The AMD Radeon R9 295X2 Review
by Ryan Smith on April 8, 2014 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- AMD
- Radeon
- Radeon 200
The Test
Starting with today’s article we’ve made a small change to our suite of games. We are replacing our last 2012 game, Hitman: Absolution with another Square Enix title: the recently released Thief. Both games make use of many of the same graphical features, and both games include a built-in benchmark that is a good approximation of what a worst case rendering load in the game will behave like, making Thief a solid replacement for the older Hitman.
Meanwhile we’ve also updated all of our benchmark results to reflect the latest drivers from AMD and NVIDIA. For all AMD cards we are using AMD’s R9 295X2 launch drivers, Catalyst 14.4. Catalyst 14.4 appears to be a new branch of AMD’s drivers, given the version number 14.100, however we have found very few performance changes in our tests.
As for NVIDIA cards, we’re using the just-launched 337.50 drivers. These drivers contain a collection of performance improvements for NVIDIA cards and coincidentally come at just the right time for NVIDIA to counter AMD’s latest product launch.
We also need to quickly note that because AMD’s Radeon R9 295X2 uses an external 120mm radiator, we’ve had to modify our testbed to house the card. For our R9 295X2 tests we have pulled our testbed’s rear 140mm fan and replaced it with the R9 295X2 radiator. All other tests have the 140mm fan installed as normal.
| CPU: | Intel Core i7-4960X @ 4.2GHz |
| Motherboard: | ASRock Fatal1ty X79 Professional |
| Power Supply: | Corsair AX1200i |
| Hard Disk: | Samsung SSD 840 EVO (750GB) |
| Memory: | G.Skill RipjawZ DDR3-1866 4 x 8GB (9-10-9-26) |
| Case: | NZXT Phantom 630 Windowed Edition |
| Monitor: | Asus PQ321 |
| Video Cards: |
AMD Radeon R9 295X2 AMD Radeon R9 290X AMD Radeon R9 290 AMD Radeon HD 7990 AMD Radeon HD 6990 NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan Black NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 |
| Video Drivers: |
NVIDIA Release 337.50 Beta AMD Catalyst 14.4 Beta |
| OS: | Windows 8.1 Pro |
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extide - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Did you misread the article? They are simply comparing the frame pacing on the old stuff to the new stuff. Unfortunately, most people are too stupid to properly comprehend english, which is pretty damn sad if you ask me. Thus, a lot of people are either mistakenly thinking that this card has bad frame pacing, or that this review had anything to do with the frame pacing updates for GCN 1.0. NEITHER of those things are the case!JDG1980 - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
These two different things really shouldn't have been in the same article. It's confusing, unfocused, and comes off as taking cheap shots at AMD over an old product. Let's be honest, there weren't many 7990s sold in the first place, and anyone who bought one for gaming and was disappointed with it could have resold it during the mining craze and at least broken even, if not actually turning a profit. A review of a new product isn't the best place to say "Old product X is still not perfect".srsbsns - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Are the Battlefield 4 benchmarks using mantle or directx?Ryan Smith - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Direct3D.Blitzninjasensei - Saturday, July 12, 2014 - link
Ryan, would you be able to do a comparison with Mantle as well as D3D? I would like to see how much the benefit is.iamkyle - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
So...they're taking the Prescott approach to performance?"Bigger!!! Faster!!! Hotter!!!"
Sounds like some Core2 Duo-type innovation is needed by AMD here to get temps and power down to a reasonable level here.
Mondozai - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Temperatures are out of control?Can you even read a basic chart or is that too much for your tiny little head to handle?
Da W - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Great EVGA GTX 780 superclocked to sell!Reason: bought too soon, i want this dual GPU bitch!
TheinsanegamerN - Friday, April 11, 2014 - link
I'll buy it. my 550ti is getting a little long in the toothMondozai - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Basically, for a few hundred dollars you are paying a premium on noise and GPU load compared to 2 R9-290X in Crossfire.While this card has a frame pacing improvement that is massive compared to 7990, it still trails 780 Ti in SLI. Although the 780 Ti is painfully gimped on 4K resolutions due to VRAM bottlenecks.
Maxwell's high-end cards in SLI is going to be beastly, since Nvidia is finally going to resolve the VRAM issue.