The AMD Radeon R9 295X2 Review
by Ryan Smith on April 8, 2014 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- AMD
- Radeon
- Radeon 200
Metro: Last Light
As always, kicking off our look at performance is 4A Games’ latest entry in their Metro series of subterranean shooters, Metro: Last Light. The original Metro: 2033 was a graphically punishing game for its time and Metro: Last Light is in its own right too. On the other hand it scales well with resolution and quality settings, so it’s still playable on lower end hardware.
Our first gaming benchmark pretty much sets the tone for what we’ll be seeing in this review. In building the 295X2 AMD set out to build a single card that could match the performance of the 290X “Uber” In Crossfire, and that is exactly what we see happening here. The 295X2 and 290XU CF swap places due to run-to-run variation, but ultimately both tie together, whether it’s above the GTX 780 Ti SLI or below it.
As we’ve already seen with the 290X, thanks in part to AMD’s ROP advantage, AMD’s strong suit is in very high resolutions. This leads to the 295X2 edging out the competition at 2160p, while being edged out itself at 1440p. None the less between AMD and NVIDIA setups this is a very close fight thus far, and will be throughout. As for Metro, even at the punishing resolution of 2160, the 295X2 is fast enough to keep this game going at above 50fps.
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mickulty - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
Well, Arctic's 6990 cooler wasn't far off. The arctic mono is good for 300W and it should be possible to fit two such heatsinks on one card. So it's possible. The resulting card would be absolutely huge though, and wouldn't be nearly as popular with gaming PC boutiques (IE the target market).Oh, VRM cooling might be an issue too. I guess a thermaltake-style heatpipe arrangement would fix that.
SunLord - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Huh looking at that board and layout of the cooling setup you can swap in two independent closed looped coolers pretty easily and try and overclock it if you want and since your rich if you buy this it's totally viable for any ownernsiboro - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Ryan, thank you for a wonderfully written and informative review. Appreciate much.behrouz - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Ryan Smith , Please Confirm this :The new nv's Driver Does Overclock GTX 780 Ti, From 928 to 1019Mhz.if So Temp should be increased.
behrouz - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
and also Power ConsumptionRyan Smith - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Overclock GTX 780 Ti? No. I did not see any changes in clockspeeds or temperatures that I can recall.PWRuser - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
I have a Antec Signature 850W sitting in the closet. 295X2 too much for it?It's this one: http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReview...
Dustin Sklavos - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Word of warning: do not use daisy-chained PCIe power connectors (i.e. one connection to the power supply and two 8-pins to the graphics card). If AMD wasn't going over the per-connector power spec it wouldn't be an issue, but they are, which means you can melt the connector at the power supply end. Those daisy-chained PCIe connectors are meant for 300W max, not 425W.We've been hearing about this from a bunch of partners and I believe end users should be warned.
PWRuser - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Thank you. According to specs my PSU could handle these GPU separately, I guess utilizing 2 PCIE slots via 2 separate cards alleviates the strain.extide - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
No it has nothing to do with how many cards or slots. It's how many CABLES from the PSU.Sometimes you can have a single cable with two pcie connectors on the end, one daisy chained of the other. What he is saying is, don't use connectors like that, use two individual cables instead.
Although, unless the PSU you are using has really crappy (thin) power cables, it should be OK even with a single cable. But yeah, it's definitely a good idea to use two!