MSI Radeon R9 280 3GB Twin Frozr Gaming OC in CrossFire OCed Review

Introduction of the MSI R9 280 3GB Twin Frozr Gaming OC

The other day we got a chance to find out the performance of a pair of R9 280 3GB cards in CrossFire via our PowerColor TurboDuo R9 280 3GB OC in CrossFire review. Thanks to the aggressive price drop that AMD issued for the R9 280 3GB, the model has become a lot more attractive, and we now know that throwing a pair of them together makes for a setup that really represents some great value.

Priced at a under $500 for a pair, when compared to the R9 290X 4GB, the R9 280 3GB setup really offers a strong bang for your buck. We even saw them outpace a reference R9 290X 4GB with no issue. It isn't until we start dealing with some pretty heavily manually overclocked R9 290X 4GB cards that the R9 280 3GB setup is up for a real fight.

With our MSI R9 290 3GB Twin Frozr Gaming OC on hand and running in CrossFire today, we'll be seeing just what kind of performance we can get out of this setup when paired with our most beloved overclocking software: MSI Afterburner.

No one will deny that the R9 280 3GB got off to a rough start due to the unreasonable price point at which it launched. However, since we've started looking at the model again over the past few weeks, our opinion has really changed thanks to that new pricing AMD has given us. Let's see if the trend can keep on going today with the MSI R9 280 3GB Twin Gaming OC in CrossFire and Overclocked.

Package - What comes inside the box

Starting off with the box, you can see the overall design is pretty much identical to other Gaming Series cards we've seen; the box features the dragon emblem on the left, and the MSI, Fnatic, and Gaming Series logos across the top. In the middle we've got the model while across the bottom we can see the card is an OC Edition and also carries with it the Twin Frozr IV Advanced cooler.

Upon turning the box over, you can see that AMD expands on some of the major features they offer, including the Gaming APP that offers overclocking, the Military Class 4 Standard that brings Hi-c and solid capacitors, along with the Twin Frozr IV cooler we just mentioned. On the right, you can some of the main AMD features, minimum system requirements, and the main specifications of the card.

Moving inside the box, you can see we've got a fair bit going on. Along with the standard Quick User Guide and the Driver CD, we have another piece of paper that explains the Hybrid BIOS, and how it works.

As for cables, we are given a CrossFire bridge, a 6-pin to 8-pin PCIe power connector, a dual Molex to 6-pin PCIe power connector, a DVI to VGA connector, and a MiniDP to DisplayPort connector to round things off. This is a significantly larger bundler than we saw from PowerColor, and it includes that handy MiniDP to DisplayPort connector.

PRICING: You can find the MSI R9 280 3GB for sale below. The prices listed are valid at the time of writing, but can change at any time. Click the link to see the very latest pricing for the best deal.

United States: The MSI R9 280 3GB retails for $234.99 at Amazon.

Canada: The MSI R9 280 3GB retails for CDN$364.99 at Amazon Canada.