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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mickulty - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
Well, Arctic's 6990 cooler wasn't far off. The arctic mono is good for 300W and it should be possible to fit two such heatsinks on one card. So it's possible. The resulting card would be absolutely huge though, and wouldn't be nearly as popular with gaming PC boutiques (IE the target market).Oh, VRM cooling might be an issue too. I guess a thermaltake-style heatpipe arrangement would fix that.
SunLord - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Huh looking at that board and layout of the cooling setup you can swap in two independent closed looped coolers pretty easily and try and overclock it if you want and since your rich if you buy this it's totally viable for any ownernsiboro - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Ryan, thank you for a wonderfully written and informative review. Appreciate much.behrouz - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Ryan Smith , Please Confirm this :The new nv's Driver Does Overclock GTX 780 Ti, From 928 to 1019Mhz.if So Temp should be increased.
behrouz - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
and also Power ConsumptionRyan Smith - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Overclock GTX 780 Ti? No. I did not see any changes in clockspeeds or temperatures that I can recall.PWRuser - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
I have a Antec Signature 850W sitting in the closet. 295X2 too much for it?It's this one: http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReview...
Dustin Sklavos - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Word of warning: do not use daisy-chained PCIe power connectors (i.e. one connection to the power supply and two 8-pins to the graphics card). If AMD wasn't going over the per-connector power spec it wouldn't be an issue, but they are, which means you can melt the connector at the power supply end. Those daisy-chained PCIe connectors are meant for 300W max, not 425W.We've been hearing about this from a bunch of partners and I believe end users should be warned.
PWRuser - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Thank you. According to specs my PSU could handle these GPU separately, I guess utilizing 2 PCIE slots via 2 separate cards alleviates the strain.extide - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
No it has nothing to do with how many cards or slots. It's how many CABLES from the PSU.Sometimes you can have a single cable with two pcie connectors on the end, one daisy chained of the other. What he is saying is, don't use connectors like that, use two individual cables instead.
Although, unless the PSU you are using has really crappy (thin) power cables, it should be OK even with a single cable. But yeah, it's definitely a good idea to use two!