The AMD Radeon R9 295X2 Review
by Ryan Smith on April 8, 2014 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- AMD
- Radeon
- Radeon 200
The Test
Starting with today’s article we’ve made a small change to our suite of games. We are replacing our last 2012 game, Hitman: Absolution with another Square Enix title: the recently released Thief. Both games make use of many of the same graphical features, and both games include a built-in benchmark that is a good approximation of what a worst case rendering load in the game will behave like, making Thief a solid replacement for the older Hitman.
Meanwhile we’ve also updated all of our benchmark results to reflect the latest drivers from AMD and NVIDIA. For all AMD cards we are using AMD’s R9 295X2 launch drivers, Catalyst 14.4. Catalyst 14.4 appears to be a new branch of AMD’s drivers, given the version number 14.100, however we have found very few performance changes in our tests.
As for NVIDIA cards, we’re using the just-launched 337.50 drivers. These drivers contain a collection of performance improvements for NVIDIA cards and coincidentally come at just the right time for NVIDIA to counter AMD’s latest product launch.
We also need to quickly note that because AMD’s Radeon R9 295X2 uses an external 120mm radiator, we’ve had to modify our testbed to house the card. For our R9 295X2 tests we have pulled our testbed’s rear 140mm fan and replaced it with the R9 295X2 radiator. All other tests have the 140mm fan installed as normal.
| 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: |
AMD Radeon R9 295X2 AMD Radeon R9 290X AMD Radeon R9 290 AMD Radeon HD 7990 AMD Radeon HD 6990 NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan Black NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 590 |
| Video Drivers: |
NVIDIA Release 337.50 Beta AMD Catalyst 14.4 Beta |
| OS: | Windows 8.1 Pro |
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Smartgent - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
The card is watercooled!! not aircooled like Nividia chose to do with their 500W TitanZ. Ishould run very quiet, and should not affect your internal temps much, as long as you mount the radiator externally to your case.Ian Cutress - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
It's a shame they're not making a version with a larger liquid cooler. Would like to see it with a 2x120 CLC and an overclock.jtd871 - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
This card should have just been released with a full-cover block and let the enthusiasts/3rd-parties use whatever custom cooling they like.Rambon3 - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Great article. I wish I had a spare grand and a half to replace my 7970 CF set up. BTW It looks like you have an extra GPU Load temp chart on Page 17 where the Load noise chart should be positioned.randomhkkid - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
I may have missed it in the article but I don't think you mentioned whether or not it would be possible to add an additional fan on that asutek cooler? This would surely bring down stock temperatures (albeit increase the noise) if one was thinking about overclocking further.Ryan Smith - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Yes, it's possible. You would need to come up with a matching fan and the screws to mount it, but there's nothing from a hardware perspective keeping you from mounting a second fan for push-pull. I don't know if it's easily visible in our pictures, but the fan power connector is exposed mid-way along the cable run, so you can split it there to get a second fan power header.mpdugas - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
push-pull, perhaps?Gunbuster - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
The perfect card for high resolution multi monitor rigs, oh wait frame pacing is still broken. Don't worry, just send in your $1500 and they'll fix it sometime in 2015 (maybe)JDG1980 - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Pay closer attention to the article. Frame pacing is still imperfect *on the old 7990*, not on the R9 295X2. It works fine on GCN 1.1 cards (290/290X/295X2) due to the new XDMA engine.Admittedly, it was odd for them to throw in some 7990 bashing in the review of a new card, so I can understand the confusion.
Mondozai - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Why are you asking people to pay attention to articles they are commenting on?This is the internet.