The AMD Radeon R7 265 & R7 260 Review: Feat Sapphire & Asus
by Ryan Smith on February 13, 2014 8:00 AM ESTThe Test
Starting with this review we are moving to the latest iteration of our GPU benchmark suite, which drops Battlefield 3 for a now far more stable Battlefield 4. We had been hoping to further augment the list to bring it to 10 games, but our other candidates from the late-fall/winter releases have proven unsuitable for benchmarking (e.g. Assassin’s Creed IV framerate cap), so we’re staying with 9 games for the time being.
For this review we’ve also updated all of our included AMD cards to account for AMD’s recently released Catalyst 14.1 beta driver, although the performance impact from it on our current test suite is minimal. We would note that we have encountered random stability issues with this driver that were not present on 13.12, resulting in a driver crash and a system hard-lock at various times.
| 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: |
XFX Radeon R9 280X Double Dissipation AMD Radeon HD 7950 Boost AMD Radeon HD 7870 AMD Radeon HD 7850 AMD Radeon HD 7770 AMD Radeon R9 270X HIS Radeon R9 270 IceQ X2 Asus Radeon R9 270 DirectCU II OC NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost |
| Video Drivers: |
NVIDIA Release 334.67 Beta AMD Catalyst 14.1 Beta v1.6 |
| OS: | Windows 8.1 Pro |
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Death666Angel - Thursday, February 13, 2014 - link
Who is surprised by that? No one that is following GPU reviews since multi-monitors became a thing for the consumer crowd. The first few generations had issues with monitors flickering in a multi-monitor setup because of too aggressive down clocking, so now they are being very conservative there and increase the clocks quite a bit.Solid State Brain - Thursday, February 13, 2014 - link
I don't think it's acceptable, though. AMD might have reduced idle consumption when a single monitor is being driven, but is still neglecting other usage scenarios that are becoming increasingly common. It's not even just a small power difference, especially with medium to high-end video cards.Da W - Thursday, February 13, 2014 - link
STFU.Anandtech had no problem calling 290 - 290X a terrible card because of its blower and the NOISE and crowning Nvidia once again. Much more now with AMD price hike.
The only biased guy here is YOU Nvidia fanboy.
silverblue - Thursday, February 13, 2014 - link
I don't think the price hikes are AMD's fault per se, however considering the inflated prices due to bitmining, you'd definitely want a better cooler than the stock one. The third party cards handle this nicely.Da W - Thursday, February 13, 2014 - link
My last post was directed to HisDivineOrder but the reply button doesn't seem to place my reply below his post.formulav8 - Thursday, February 13, 2014 - link
They always complain when something good is said about AMD whether the good is justified or not justified. They don't care either way.SolMiester - Thursday, February 13, 2014 - link
If this is just the 7xxx rebadge, then I guess it has the same multi GPU frame pacing issues....LOL, why dont they fix the damn thing FFS!...no CF Eyefinity, no DX9 pacing.....still shit!fiasse - Thursday, February 13, 2014 - link
Typo 'and R7 270 holding at $179 (MSRP)'Mr Perfect - Thursday, February 13, 2014 - link
With the naming of the card being so close to the 260X, I was really hoping this would be a faster GN1.1 part. How does AMD expect TrueAudio to catch on if they keep releasing card that don't support it? Hopefully the 300 series will sort this out and I can grab one to play Thief on.fiasse - Thursday, February 13, 2014 - link
looks like another typo on Asus R7 260 page, 'but this is an especially treacherous position if R7 260X prices quickly come down to $199.'