The AMD Radeon R9 295X2 Review
by Ryan Smith on April 8, 2014 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- AMD
- Radeon
- Radeon 200
Total 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.
For the moment we are including Total War: Rome II as a “freebie” in this review, as neither AMD nor NVIDIA is able to properly render this game. A recent patch for the game made it AFR friendly, unlocking multi-GPU scaling that hasn’t been available for the several months prior. However due to what’s presumably an outstanding bug in the game, when using CF/SLI we’re seeing different rendering artifacts on both AMD and NVIDIA cards.
Given the nature of the artifacting we suspect that performance will remain roughly the same once the problem is resolved, in which case the 295X2 will hold a small but significant lead, but there is no way to know for sure until the rendering issue is corrected. In the meantime this is progress for all multi-GPU cards, even if the game’s developers don’t have it perfected quite yet.
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HalloweenJack - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
cheaper set of 780ti`s? 2 of them is $1300 > $1400 and the 295 isn't even in retail yet....anandtech going to slate the Titan Z as much? or is the pay cheques worth too much. shame to see the bias , anandtech used to be a good site before it sold out.
GreenOrbs - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Not seeing the bias--Anandtech is usually pretty fair. I think you have overlooked the fact that AMD is a sponsor not NVIDA. If anything "slating" Titan Z would be more consistent of your theory of "selling out."nathanddrews - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
What bias?http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1187?vs=107...
Two 780ti cards are cheaper than the 295x2, that's a fact.
Two 780ti cards consume much less power than the 295x2, that's a fact.
Two 780ti cards have better frame latency than the 295x2, that's a fact.
Two 780ti cards have nearly identical performance to the 295x2, that's a fact.
If someone was trying to decide between them, I'd recommend dual 780ti cards to save money and get similar performance. However, if that person only had a dual-slot available, it would be the 295x2 hands-down.
The Titan Z isn't really any competition here - the 790 (790ti?) will be the 295x2's real competition. The real question is will NVIDIA price it less than or more than the 295x2?
PEJUman - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
I don't think the target market for this stuff (295x2 or Titan Z) are single GPU slots, as Ryan briefly mentioned, most people who are quite poor (myself included), will go with 780TI x 2 or 290x x 2, These cards are aimed at Quads.AMD have priced it appropriately, roughly equal perf. potential for 3k dual 295x2 vs 6k for dual titan-z. Unfortunately, 4GB may not be enough for Quads...
I've ventured into multiGPUs in the past, I find these rely too much on driver updates (see how poorly 7990 runs nowadays, and AMD will be concentrating their resource on 295x2). Never again.
Earballs - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
With respect, any decision on what to buy should made but what your application is. Paper facts are worthless when they don't hold up to (your version of) real world tasks. Personally I've been searching for a good single card to make up for Titanfall's flaws with CF/SLI. Point is, be careful with your recommendations if they're based on facts. ;)Sidenote: I managed to pick up a used 290x for MSRP with the intention of adding another one once CF is fixed with Titanfall. That price:performance, which can be had today, skews the results of this round-up quite a bit IMO.
MisterIt - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
By drawing that much power from the PCI-lane, won't it be a fire hassard? I'v read multiple post about motherboard which take fire at bitcoin/scryptcoin mining forums due to using to many GPU without using a power riser to lower the amount of power delivered trought the pci-lane.Would Anandtech be willing to test the claim from AMD by running the GPU at full load for a longer period of time under a fire controlled environment?
Ryan Smith - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
The extra power is designed to be drawn off of the external power sockets, not the PCIe slot itself. It's roughly 215W + 215W + 75W, keeping the PCIe slot below its 75W limit.MisterIt - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Hmm allright, thanks for the reply.Still rather skeptical, but I'll guess there should be plenty of users reviews before the time i'm considering to upgrade my own GPU anyways.
CiccioB - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Don't 8-pin molex connector specifics indicate 150W max power draw? 215W are quite out of that limit.Ryan Smith - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Yes, but it's a bit more complex than that: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4209/amds-radeon-hd-...