MSI's new R9 280X GAMING 6 GB comes with double the framebuffer of the reference design, an overclock out of the box, and a great cooling solution. Performance of the card is around 2% higher than the reference design, which is kind of slim and only due to the overclock out of the box. The extra memory doesn't provide any performance benefit at resolutions below 4K (including EyeFinity). Only at 4K did we find a tiny performance increase by another 2%, which is certainly not significant, especially not on a card like the R9 280X that is simply too weak to drive a 4K monitor at decent framerates. I would say the R9 280X offers excellent performance at 1080p, since you can still max out the details settings, including anti-aliasing. Our benchmarks conclusively show that there is absolutely no reason to double the video memory for a total of 6 GB at 1080p.
However, not everything is lost for the MSI Radeon R9 280X Gaming 6 GB. The card excels in all other criteria, making it the best R9 280X I've tested so far. We are seeing amazing noise results that are whisper quiet in idle and only slightly more audible during gaming because of MSI's excellent TwinFrozr cooler and proper fan speed settings in the BIOS. This makes the card the quietest R9 280X I've ever reviewed, and I can definitely recommend it to everyone looking for a quiet R9 280X, which, going by my previous R9 280X reviews, is hard to find.
MSI also included the dual BIOS feature, which acts as safety net when playing around with the card by flashing its BIOS. With 185 W on average and 200 W at most, the card's power consumption during gaming is also reasonable for its performance class.
GPU overclocking on our sample is decent, about average. What impressed me more was that memory overclocking works really well, reaching 1800 MHz, a range Hynix and Samsung memory chips reserved for themselves in the past. However, this card uses Elpida chips, which are usually notorious for overclocking poorly. It does seem as though MSI took another hard look at the memory settings for their 6 GB card since it handles memory overclocking really well.
With a price of $400 online, the card is quite expensive, though. A standard 3 GB R9 280X retails for $280, making it a great option if you are all about price/performance. The same $400 that get you a R9 280X 6 GB would get you a R9 290, which is over 20% faster, although it doesn't have as much memory (which isn't necessary). Alternatively, you could look at the GTX 770, which is a few percent faster, but only costs $300. On the other hand, if you think you really need 6 GB of VRAM (you probably don't), MSI's R9 280X 6 GB might be your best choice, not only because it provides the extra memory, but because it manages the delicate balance between running quietly and producing temperatures that aren't too high.