The AMD Radeon R9 295X2 Review
by Ryan Smith on April 8, 2014 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- AMD
- Radeon
- Radeon 200
GRID 2
The final game in our benchmark suite is also our racing entry, Codemasters’ GRID 2. Codemasters continues to set the bar for graphical fidelity in racing games, and with GRID 2 they’ve gone back to racing on the pavement, bringing to life cities and highways alike. Based on their in-house EGO engine, GRID 2 includes a DirectCompute based advanced lighting system in its highest quality settings, which incurs a significant performance penalty but does a good job of emulating more realistic lighting within the game world.
There’s little to say about GRID 2 other than that we continue to get amazing performance out of the game even though it’s still one of the best looking games in our benchmark suite. For what it is worth the 295X2 holds a distinct advantage over the GTX 780 Ti SLI at both resolutions we test – especially at 2160p – but even the relatively slow GTX 780 Ti SLI is delivering better than 120fps at 1440p and better than 60fps at 2160p, so the difference is somewhat academic (ed: 120Hz 4K monitors, anyone?)
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Dustin Sklavos - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Single cable is beyond spec for the connector. We've been hearing connectors actually melting. "Crappy" isn't really relevant here; this is the *only* card on the market that causes these kinds of problems.Anders CT - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
500 watt power consumption is insane. It should come with an on-board dieselgenerator.Blitzninjasensei - Saturday, July 12, 2014 - link
The thought of this made my day. Thanks for the joke, needed it.therfman - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
This is all very nice, but unless case space is at a premium, I fail to see the advantage of this card over two 290X cards with good coolers. The PowerColor PCS+ version of the 290X runs at 1050 MHz, is much quieter than the reference boards (40-42 dBA under load at 75cm), and is available for under $600. Is having a single-slot solution worth $300 extra? Not unless you really want have everything in a small form factor case.Peeping Tom - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Is that a giveaway I hear coming? ;-)silverblue - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Please, don't... I don't think I could stand to see a card of this calibre being offered only to those in the States... :|JBVertexx - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Is there any way to tell the temperatures of each of the two GPUs? Where does the temperature reading for the testing come from - is it an average of the 2, the hotter, or the cooler one?Reason I'm asking is I was skeptical a 120mm rad could effectively cool two of these GPUs. Given they are connected in series, one is bound to be measurably hotter than the other.
Otherwise, this looks to be a winner. I was considering upgrading my uATX rig so I could do SLI. But with this card, I could keep the compact form factor.
JBVertexx - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
After some additional research on the web, it looks like the difference in temps between the 2 GPUs is only about 2 degrees under load, so pleasantly surprised with how well the 120mm radiator handles the cooling.Ryan Smith - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
The temperature readings come from MSI Afterburner, which is capable of reading the temperatures via AMD's driver API. And unless otherwise noted, the temperature is always the hottest temperature.srsbsns - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
The point of this driver was improvements the the HD7000 series and their rebrands... Anandtech missed this by benching an already optimized 290x dual card?