The AMD Radeon R9 295X2 Review
by Ryan Smith on April 8, 2014 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- AMD
- Radeon
- Radeon 200
Crysis 3
Still one of our most punishing benchmarks, Crysis 3 needs no introduction. With Crysis 3, Crytek has gone back to trying to kill computers and still holds “most punishing shooter” title in our benchmark suite. Only in a handful of setups can we even run Crysis 3 at its highest (Very High) settings, and that’s still without AA. Crysis 1 was an excellent template for the kind of performance required to drive games for the next few years, and Crysis 3 looks to be much the same for 2014.
Crysis 3 is another title that regular favors NVIDIA cards, and despite AMD being able to close the gap through superior Crossfire scaling the 295X2 still trails the GTX 780 Ti SLI at all resolutions. That said, AMD does at least make it relatively close, and all the while manages to crack 60fps at 2160p with Medium settings, which is about as good as any dual-GPU setup can hope for in Crysis 3 right now.
When it comes to our look at frame pacing, Crysis 3 is the one game where even the XDMA-equipped 295X2 is struggling to meet our own standards for acceptable frame pacing. Our normal threshold here is 20%, which the 295X2 just misses. The remaining difference is under 2% and in all likelihood should not be a significant problem for smoothness (it certainly hasn’t been an issue in our testing), but nonetheless it’s a game that could stand to see further improvements in AMD’s drivers.
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Dupl3xxx - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
$2k+ for a 4k screen? where are you wasing your money? In norway, you can get a 4k screen for just about 5kNOK, or just about 850USD, including tax! also, why would you need a $1500 CPU, whene the 4930k is 200MHz slower, for half the price?Also, WHY would you want 32GB of 2400MHz ram!?!?!?! There is next to no improvement over 1600MHz!
As far as SSD's goes, a single samsung 250/500GB should be plenty, you got 32GB of ram to use as buffer!
And if you want a "tight" system with insane preformance, the 295x2 is the best choice ATM. Double the 290x preformance, "half" the size.
lehtv - Wednesday, April 9, 2014 - link
Another difference is the way this card handles heat compared to any 290X CF setup apart from custom water cooling. The CLLC combines the benefits of reference GPUs - the ability to exhaust hot air externally rather than into the case - with the benefits of third party cooling - the ability to keep temperatures and noise levels lower than those of reference blower cards. A 290X crossfire setup using reference cooling is not even worth considering for anyone who cares about noise output, while third party 290X crossfire is restricted to cases with enough cooling capacity to handle the heat.Supersonic494 - Friday, April 11, 2014 - link
You are right, but keep in mind on big limitation with normal crossfire/SLI is the space taken up by 2 big dual slot GPUs, with this it is only one slot; however other than that you might as well get 2 290x'sbj_murphy - Friday, April 11, 2014 - link
Dual GPU doesn't have the requirement for 2 PCI-E slots; you can't do SLI/Crossfire in a Mini-ITX system for example.HalloweenJack - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
muppet - 20w more in furmark , and 160 in games - not hundreds more. keep drinking the ananadtech koolaid.WaltC - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Interesting. [H] seems to have done some pretty thorough testing, and the AMD card blows by 780Ti SLI in every single case. Of course, [H] is testing @ 4k resolutions/3-way Eyefinity exclusively--but that's where anyone who shells out this kind of money is going to be. 1080P? Don't make me laugh...;)WaltC - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Can't edit, so I'll just say I don't know where "1080P" came from...;)lwooood - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
Apologies for going slightly OT. Is there any indication when AMD fills in the middle of their product stack with GCN 1.1 parts?sascha - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
I like to know that, too!MrSpadge - Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - link
I would say that indication is 20 nm chips, at the end of the year the earliest.