AMD Radeon R9 285 Review: Feat. Sapphire R9 285 Dual-X OC
by Ryan Smith on September 10, 2014 2:00 PM ESTBattlefield 4
Our latest addition to our benchmark suite and our current major multiplayer action game of our benchmark suite is Battlefield 4, DICE’s 2013 multiplayer military shooter. After a rocky start, Battlefield 4 has finally reached a point where it’s stable enough for benchmark use, giving us the ability to profile one of the most popular and strenuous shooters out there. As these benchmarks are from single player mode, based on our experiences our rule of thumb here is that multiplayer framerates will dip to half our single player framerates, which means a card needs to be able to average at least 60fps if it’s to be able to hold up in multiplayer.
Our first Mantle-enabled game, Battlefield 4 shows the current Mantle R9 285 performance regressions front and center. At every resolution the R9 285 loses performance, sometimes remarkably so. As a result it is limited to Direct3D.
Regressions aside, I feel like Battlefield 4 is a good case for why the R9 285 needs more VRAM, or at the very least it’s not a good choice for 2560x1440. The sustained performance at 2560 is too low for this game, and the performance loss compared to the 3GB R9 280 appears to be a direct result of VRAM pressure. If the R9 285 had more VRAM, I suspect it would reach parity with the R9 280, especially given what happens at 1080p with High settings.
In any case, this is also the first game where the R9 285 trades blows with the GTX 760 rather than taking a distinct lead. With both cards limited to Direct3D, both cards are also returning similar performance. Which for R9 285 and its higher price tag is essentially a loss.
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Samus - Wednesday, September 10, 2014 - link
Am I missing something or is this card slower than the 280...what the hell is going on?tuxRoller - Wednesday, September 10, 2014 - link
Yeah, you're missing something:)Samus - Thursday, September 11, 2014 - link
BF4 its about 4% slower.Kenshiro70 - Wednesday, September 10, 2014 - link
"something of a lateral move for AMD, which is something we very rarely see in this industry"Really? Seems like the industry has been rebadging for the last two release cycles. How about starting to test and show results on 4k screens? 60Hz ones are only $500 now, and that will put a little pressure on the industry to stop coasting. I have no intention of spending money on a minor bump up in specs. Bitcoin mining demand can't last forever.
tuxRoller - Wednesday, September 10, 2014 - link
Error page 4: chart should read "lower is better"jeffrey - Wednesday, September 10, 2014 - link
Saw this too, the Video Encode chart Ryan.Congrats btw!
Ryan Smith - Thursday, September 11, 2014 - link
Whoops. Thanks.yannigr2 - Wednesday, September 10, 2014 - link
Great article and review.The only bad news here I think is Mantle.
But on this matter, about Mantle, maybe a slower processor could show less of that performance drop or even keep performing better than DirectX11. Maybe one more test on a slower core, on an FX machine?
mapesdhs - Wednesday, September 10, 2014 - link
What were AMD thinking? How can the 285 be a replacement for the 280, given itsreduced VRAM, while at the same time AMD is pushing Mantle? Makes no sense at all.
Despite driver issues, I'd kinda gotten used to seeing AMD be better than NVIDIA in
recent times for VRAM capacity. A new card with only 2GB is a step backwards. All
NVIDIA has to do is offer a midrange Maxwell with a minimum 4GB and they're home.
No idea if they will. Time will tell.
Ian.
Alexvrb - Wednesday, September 10, 2014 - link
There you have it, and with no issues with boost. Sorry Chizow, so much for that. :PThanks for the in-depth review, Ryan. It appears that power consumption is going to vary from implementation to implementation. Lacking a reference model makes it tricky. Another review I read compared Gigabyte's Windforce OC 285 to a similarly mild OC'd 280, finding a substantial difference in the 285's favor.