AMD Radeon R9 285 Review: Feat. Sapphire R9 285 Dual-X OC
by Ryan Smith on September 10, 2014 2:00 PM 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.
With Total War: Rome 2, we’re back to a pattern of the R9 285 performing slightly better than the R9 280 it replaces. At 5% faster it’s a small difference, but it helps to secure the card’s overall lead in the averages. At this point we can only assume that we’re once again seeing color compression in action, though as an RTS with tessellation we can’t entirely rule out some of those geometry improvements playing a part too. Whatever the reason, it puts AMD in a good spot competitively. The R9 285 is once again within striking distance of the GTX 770, all the while leaving the GTX 760 behind by a rather unexpected 20%.
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chizow - Thursday, September 11, 2014 - link
If Tonga is a referendum on Mantle, it basically proves Mantle is a failure and will never succeed. This pretty much shows most of what AMD said about Mantle is BS, that it takes LESS effort (LMAO) on the part of the devs to implement than DX.If Mantle requires both an application update (game patch) from devs AFTER the game has already run past its prime shelf-date AND also requires AMD to release optimized drivers every time a new GPU is released, then there is simply no way Mantle will ever succeed in a meaningful manner with that level of effort. Simply put, no one is going to put in that kind of work if it means re-tweaking every time a new ASIC or SKU is released. Look at BF4, its already in the rear-view mirror from DICE's standpoint, and no one even cares anymore as they are already looking toward the next Battlefield#
TiGr1982 - Thursday, September 11, 2014 - link
Please stop calling GPUs ASICs - this looks ridiculous.Please go to Wikipedia and read what "ASIC" is.
chizow - Thursday, September 11, 2014 - link
Is this a joke or are you just new to the chipmaking industry? Maybe you should try re-reading the Wikipedia entry to understand GPUs are ASICs despite their more recent GPGPU functionality. GPU makers like AMD and Nvidia have been calling their chips ASICs for decades and will continue to do so, your pedantic objections notwithstanding.But no need to take my word for it, just look at their own internal memos and job listings:
https://www.google.com/#q=intel+asic
https://www.google.com/#q=amd+asic
https://www.google.com/#q=nvidia+asic
TiGr1982 - Thursday, September 11, 2014 - link
OK, I accept your arguments, but I still don't like this kind of terminology. To me, one may call things like fixed-function video decoder "ASIC" (for example UVD blocks inside Radeon GPUs), but not GPU as a whole, because people do GPGPU for a number of years on GPUs, and "General Purpose" in GPGPU contradicts with "Aplication Specific" in ASIC, isn't it?So, overall it's a terminology/naming issue; everyone uses the naming whatever he wants to use.
chizow - Thursday, September 11, 2014 - link
I think you are over-analyzing things a bit. When you look at the entire circuit board for a particular device, you will see each main component or chip is considered an ASIC, because each one has a specific application.For example, even the CPU is an ASIC even though it handles all general processing, but its specific application for a PC mainboard is to serve as the central processing unit. Similarly, a southbridge chip handles I/O and communications with peripheral devices, Northbridge handles traffic to/from CPU and RAM and so on and so forth.
TiGr1982 - Thursday, September 11, 2014 - link
OK, then according to this (broad) understanding, every chip in silicon industry may be called ASIC :)Let it be.
chizow - Friday, September 12, 2014 - link
Yes, that is why everyone in the silicon industry calls their chips that have specific applications ASICs. ;)Something like a capacitor, or resistor etc. would not be as they are of common commodity.
Sabresiberian - Thursday, September 11, 2014 - link
I reject the notion that we should be satisfied with a slower rate of GPU performance increase. We have more use than ever before for a big jump in power. 2560x1440@144Hz. 4K@60Hz.Of course it's all good for me to say that without being a micro-architecture design engineer myself, but I think it's time for a total re-think. Or if the companies are holding anything back - bring it out now, please! :)
Stochastic - Thursday, September 11, 2014 - link
Process node shrinks are getting more and more difficult, equipment costs are rising, and the benefits of moving to a smaller node are also diminishing. So sadly I think we'll have to adjust to a more sedate pace in the industry.TiGr1982 - Thursday, September 11, 2014 - link
I'm a longstanding AMD Radeon user for more than 10 years, but after reading this R9 285 review I can't help but think that, based on results of smaller GM107 in 750 Ti, GM204 in GTX 970/980 may offer much better performance/Watt/die area (at least for gaming tasks) in comparison to the whole AMD GPU lineup. Soon we'll see whether or not this will be the case.