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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Samus - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Very pretty cooler.slickr - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Is it me or is pricing on graphic cards INSANE? $1500 for this and then $3000 for Titan Z? I mean give me a break, I'd buy a freaking car with that money.stefpats - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
my question is: is there going to be a GTX 790 or that plan is gone? i would like to compare similar things,and then decide what i m replacing 690 with.I ve waited long enough it's time for an upgrade.TheinsanegamerN - Friday, April 11, 2014 - link
My guess, no. They will have the 890, skipping over the 790 completely. 20nm and maxwell will make for a much more interesting dual GPUekagori - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
I like what AMD has done here, paying more attention to the high end packaging is good to see. Hopefully this trickles down to the next generation on 20nm. Considering how far AMD has been behind NVidia in terms of power consumption, seeing this card average under 500W at full load is pretty good. That's under 250W per chip, pretty close to what a 780ti does. You pay a slight premium for the better case and clc and still better than what NVidia wants for the Z.HammerStrike - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Shame there is still no HDMI 2.0 support on any consumer GPU's, including this one. Given that this is arround $250 more then two custom cooled 290X's with similar noise profiles it doesn't make much sense (at least to me) in standard or full size cases, but would be an interesting choice for a HTPC. Card is overkill for 1080p, but with new 4K TV's coming out that support HDMI 2.0 this would have made sense for that. As it is, while I can appreciate the design and performance, I don't see the value prop vs a couple of individual 290x's in CF.TinHat - Friday, April 11, 2014 - link
Can you not just use Displayport like everyone else? I believe its got far superior resolution support and because its loyalty free to produce, its cheaper too!Camel51 - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
What is the static pressure of the 120mm fan? Is it easily replaceable? I'm wondering if it would make sense to replace it with an SP120 HP edition, a Noctua, or any other high static pressure/low noise fan (even if it would require modding it in by cutting wires).The review was excellent. Very informative and interesting. Took me a whole hour to read. Haha. I just wish the card was short enough to fit in the Obsidian 250D. Now for the Ares III!
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
I don't have any information on the static pressure, but the fan is easily replaceable. It's just a standard 120mm fan; so any other 2pin/3pin 120mm fan should work.henrikfm - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
Does it make coffee?