Hardware AMD Radeon R9 295X2 Review

You guys should look over at Toms for the details of the power use. There is so much concern about it that they brought out the o-scope. It appears this card is only pulling 28W from the slot under max load and doesn't use the 3.3V at all.

 

If you look at the reference specs, the GTX 780 doesn't get a look in. The 780 Ti can generate more textures/s than the R9 290X, but the R9 290X can generate more pixels/s and more GFLOPS. The R9 295X is faster than a pair of R9 290X (same configuration, higher clock speeds, no reliance on a bridge or the PCI-E bus to transfer data between GPUs).

As such, I would say, except when your bottleneck is in texture processing, the new card is more powerful than any two single cards, at reference clock speeds. Also, the 780Ti and the 290X both have TDP of 250W, which doubles up to give the 500W of the new card.

I do agree though that the separate cards are much cheaper, this card really targets a niche market (maybe miners who want to fit as much processing power as possible into a single system unit). Or TG of course, he likes buying high end hardware

 

Separate cards may be cheaper, but if I had the money/desire I'd be tempted by making a stupidly powerful compact gaming system even at a bit of a premium.

Imagine a mini-ITX system build around this monster

Also the simplicity of two relatively compact all in one coolers would be a boon for such a system.

 

It looks like an amazing card and I know someone who wants one, or two. LOL.

 

pcper have a review of 780ti`s in sli and this , bothusing the very latest beta drivers...... at 1440p the 780`s are slightly ahead but above that the 295 is ahead - that's down to the wider back end , something drivers simply cannot do anything about - the ability to shunt a lot of data.

 

Quite nice, shame about the price, I'd be tempted to have one of these in exchange for my 3 290s, would drop power use and heat down for very little performance sacrifice I'd of thought.

 

Does this card has 8GB or 4GB VRAM PER GPU?

Because there is a misconception on dual cards that have "double" the ram, however because of CF/SLI, it is actually half due to cloned data.

 

I'll get one in 5 years from ebay for a fiver and then use it to scrape bird poo off my windows.

 

I'm not convinced with the ergonomics... and that radiator flapping about would probably scratch things up pretty bad.

Probably better suited as an auxiliary heater for the basement.

 

Lovely card. Price seems a lot, but when you consider the alternative of 2 other cards, plus watercooling equipment, the price of the 295x2 is not that crazy.

 

i like it and my guess is the price will come down after a while

 

Matthew, did you notice any stuttering in your testing?

Seeing as this has always been one of the main deal breakers for multi-GPU setups, would be nice to know if this was the case.

 

Thanks!


Time to drop in another 290X and install these 14.4 BETA drivers?

 

I just had a read of Eurogamer's review and like PCper they found that the 780ti SLI set up actually had more problems than the 295x2.

That's impressive. AMD have come a bloody long way since PCper 'outed' them. What's better is I'm a 7990 owner, and, got my card at a drastically reduced price because of the frame problems.

Can't see myself moving from 1080p any time soon, and even if I do I will most probably got for a 1440 monitor instead. Will be the perfect match for my 7990

Bindi pointed out that these cards actually cost more to make than two separate 290x. Not only that but you're getting a dual rad cooler and what looks like two separate pump units (one per GPU). Now unless one's simply a dummy that all adds cost.

 

Great card, but the price is stupid...

I watched the Nvidia G-sync video, and they went in great detail how monitors could be more to blame for what we would describe as 'Lag/mircoshutter'. Sounds like you may be experiencing that with your single GPU setup's too?

This was the video.



I know you guys have a lot to do, but could you not add some SLI/CFX solutions to show where this card would be in the table of results using multi GPU setup. I.E 2x GTX780Ti/ 2x R9 290X etc.

 

I've yet to see a G-sync monitor in action, but from what I've gathered too, they're awesome!

I understand. Well hopefully once things settle down, it would be good to see how multi GPU cards scale in SLI/CFX and how the drivers on both teams have improved over the years.
I remember a few years back CPC did this test and showed the scalability of using 1, 2, & 3 GPU's.

 

Excellent review Matthew