off the top of my head I can't remember about the reference pcb. As to the second question yes. There are multiple water blocks that can be used with this card.

Question 8

Will I be able to hook this card up to my thunderbolt monitor?

Accepted Answer

Yes, but you need to get an HDMI to Thunderbolt adapter to do it.

Question 9

Does this card work with Adobe After Effects CS6.0 or Element 3D. Why aren't there any specs for CUDA Cores? Power Consumption? Are there any advantages to 6G vs. 3or 4G's if I'm using it to render in 3D and not for gaming? Thanks!

Accepted Answer

Thanks Jeremy. Did some research...looks like the preferred product is Nvidia.

Question 10

Will this card utilize the extra 3 GB of vram? I would like to know if the extra money you pay for double the memory really pays off when it comes to the increase of the performance at Crysis III 1440p max settings.

Accepted Answer

Absolutely the R9 280x uses all 6 gb of texture memory, I'm not sure on gaming, but for scientific visualization (OpenGL, Imaris, Amira) it is FANTASTIC! Forget a Quadro 6000/Quadro K5000/Quadro K6000... forget those.. 
Heck, forget a FirePro W9000.. this is the graphics card to get.

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