AMD Radeon R9 285 Review: Feat. Sapphire R9 285 Dual-X OC
by Ryan Smith on September 10, 2014 2:00 PM ESTCrysis: Warhead
Up next is our legacy title for 2014, Crysis: Warhead. The stand-alone expansion to 2007’s Crysis, at over 5 years old Crysis: Warhead can still beat most systems down. Crysis was intended to be future-looking as far as performance and visual quality goes, and it has clearly achieved that. We’ve only finally reached the point where single-GPU cards have come out that can hit 60fps at 1920 with 4xAA, never mind 2560 and beyond.
Crysis Warhead is one of the few cases where R9 285 tends to regress, with the R9 280 leading the R9 285 by around 5% at our highest settings. Interestingly, the tables turn at the lower quality settings and R9 285 regains the lead, but overall this is mostly a wash.
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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.