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?)
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
131 Comments
View All Comments
Samus - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Very pretty cooler.slickr - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Is it me or is pricing on graphic cards INSANE? $1500 for this and then $3000 for Titan Z? I mean give me a break, I'd buy a freaking car with that money.stefpats - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
my question is: is there going to be a GTX 790 or that plan is gone? i would like to compare similar things,and then decide what i m replacing 690 with.I ve waited long enough it's time for an upgrade.TheinsanegamerN - Friday, April 11, 2014 - link
My guess, no. They will have the 890, skipping over the 790 completely. 20nm and maxwell will make for a much more interesting dual GPUekagori - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
I like what AMD has done here, paying more attention to the high end packaging is good to see. Hopefully this trickles down to the next generation on 20nm. Considering how far AMD has been behind NVidia in terms of power consumption, seeing this card average under 500W at full load is pretty good. That's under 250W per chip, pretty close to what a 780ti does. You pay a slight premium for the better case and clc and still better than what NVidia wants for the Z.HammerStrike - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Shame there is still no HDMI 2.0 support on any consumer GPU's, including this one. Given that this is arround $250 more then two custom cooled 290X's with similar noise profiles it doesn't make much sense (at least to me) in standard or full size cases, but would be an interesting choice for a HTPC. Card is overkill for 1080p, but with new 4K TV's coming out that support HDMI 2.0 this would have made sense for that. As it is, while I can appreciate the design and performance, I don't see the value prop vs a couple of individual 290x's in CF.TinHat - Friday, April 11, 2014 - link
Can you not just use Displayport like everyone else? I believe its got far superior resolution support and because its loyalty free to produce, its cheaper too!Camel51 - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
What is the static pressure of the 120mm fan? Is it easily replaceable? I'm wondering if it would make sense to replace it with an SP120 HP edition, a Noctua, or any other high static pressure/low noise fan (even if it would require modding it in by cutting wires).The review was excellent. Very informative and interesting. Took me a whole hour to read. Haha. I just wish the card was short enough to fit in the Obsidian 250D. Now for the Ares III!
Ryan Smith - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
I don't have any information on the static pressure, but the fan is easily replaceable. It's just a standard 120mm fan; so any other 2pin/3pin 120mm fan should work.henrikfm - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
Does it make coffee?