The AMD Radeon R7 265 & R7 260 Review: Feat Sapphire & Asus
by Ryan Smith on February 13, 2014 8:00 AM ESTTotal War: Rome 2
The second strategy game in our benchmark suite, Total War: Rome 2 is the latest game in the Total War franchise. Total War games have traditionally been a mix of CPU and GPU bottlenecks, so it takes a good system on both ends of the equation to do well here. In this case the game comes with a built-in benchmark that plays out over a forested area with a large number of units, definitely stressing the GPU in particular.
For this game in particular we’ve also gone and turned down the shadows to medium. Rome’s shadows are extremely CPU intensive (as opposed to GPU intensive), so this keeps us from CPU bottlenecking nearly as easily.
Total War: Rome 2 is a solid showing for AMD’s new cards, but it’s not a blow-out in either direction. Here we find the R7 260 generally tied with the GTX 650 Ti, while the R7 265 trails the GTX 660 by around 5% at Very High quality settings. Meanwhile the R7 265 also just cracks 30fps at Extreme quality settings, though it’s close enough that I suspect most players will want to err on the side of caution and turn down the quality settings for a framerate that will have a much easier time staying above 30fps.
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Death666Angel - Thursday, February 13, 2014 - link
Who is surprised by that? No one that is following GPU reviews since multi-monitors became a thing for the consumer crowd. The first few generations had issues with monitors flickering in a multi-monitor setup because of too aggressive down clocking, so now they are being very conservative there and increase the clocks quite a bit.Solid State Brain - Thursday, February 13, 2014 - link
I don't think it's acceptable, though. AMD might have reduced idle consumption when a single monitor is being driven, but is still neglecting other usage scenarios that are becoming increasingly common. It's not even just a small power difference, especially with medium to high-end video cards.Da W - Thursday, February 13, 2014 - link
STFU.Anandtech had no problem calling 290 - 290X a terrible card because of its blower and the NOISE and crowning Nvidia once again. Much more now with AMD price hike.
The only biased guy here is YOU Nvidia fanboy.
silverblue - Thursday, February 13, 2014 - link
I don't think the price hikes are AMD's fault per se, however considering the inflated prices due to bitmining, you'd definitely want a better cooler than the stock one. The third party cards handle this nicely.Da W - Thursday, February 13, 2014 - link
My last post was directed to HisDivineOrder but the reply button doesn't seem to place my reply below his post.formulav8 - Thursday, February 13, 2014 - link
They always complain when something good is said about AMD whether the good is justified or not justified. They don't care either way.SolMiester - Thursday, February 13, 2014 - link
If this is just the 7xxx rebadge, then I guess it has the same multi GPU frame pacing issues....LOL, why dont they fix the damn thing FFS!...no CF Eyefinity, no DX9 pacing.....still shit!fiasse - Thursday, February 13, 2014 - link
Typo 'and R7 270 holding at $179 (MSRP)'Mr Perfect - Thursday, February 13, 2014 - link
With the naming of the card being so close to the 260X, I was really hoping this would be a faster GN1.1 part. How does AMD expect TrueAudio to catch on if they keep releasing card that don't support it? Hopefully the 300 series will sort this out and I can grab one to play Thief on.fiasse - Thursday, February 13, 2014 - link
looks like another typo on Asus R7 260 page, 'but this is an especially treacherous position if R7 260X prices quickly come down to $199.'